Strange Bird by Michele K. Troy

Author:Michele K. Troy
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 2017-07-09T16:00:00+00:00

SIXTEEN

Albatross Under the Occupation

IN THE FIRST YEAR OF THE WAR, Holroyd-Reece must have done an exceptionally good job convincing French authorities that Albatross and Tauchnitz were under British control, for by the time Erich Kupfer and Wolfgang Krause-Brandstetter arrived at 12 rue Chanoinesse, on 25 October 1940, Occupation officials had a lot of questions for them to answer. As Kupfer later reported, “As a result of misinformation on the part of Herr Holroyd-Reece, the opinion persisted [in Paris] that not only Albatross, but also Tauchnitz, was English property.” In wartime, assumptions about national affiliation, true or not, had consequences. Bruno Conrad, the German custodian of Hachette—a longtime French book distribution giant—was on the verge of confiscating Albatross and Tauchnitz books when Kupfer and Krause-Brandstetter arrived on the scene. And that was the least of the two men’s troubles. 1

Kupfer and Krause-Brandstetter were allied on Albatross-Tauchnitz business and had come together to seize and inventory the Albatross and Tauchnitz books in the Paris warehouses that had been lost to the Reich for the first year of the war. Yet they also worked for different masters. Kupfer, by authority of the Reich Commissioner, Ernst, was to claim Enoch’s Parisian firm, Continenta, as enemy property so that Albatross in Leipzig could legally usurp Enoch’s contracts with foreign booksellers. Krause-Brandstetter was embarking on a more ambitious project. The Propaganda Ministry and Foreign Office were launching a joint campaign involving Albatross and Tauchnitz, a secret mission of great importance to spread German books abroad. And he had been sent to Paris to begin quietly laying the groundwork. 2

Yet before they could advance these tasks, Kupfer and Krause-Brandstetter had to prove to military Occupation authorities precisely what Holroyd-Reece had spent months disproving: that Albatross and Tauchnitz were, despite French claims, firms with legitimate German ties. Holroyd-Reece had not made their task easy. The war had forced him to abandon Paris. But his octopus-like reach into numerous publishing houses meant he maintained some hold, even after fleeing to London. Something did not smell right. And until German propaganda officials could determine what it was, and how Holroyd-Reece’s firms were tied up with it, they treated everything he had touched with suspicion. 3

In the office at 12 rue Chanoinesse, which had once bustled with the activity of multiple publishing houses, the high-ceilinged library stood quiet; no one was present in the tidy curtained office to check a file or to race up the stairs to the back terrace and its expansive view over the Seine. What would happen next to this seat of Holroyd-Reece’s power over Anglo-American books—and who would savor his outlook on the pont Louis-Philippe sweeping across to meet the Île Saint-Louis—depended on the whims of sparring German officials. 4 For Krause-Brandstetter, who had stepped into Holroyd-Reece’s position as the front man for Albatross-Tauchnitz operations abroad, it was not a peaceful trip.

*

Krause-Brandstetter must have expected a more favorable reception. It was, for him, an exciting time. He had been wooed for a post in the Information

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