In the fall of 2011, Steidl published The Protest Box under the aegis of Martin Parr, a collection of exact replicas of five out of print photo books that each in their own way focused on the theme of political opposition. Algeria (Algérie), by Dirk Alvermann, is one of those. While visiting the photographer in his studio to discuss the details of the reprint, Gerhard Steidl discovered the captivating story of the book’s first printing, which convinced him to acquire an original copy.
A young rebel fascinated by the Algerian people’s fight for liberty, Dirk Alvermann was only 20 in the early 1950’s when he crossed the heavily controlled Tunisian border towards eastern Algeria where he photographed the events alongside an FLN unit. Upon his return to West Germany, he presented his pictures to Rowohlt Verlag. The publishing house’s aged founder Ernst Rowohlt studied his proposition and promised he would publish a book.
However, by the time the page layout was finally finished, the publishing house had changed hands and was being run by Heinrich Maria Ledig-Rowohlt. Alvermann had imagined his book as a small paperback capable of touching the widest number of readers possible. He hoped it would pass from reader to reader, like a political manifesto: from this point of view, the “rowohlts-rotary-romane”1 format, which was developed in 1950, seemed ideal.
At this very moment, an official FLN delegation was in Bonn, then capital of the German Republic. They were undergoing negotiations with Hans-Jürgen Wischnewski, deputy of the social-democratic opposition at the Bundestag. While discussions were taking place, the Main Rouge2 terrorist organization set off a car bomb killing several people. The political situation was tense, the fear of alienating French readers or writers led Ledig-Rowohlt to remove the book from its catalog of new releases.
The war in Algeria and the FLN combat were issues far too embarrassing for Chancellor Adenauer’s Federal Republic, one of whose primary goals was reconciliation with France. Alvermann found a better reception for his political and photographic project in East Germany where Rütten & Loening Books were ready to print his book under the condition that it run with a glossy large format. Alvermann was attached to his idea of a small paperback, the format he had imagined when preparing the layout. They came to an agreement, the book would run in a small format but with a bound cover.
This new edition of Algeria was coherent with the photographer’s first intention: the book ran in the traditional “rororo” format with a hard-backed cover and included, editorially, the entirety of the original project. The pictures featured were accompanied by political documents of the time period, excerpts from military reports, newspapers or flyers.
More than 50 years after its first printing, it is now more relevant than ever with its observation of a people’s fight against oppression and despotism, whether referring to European colonialism of the past or of today’s local dictatorships.
1 « Books on Rowohlt Rotary » : the renowned « rororo », the first German pocket books. (N.d.T.)
2 Run by the French counter-intelligence service, the armed Main Rouge group was formed to eliminate FLN leaders and their foreign supporters.
Algeria
Layout by Dirk Alvermann
224 pages, 161 photographs.
10,8x18cm
18€
ISBN 978-3-86930-355-0
Distribution SODIS
Released March 1, 2012
