List Otto
The Otto list , officially Ouvrages retirés de la vente par les éditeurs ou interdits par les autorités allemandes , is a censorship list of banned books named after the German ambassador in occupied France Otto Abetz during the German occupation of France .
The list first appeared on September 28, 1940 (print run 40,000, 37 pages) and was drawn up in collaboration with the French Syndicat national de l'édition (SEN) and French publishers. Before that there was already a list of books to be confiscated (the Bernhard list from August 1940), but this was only compiled by German authorities. The German occupiers wanted to preserve the appearance of a free cultural life in France and therefore did not rely on spectacular propaganda measures such as book burnings, but tried to maintain discretion. In connection with this was the continuation of the leading French literary newspaper Nouvelle Revue Française under the new editor-in-chief Pierre Drieu la Rochelle . The list was also not a prohibited list of the German occupiers, but a voluntary measure of the French publishers according to the official interpretation.
The list included around 1,060 works by predominantly Jewish authors who were critical of the National Socialists, for example Heinrich Heine , Thomas Mann , Heinrich Mann , Stefan Zweig , Arnold Zweig , Max Jacob , Joseph Breitbach , Joseph Kessel , Sigmund Freud and Anna Freud , Paul Claudel , Henri Barbusse , Carl Gustav Jung , Julien Benda , Karl Marx , Leon Trotsky , Louis Aragon , General Henri Mordacq , Léon Blum , Albert Einstein , Lion Feuchtwanger , Theodor Herzl , Harry Graf Kessler , Arthur Koestler , Eric Ambler (epitaph on a spy ), Emil Ludwig , Vicki Baum , Irmgard Keun , David Lloyd George , André Malraux , Maimonides , Alfred Döblin , André Maurois , Raymond Aron , Wladimir d'Ormesson , Pablo Neruda , Walther Rathenau , Romain Rolland , Joseph Roth , Arthur Schnitzler (Die ), René Schickele , Erich Maria Remarque , Annemarie Selinko , Anna Seghers , Jacob Wassermann , HG Wells , Franz Werfel , Hermann Rauschning , but also various French editions n von Mein Kampf and initially (because of the Hitler-Stalin Pact) also anti-communist books. There were two additional editions (July 8, 1942, May 10, 1943), the last edition with an appendix with a list of 739 French-speaking Jewish writers. An agreement was also reached with French publishers on self-censorship for new publications. The list was valid not only in occupied France, but also under the rule of the Vichy regime .
Books on the list were confiscated, stored and destroyed.
The French publishers adhered to the guidelines. It was not until 1942 that an independent publisher was founded that was close to the resistance ( Éditions de Minuit ) and published as the first book The Silence of the Sea of Vercors .
Web links
- Christoph Vormweg: The "Otto List" - Gleichschaltung and Resistance in the French literary scene , dossier for broadcast on Deutschlandfunk , August 21, 2015 (pdf; 450 kB)
Individual evidence
- ^ List Otto bei Gallica, September 1940 edition
- ↑ Manu Braganca, La curieuse histoire de “Mein Kampf” en français, Sud Ouest, June 9, 2016