About twenty years ago, in an essay on Henri Lefebvre, I said that his book on Nietzsche (1939) was on the prohibited โListe Ottoโ. These were books that had to be removed from sale, and existing copies destroyed, after the German occupation of France. For other reasons now Iโve recently looking at the list โ the 1940 version is here โ and discover that this is not one of the books on the list. Mea culpa.
As far as I can tell, only two books written by Lefebvre are on the list โ there are various iterations from 1940 and through the occupation. The books are Hitler au pouvoir (1938) and Le Matรฉrialisme dialectique (1940). So too was Caยญhiers de Lรฉยญnine sur la diaยญlecยญtique de Heยญgel (1938) and Karl Marxโs Morceaux choisis (1934), both of which Lefebvre and Norbert Guterman had edited.
Guterman was Jewish, so this alone would have been enough for inclusion on this list. But Lefebvreโs book on Nietzsche, his Le Nationalisme contre les Nations (1937) and the collection of texts by Hegel he and Guterman had edited (1938) are not on the lists Iโve seen, and nor is their co-authored book La conscience mystifiรฉe (1936).
There is therefore something of an arbitrary nature of the list โ there are obviously reasons why the Nazi occupiers would object to those they did include, but those reasons would also seem to apply to ones they did not. The Nietzsche book, for example, is very much written as a challenge to the fascist appropriation.
In looking further into this, though, I went back to the original edition of Critique de la vie quotidienne from 1946. On the page โDu mรชme auteurโ, Lefebvre lists his previous publications.
There he distinguishes three ways his books were suppressed.
Interestingly, he says Le Nationalisme was in the first category; Hitler and Nietzsche in the second; Le matรฉrialisme dialectique and the collections on Lenin and Hegel were in the third. From the lists Iโve seen, this isnโt entirely correct either for category three, but it explains why the Nietzsche book was indeed removed from sale shortly after publication, and why copies are so hard to find today. And presumably the โListe Ottoโ did not need to proscribe books that were already banned.
The list of books by Lefebvre โEn prรฉparationโ is also interesting โ only a few of these were ever published, but thatโs another story, some of which also concerns censorship.
I hope what Iโve reported here is accurate, but happy to receive additions or corrections.
Incidentally, my 2004 book on Lefebvre has long been available as print-on-demand only, and keeps going up in price. Someone has uploaded a version here thoughโฆ
stuartelden
Three books that were on the list - Le matรฉrialisme dialectique is a later reprint
three books that were not included on the list