Throughout the years, many nations have used the practice of censorship in their attempt to control the masses. In the book Censors at Work, the author Robert Darnton describes three cases in which Bourbon France, British India, and Communist East Germany utilized methods such as privilege, close surveillance, and careful planning to restrict its authors. During those periods, authors wrote books, pamphlets, and articles that defied their government and the church by articulating ideas of injustices and oppression lived by the people during those times.
During the Enlightment period, France offers us a variety of examples of how book authors were imprisoned, and their books decommissioned and burned by the state. As a requirement in France, all books needed to have the seal of the king for “approbation and privilege” to be published. The books also needed to be approved by four other people who acted as royal censors.
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The key to maintain this system running smoothly in this regime was a careful planning. In this era, each of the books was evaluated and decoded by editors, publishers, and members of the HV with the means that the book aligned with the Party Line. Through this process, the book was discarded or had to be rewritten multiple times until the book was published. In other words, some books were almost transformed from its original versions. Yet, even after the book was published, if it provoked a scandal, “it would be withdrawn from bookshops and pulped.” Some writers like Erich Loest had found the system unbearable and fled to West Germany where they could publish their books freely. Others were arrested, blacklisted, kick out of the country, or banned out of the Authors Union for failure to cooperate or violate the system. The system of censorship continued functioning this way until it ended when the Wall that divided East and West Germany fell on November 9,