D O C . 3 1 1 A G A I N S T B A N O F P O T E M K I N 5 0 9 copy these for cross reference, double click, choose paragraphs, End- note. Index marker Index endnote marker Index n shorttitle marker LitCit Published in Berliner Tageblatt, 26 June 1926, EE, p. [4]. A differently worded version of the appeal was published in Vossische Zeitung, 26 June 1926, ME, p. [6]. [1]The film was directed by Sergei Eisenstein and had been commissioned by the Soviet film industry to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of the 1905 uprising in Russia. The film pre- sented one of the mutinies that took place in the czarist navy in the autumn of 1905 following Russia’s defeat in the Russo-Japanese War. The film is set in June 1905 in Odessa on board the battleship Potemkin, one of the ships of the Black Sea fleet. The German film censor banned the film in March 1926 for endangering “public safety and order” (“öffentliche Sicherheit und Ordnung”). Following an appeal in April, the film was released for public screening, yet several scenes containing violence were cut. The minister of the interior of Württem- berg, Eugen Bolz, initiated a ban of this edited version for endangering the “integrity of the Re- ichswehr and the police” (“Unversehrtheit von Reichswehr und Polizei”). The censor approved Bolz’s initiative. A version with additional cuts was released by the censor in July 1926. A further motion to have this version banned as well failed. However, in spite of the film’s release throughout the Reich, it was banned by the police in Bavaria, Württemberg, and Thuringia because of alleged public safety concerns (see Fisch 1997, pp. 1 and 13–19). [2]The appeal was signed by various organizations, including trade unions, and by prominent pol- iticians, authors, retired officers, and artists, including Ludwig Fulda, Hellmut von Gerlach, Alfred Kerr, Fritz Kortner, Otto Lehmann-Russbüldt, Paul Löbe, Willy Münzenberg, Erwin Piscator, and Ernst Toller. [2] [1]