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Saturday, March 04, 2006
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One More Lewis Mumford Story [For an earlier Mumford narrative, see UD, 1/29/06.] At Jerzy Soltan’s memorial event yesterday, a short film was shown, in which he was interviewed. He told the following story: During the Second World War, when he was in Murnau, the German prisoner of war camp, Soltan ordered a book by Lewis Mumford, The City in History. Being in a prisoner of war camp for captured officers, he said, was horrible, but it was nothing like being in a concentration camp. In Murnau, for instance, they could send and receive mail, and sometimes they could order books. Everything they received was heavily censored by the Germans, and one of the censors decided that the Mumford book was banned material. So the book was duly stamped BANNED (or some such thing) in big black letters and put away. But, Soltan went on, the bureaucratic organization of the camp wasn’t all that good, and he was eventually able to get the book out of the censor’s office. Long after the war, Soltan met Lewis Mumford at some architects’ event. Knowing Mumford would be there, he’d brought along the book, which still bore the big BANNED stamp. He showed it to Mumford. “He loved it.” |