Günther Grass accuses FAZ of copyright infringement

Nobel Prize winner for literature Günter Grass feels unfairly treated by the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ). Grass accuses the newspaper of copyright infringement, as he said on Friday at the Frankfurt Book Fair. At the end of September, the FAZ had printed two letters from Grass to former Economics and Finance Minister Karl Schiller from 1969 and 1970. In these letters, Grass appealed to the SPD politician to reveal his Nazi past. The letters printed by the FAZ were "personal" and should not have been published, Grass said. The FAZ, on the other hand, had not signed a declaration to cease and desist demanded by Grass, and is now arguing that the letters are in the public interest. For this reason, the FAZ had decided to publish them. According to the newspaper, it is about the credibility of the public figure Günter Grass, who triggered the debate himself by belatedly confessing to having been a member of the Waffen SS. Grass' lawyer Paul Hertin takes a different view. If this practice of printing unpublished letters sets a precedent, then all writers and other authors as well as their heirs should be urgently advised to immediately withdraw unpublished correspondence from all archives.