How the German historians' establishment tries to marginalise rivals and prevent revisionist ideas from circulating.

Fury of the German Press, as a "Right wing" publisher gets into German Historians' Convention

Aachener Zeitung, Germany

Radical Right publisher casts shadows on Historians' Convention

Aachen.-- Professor Johannes Fried speaks of an "ugly occurrence." And one that none has stumbled into, "a hideously distressing matter," as the renowned Medievalist of the Frankfurt Johann Wolfgang Goethe University emphasizes. It has happened, and now the organizers of the forty-third German Historians' Convention must attack the problem vigorously.

By an oversight, access to the most important German History Congress was allowed to the Grabert Verlag, a proven radical right-wng media house -- through a full-page advertisement in the thick convention brochure.

Fried is President of the Association of Historians of Germany, which will hold the convention in Aachen in September. And once it became clear "which louse had nested in the fur," he declared the whole action to be Chefsache [top state secret].

The official position on the incident is unmistakable: "The Association of Men and Women Historians of Germany regrets this deeply and distances itself with all vigor from the extreme Rightist agenda of the publisher, which is not apparent from its advertisement," it says in the official position paper of the Association.

In fact, the book titles [advertised] do not permit conclusions as to the real spirit of the Tübingen publisher, which however is best known by the guardians of democracy. The Baden-Württemberg Office for the Protection of the Constitution classifies it as one of the largest German extreme Right publishers in the "revisionist" field.

That is to say it publishes books in which the scientifically guaranteed version of the Nazi crimes is disputed. The Constitution Protection Office report publicizes searches, notifications and convictions on account of racial incitement, slander and defamation of the memory of the dead.

How could such a faux pas happen? This mistake lay hidden under another one in the system, of which the Aachen organizers themselves have become victims in certain ways. For a few years now, from convention to convention, each held in a different city, an unofficial list of publishers has been passed around, intended to ease the opening of contacts for getting advertisements.

These publishing houses were contacted by automatic form-letters from the current year's organizers. Thereupon Grabert is supposed to have acted with alacrity but inconspicuously. The Association of Historians says that through a "technical glitch" the Graber advertisement ended up in the Convention's brochure.

They intend now to make things good swiftly, among other things, by turning over the revenue from the Grabert advertisement to the Union for Christian-Jewish Cooperation, which money can be devoted to the remembrance of the victims of Nazism.

And they also intend to eliminate the fundamental flaw in the system: Every single publishers' list has been furnished to the Institute for Anti-Semitism Research for screening. Mr. Fried is sure that "No radical publisher escapes this institute's attention." And also that the error in Aachen will not happen in the future.

Hans-Peter Leisten, 03.08.2000 23:36

Indebted to Charles Gentry for this translation.