»In die Illegalität gedrängt«?

Press historians so far thought that the Evangelischer Pressedienst (epd), a Berlin news agency of the German protestants, was banned by the Nazi censorship authorities in 1937. Focko Luepsen, the chief editor of epd until 1940, officially even until 1941, put forward this assertion in 1950. To this day, many scholars and journalists have passed on Luepsen’s version of history without testing it. Actually epd could be published until May 1941, and was then not a victim of political censorship, but of the short supply of printing paper in the times of World War II (as were many other publications). The editorial content in these years was in line with official Nazi propaganda. There was no dissident deviation that could have given cause for prohibition. In post-war times, Focko Luepsen used the legend of a Nazi ban of epd to get a press licence from the British military government in north-western Germany. His aim was to relaunch the protestant news agency very quickly under the new political conditions.