COURAGE

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A List of Forbidden Books and Newspapers is a three-page document written on a typewriter at the District Public Court in Zagreb no later than on 16  March 1946. The list contains thirty seven book titles officially forbidden by the Zagreb District People’s Court from the autumn of 1945 until the spring of 1946 and two more passages, referring to a much larger number of blacklisted publications. The first passage lists all works by the Catholic author writer Zvonimir Remeta (1909–1964), and the second passage mentions the banned distribution of all publications issued by some twenty four publishers related to ustasha and fascist regimes (even referring to publications of the Croatian-Japanese Society). The list was apparently used to purge bookshops and libraries and was widely distributed.

Iljko Karaman took possession of the document illegally from the Public Prosecutor's Office and kept it in his home collection, which in 1992 ended in the Croatian State Archives. The material is available for research and copying and was used in the publications by Deniver Vukelić and Josip Grbelja as sources for studying the postwar communist censorship.

The role of the document was to preserve the memory of all persecuted priests of the Diocese of Ljubljana in the post-war period, both those who were killed and those who were imprisoned. The very fact that it was compiled was a challenge to the authorities. The document was maintained in secrecy and it served as a memorial to the bishop and subsequently to the public about the extent of persecution. Today it is a valuable monument to the circumstances when it was created and to its creator. It is located in the Anton Vovk collection in box 74 and it is freely accessible. 

The magazine of the Czechoslovak Socialist Opposition, intended mainly for readers in Czechoslovakia, was published once every two months since 1971. This journal of political figures and publicists connected with the Prague Spring was created in 1970 in Roman exile thanks to the work of Jiří Pelikán, when two zero numbers with a head Forbidden Prague Literary Sheets was published. One year later, it began to come out periodically. Jiří Pelikán was originally the publisher of the magazine.

 “Listy” was a left-wing opposition magazine, both domestic and exile, but they tried to remain open for authors of other political orientations. In particular, they included political studies, commentaries and analyses. Other inaccessible information from behind the scenes of communist politics, as well as small columns about the activities of communist parties in Eastern Europe (in the section “What Red Law Does Not Write”) were also published. From the beginning of its existence, “Listy” focused on political processes with opponents of the regime, and after 1977 they regularly reported on Charter 77, published committee documents to defend those unfairly prosecuted, and also regularly reprinted articles from domestic samizdat. The magazine had many authors who contributed to its publishing. Many articles were signed with ciphers or pseudonyms, and cannot be identified even today.

Scriptum.cz acquired this unique collection directly from the hands of Dušan Havlíček, who was one of the authors of the “Listy” magazine and together with his wife for many years compiled a set of registers for this important title. Dušan Havlíček only provided his collection to scriptum.cz and it cannot be found anywhere else, either digitally or in print.

Recurrent motifs addressed by Roger Loewigs artworks are walls, rivers, fences, broken bridges, injured or dead bodies. These representations draw inspiration from the personal experiences of the Second World War, making a clear statement against any form of violence and repression.