From the Keep (September 1947)
[Der Weg 1948-05] An original translation of "Vom Bergfried aus"
Title: From the Keep [de: Vom Bergfried aus]
Author(s): Der Weg Editorial Staff, Die Tat
Issue: Year 01, Issue 04 (September 1947)
Page: 273-275
Dan Rouse’s Note(s):
Der Weg - El Sendero is a German and Spanish language magazine published by Dürer-Verlag in Buenos-Aires, Argentina by Germans with connections to the defeated Third Reich.
Der Weg ran monthly issues from 1947 to 1957, with official sanction from Juan Perón’s Government until his overthrow in September 1955.
Source Document(s):
[LINK] Scans of 1951 Der Weg Issues (archive.org)
From the Keep
Index of Prohibited Books
Published by the German Administration for Public Education in the Soviet Occupation Zone, April 1, 1946
In the list of “banned books and writers,” as the editors note in their preface, all works are included that
“bear fascist or militaristic content, harbor notions of political expansion, uphold the National Socialist racial doctrine, or turn against the Allies.”
We offer here an excerpt from this catalog; a more comprehensive list was published in Condor, Chile, on July 17, 1947. It goes without saying that it encompasses writings grappling with ideological, political, racial, economic, social, military, legal, or similar themes and portrayals—whether penned after 1933 or deemed precursors to such ideas or essentially akin to them. To enumerate every title and author would be to carry coals to Newcastle, so we present only those well-known figures who, despite not embodying any of the tendencies outlined, have nonetheless found themselves inscribed upon this “Index.”
List of Authors
Adolf Bartels
Otto von Bismarck
Arnolt Bronnen
“O. S.” and “Roßbach”
Carl von Clausewitz
R. N. Coudenhove-Kalergi
Edwin Erich Dwinger
Kasimir Edschmid
Hans Heinz Ewers
Rider in the German Night
Horst Wessel
Gustav Frenssen
Frederick the Great
Karl Goetz
Hans Grimm
Wolf Hirth
Handbook of Gliding
Karl Haushofer
Paul von Hindenburg
Erich Höflich
How Do I Behave?
Hanns Johst (all writings)
Ernst Jünger
Hermann Kirchhoff
Admiral Graf Spee
Erwin Guido Kolbenheyer
Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck
Hermann Löns
Erich and Mathilde Ludendorff
Winfried Lüdecke
Martin Luther
August von Mackensen
Agnes Miegel
Arthur Moeller van den Bruck
Friedrich Nietzsche
Günther Plüschow
Aviator of Tsingtao
Hans Pochhammer
Graf Spee’s Last Voyage
Günther Prien
Alexandra Rachmanowa
Manfred Freiherr von Richthofen
The Red Fighter Pilot
Paul Rohrbach
Colin Ross
Ernst Samhaber
Hjalmar Schacht
Franz Schauwecker
Albert Leo Schlageter
Generaloberst von Seeckt
Bogislav von Selchow
Bernhard Shaw
The Atrocities of Denshawai and Other British Atrocities
Heinrich Sohnrey
Werner Sombart
Oswald Spengler
Heinz Steguweit
Hans Surèn
Strength Gymnastics with Natural and Athletic Equipment
Pocket Brockhaus of Contemporary History
Tennis Primer
Heinz Tovote
Siegfried von Vegesack
Will Vesper
Richard Wagner
Walther von der Vogelweide
Josef Magnus Wehner
August Winnig
Anton Zischka
And following this, we present a noteworthy article from the Swiss daily newspaper Die Tat, dated July 30, 1947.
From Luther to Däniker
A Russian Index for the Germans
“It was dark, the moon shone bright.” So begins the charming song, which closes with the quatrain: “High upon the apple tree, laden with the sweetest pears, hung the final plum of spring, and of nuts there still were spares!” Yet the apple tree bearing these fruits of lofty nonsense is, in our case, no common orchard tree, nor even a fanciful one, but rather the “List of Literature to Be Excluded,” issued last year by the German Administration for Public Education in the Soviet Occupation Zone of Germany. To leaf through this new Index of Prohibited Books is to guarantee oneself an hour of sheer amusement.
Of course, it’s hardly riveting to read that all writings by Hitler, Goebbels, Rosenberg, and other luminaries of the Third Reich are now forbidden. That much was predictable, though a glance at the parallel situation in Italy does tickle the mind. For in Florence and Rome, Mussolini’s complete works remain on sale in bookstores to this day, and not long ago, a prominent Roman shop even showcased them in its window—apparently without causing the De Gasperi government to feel any shakier than it already did.
Not so with the German Index! Here, the departed Duce has not been overlooked, and we find the elegant Mussolini translations, published by Rascher Verlag in Zurich, meticulously cataloged. This brings us straight to the Swiss authors and publishers who grace this tome of over 500 pages. We’re delighted to note that our cherished fellow citizen from Ascona, Emil Ludwig, has been consigned to Hades for the conversations he once held with the Duce. It will surely comfort Ludwig to know he shares this bitter fate with Jakob Schaffner, our compatriot from the Basel corner of Switzerland. And lest this Swiss contingent descend to the underworld without martial escort, the Soviet-German censor has also added Eugen Bircher (Doctor and Soldier, 1941) and Gustav Däniker, with sundry works, to the roster of the banned.
Apart they stand, faces shadowed, two Swiss of whom we’ve lately heard whispers anew: Franz Riedweg with his Germanic Community, published in Berlin from 1914 to 1943, and Benno H. Schaeppi with his Germanic Volunteers in the East. “Trump or bluff?” the curious reader might muse, for just then their searching gaze lands on Herbert Rieckhoff, who—naturally!—sails aboard this overburdened airship of the Index.
Yet we’ve lingered too long, perhaps rudely, among the Swiss, when refined Anglo-Saxon and French gentlemen also claim our regard. Beyond Mr. William Joyce (once dubbed Lord Haw-Haw), an indispensable figure, we encounter in this Soviet-German roster of forbidden books the likes of Wyndham Lewis, G. Ward Price, and, not least, the Marquess of Londonderry. As ever, when mirth abounds, George Bernard Shaw makes his entrance. His piece on The Atrocities of Denshawai and Other British Atrocities—a dusty old shelf-sitter!—is deemed far too anti-English for the staunchly loyal Russians to permit in their zone. And then, with good reason, Henry Ford’s classic antisemitic work, The International Jew, earns its place on the Index—a moment to recall with relish that Ford was no German but an American, who penned his opus in 1920, never granted the chance to defend it at Nuremberg.
But that in the mid-20th century—in Germany, no less!—Martin Luther, Richard Wagner, and Ulrich von Hutten should land on the Index is nothing short of hilarious. True, Luther authored Against the Jews and other such polemics; true, Wagner penned the pamphlet Judaism in Music; and old Hutten was hardly discerning. Yet a regime that, in 1947, bans these authors with multiple works judges itself—especially since, remarkably, these are the very same figures once proscribed 400 years ago at the Council of Trent! That the famed Letters of Obscure Men by German humanists reappear on the Index only deepens our scorn for this pact between the Stalinist Germans and the Tridentine legacy.
To spare Christians and Jews further offense, they’ve spared no effort in banning the writings of Julian the Apostate and Archbishop Agobard of Lyon. And here the tale turns utterly, irredeemably absurd—so absurd that nothing surprises anymore. Not the banning of Walther von der Vogelweide’s “nationalistic” poems, nor the inclusion of Ulrich von Hassell and Gregor Strasser, nor even Count von Stenbock-Fermor’s Volunteer Stenbock—this communist German-Baltic noble who, in 1918, fought gleefully as a Baltikumer against the Soviets, yet since 1945 has served as a Russian land reform agent in the Soviet Zone.
Not all are as shrewd as Friedrich Lenz, now a professor at the University of Berlin, whose 1943 work on Friedrich List swiftly landed on the Index. The good professor devised a clever fix: he recently issued another study on List—this time with Russian-American printing approval! Nihil obstat! Inspired by this brilliant example, we’d urge all banned nationalists, militarists, and Nazis—from Julian the Apostate to Luther, Wagner, and Gustav Däniker—to simply reissue their forbidden works under new titles. Thus might come to pass what such bans always achieve, their architects believing they can quell the spirit with dullness: “It was dark, the moon shone bright.”