Editions du Carrefour

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Editions du Carrefour (also often short Edition Carrefour or Editions Carrefour) was a publisher based in Paris that existed from 1928 to 1940 . When it was founded, the publishing house specialized in the publication of left-wing literature and art. In March 1933, the KPD functionary Willi Munzenberg, who had fled the German Reich, acquired the publishing house and made it the most important journalistic mouthpiece for the KPD in exile and a major publisher for German emigration during the Nazi dictatorship. The publisher specialized in the publication of anti-Nazi books, brochures and leaflets.

history

The KPD functionary Willi Munzenberg, who was a member of the Reichstag until his escape from Germany in March 1933 and editor of various Communist newspapers, took over the Editions du Carrefour publishing house around April 1933 with the approval of the Moscow Comintern with the help of the French Communist Party . Through the mediation of the French writer Paul Nizan , he met the Swiss publisher Pierre G. Lévy . Pierre Gaspare Levy was a Swiss left-wing intellectual of Alsatian origin who wanted to get involved in the fight against National Socialism and who had become a sympathizer of the PCF. Levy founded his publishing house in 1928 and named it "Editions du Carrefour" after the first location at the crossroads "Carrefour de la Croix Rouge".

In previous years Levy had specialized in the publication of left-wing literature and art. In addition to corresponding novels, he published in particular the magazine Bifur , which appeared from May 1929 to June 1931 , an avant-garde review that was considered to be artistically avant-garde and politically anarchist. At the time of the takeover of the publisher, the publisher was in financial danger. With the help of funds from the Communist International, Münzenberg was able to take over the publishing house that had existed since 1928. As a staunch anti-fascist and Jew, Levy was a sharp opponent of the Nazi system. After taking over the publishing house, Munzenberg and his staff made himself available as a consultant who gave them important contacts through the publishing landscape and access to the Parisian intellectual milieu. A stock corporation was founded in November 1933. The majority shareholders were Babette Gross with 75.8% of the shares, Levy 11.8% and Count Mihály Károlyi with 10%.

The rooms of the Editions du Carrefour were initially in the house at 169 Boulevard Saint-Germain, a small garden shed that Levy had already used as the headquarters of his publishing house. In 1934, in order to get beyond the cramped working conditions on Boulevard Saint-Germain, where it had only two rooms, the publishing house moved to the fourth floor of the building at 89 Boulevard Montparnasse , where Munzenberg - in the suite across the street - also had the he had set up the Paris office of International Workers Aid, which he led.

In addition to Münzenberg and his partner Babette Gross , who became the managing director of Editions, the employees of the publishing house included a. Arthur Koestler , Otto Katz and John Heartfield (illustrations and cover designs). In addition to the company's own political propaganda and educational pamphlets compiled by the publisher's editorial team (in particular the so-called Brown Books , which clarified the situation in National Socialist Germany, see below), novels and political works by well-known left-wing writers such as Bertolt Brecht and Johannes R. Becher were also part of the Publishing program.

The publisher's first publication was the Brown Book published in August 1933 on the Reichstag fire and the Hitler terror . This offered a compilation of alleged evidence (at least in part later exposed as falsifications) of the National Socialists' responsibility for the burning of the Reichstag building in Berlin on the night of February 27-28, 1933, as well as a collection of documentary materials on many of the National Socialists in the From February to May 1933 terrorist and repressive measures against communists, social democrats and other sections of the German population opposed to them and even against people from their own ranks. In particular, the work also contained a list of more than a hundred people who had perished since the National Socialists came to power through their fault - be it through targeted murder, or through unrestrained use of force with fatal consequences. Publisher had come to knowledge. The work, known for short as the Braunbuch , which within a short period of time had more than 50 editions in more than twenty languages, was by far the work with the highest circulation in Edition Carrefour. In addition, the book developed a considerable mass impact by strongly shaping the image of foreign countries on the Nazi state. Even the Nazi government could not completely ignore the work: Various of the concrete detailed accusations that were articulated in the work against individual Nazi leaders, such as Hermann Göring and Edmund Heines , of having been involved in the burning of the Reichstag building were included in the framework The Reichstag fire trial before the Reichsgericht in Leipzig in autumn 1933 was taken up and examined by the court, and various other allegations in the Brown Book were repeatedly denied by the foreign press services of the Reich Propaganda Ministry. The Berlin SA even saw itself published for the publication of an anti-brown book about this camp , written by Werner Schäfer , the SA commandant of the Oranienburg concentration camp, in which they published the "horror tales" put forward in the brown book about the conditions in this camp and the The prisoners faced harassment. During the years 1933 to 1945 numerous details of the Brown Book were taken up in writings of anti-Nazi German exile journalism as well as the Allied war propaganda and during the first decades after the Second World War (to a lesser extent still today) the work was one of the historical research literature in source or reference font used with great frequency. Analogous statements can be made with reference to two follow-up writings, which Munzenberg succeeded in following the Brown Book - the Brown Book II and the so-called White Book on the shootings of June 30, 1934 (short white book ).

Despite individual publications with a high circulation - such as the Brown Books - the publisher was a subsidy company from the start: The financial deficits were covered by funds that Munzenberg had been able to transfer to Paris from his former KPD publishers before his flight from Germany. The additional costs were paid by the Comintern.

In 1937, the management of the publishing house was transferred to the Kl functionary Bohumil Smeral, who still published some books that had already been planned under Munzenberg, after which Edition du Carrefour was effectively dissolved.

Fonts from the Editions du Carrefour program

Publications of the 'old' Editions du Carrefour (1929 to 1933):

  • Ancora un bellissimo viaggio in Persia. Tavernier, Jean-Baptiste, Voyage en Perse et description de ce royaume , Paris 1930.
  • Claude Cahun : Aveux non avenus. Paris 1930.

Publications of the 'new' Editions du Carrefour (1933 to 1940):

1933:

  • Anonymous: Brown book on the Reichstag fire and Hitler terror. Paris 1933. (Foreword by Lord Marley, d. I. Edward Marley )

1934:

  • Anonymous: Braunbuch II. Dimitrov versus Göring. Revelations about the real arsonists , Paris 1934 (preface by Denis Nowell Pritt )
  • Bertolt Brecht : songs, poems, choirs , Paris 1934.
  • Albert Schreiner : Hitler drives to war. Paris 1934
  • Anonymous: White paper on the shootings of June 30, 1934. Authentic representation of the German Bartholomew Night. Paris 1934. (Foreword by Georg Branting )
  • Albert Schreiner, Dorothy Woodman (Ed.): Hitler drives to war. Documentary revelations about Hitler's secret armaments. Edited by Dorothy Woodman, UK Union Secretary for Democratic Control. Translated from the English by Franz Obermeier. Paris 1934. (Reprinted in Cologne, Pahl-Rugenstein and Röderberg-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1979).

1935:

  • Anonymous: The Brown Net: How Hitler's Agents Work Abroad and Prepare for War , Paris 1935.
  • Anonymous: Nazi leaders look at you. Paris 1934.
  • Johannes R. Becher : The man who believes everything. Seals. Paris 1935.
  • Karl Billinger (d. I. Paul W. Massing ): Protective prisoner No. 880. From a German concentration camp. Paris 1935 (novel)
  • Dorothy Woodman (d. I. Albert Schreiner): Hitler's air fleet ready to go. Paris 1935.
  • Anna Seghers The way through February. Paris 1935.
  • Bodo Uhse : mercenary and soldier. Paris 1935.
  • Dorothy Woodman : Hitler's air fleet ready to go. Paris 1935.

1936:

  • The yellow spot. The extermination of 500,000 German Jews , Paris 1936. (Foreword by Lion Feuchtwanger )
  • The German people accuse . Hitler's war against the peace fighters in Germany. A book of facts , Paris 1936.
  • Albert Müller (d. I. Albert Schreiner): Hitler's motorized shock army. Army and economic motorization in the Third Reich, with numerous pictures, maps and tables and an appendix on the militarization of the demilitarized zone , Paris 1936.
  • Franz Spielhagen (d. I. Otto Katz ): Spies and conspirators in Spain. According to official National Socialist documents , Paris 1936.
  • Sydney Fowler Wright : The Fall of Prague. Novel of the war of 1938. Paris 1936.
  • What should happen to the Jews? Practical suggestions from Julius Streicher and Adolf Hitler , Paris 1936.

1937:

  • Ernst Henry [d. i. Leonid Arkadyevich Chentov ]: Campaign against Moscow? Paris 1937. (German edition of Hitler over Russia?, London 1936)
  • Willi Munzenberg: Propaganda as a weapon. Paris 1937.
  • Maximilian Scheer: blood and honor. Paris 1937.

1938

  • Le peuple allemand accuse. Appel à la conscience du monde. Un livre de documentation , Paris, 1938

1939:

  • Albert Schreiner: From total war to total defeat of Hitler , Paris 1939.

literature

  • Catherine Lawton: Les Editions du Carrefour, rappel d'un passé antèrieur , in: Willi Münzenberg: [1889-1940]. Un homme contre— actes [du] colloque international, 26-29 mars 92, Aix-en-Provence. Le temps des cerises, Paris 1993, pp. 173-175.
In German as "The Editions du Carrefour. A memory of a prehistory." In: Schlie / Roche, as below pp. 207-210.
  • Héléne Roussel: On Willi Münzenberg's publishing activities in the context of his dealings with the media in the Weimar Republic and in exile in France. In Héléne Roussel; Lutz Winckler Hg .: German Exile Press and France. 1933-1940. Peter Lang 1992, ISBN 3-261-04491-8. Pp. 182-184.
  • Tania Schlie, Simone Roche: Willi Münzenberg (1889-1940). A German communist caught between Stalinism and anti-fascism. Frankfurt am Main 1995, ISBN 3-631-48043-1 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Catherine Lawton: "The Editions du Carrefour. Memory of a Prehistory." In: Schlie / Roche, p. 207.
  2. ↑ Héléne Roussel: On Willi Münzenberg's publishing activities in the context of his dealings with the media in the Weimar Republic and in exile in France. In Héléne Roussel; Lutz Winckler Hg .: German Exile Press and France. 1933-1940. Peter Lang 1992, ISBN 3-261-04491-8. P. 182f.