A Forgotten Publication Project: Vilém Flusser’s “The Fairy Tale of Truth”
In the 1990s, the Bollmann Verlag planned to publish a complete edition of Vilém Flusser’s oeuvre. However, in the mid-nineties, due to financial difficulties, this plan had to be abandoned. In 1996, was published the last volume under the catchy title Kommunikologie. However, the material for another complete volume had already been assembled by Edith Flusser, Klaus Sander and Vera Schwamborn. The working title was Das Märchen von der Wahrheit. Glossen und Philosophiefiktionen (The Fairy Tale of Truth: Glosses and Philosophical Fictions). The first section contained a collection of twenty-seven philosophical fictions and the second nearly all the texts of the daily satirical column Posto Zero that were published from January 22 to April 12, 1972, shortly before Flusser’s return to Europe. For the publication project, Edith Flusser had translated practically all the Portuguese texts into German. The essay also discusses five of these previously unpublished texts in more detail.