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Random House has ended a literary dispute over a biography of Carl Gustav Jung by publishing a new version this month in Germany without special annotations and material from the Swiss heirs who had complained about "factual errors" and "misleading" information about the psychiatrist.
The biography by Deirdre Bair, which was published earlier in the United States, has been the subject of a struggle between the author and some members of Jung's family who disputed many facts in the book from Jung's proper name at birth and the color of a family sailboat to a description of Jung's wife, Emma, as someone not showing warmth. Fearing a potential lawsuit, Random House in Germany decided to insert two pages of the Jung family's version of descriptions and facts in the book, which one of its imprints, Knaus Verlag, planned to publish this month. But last week the book appeared in German bookstores without the family's material.
Claudia Vidoni, the publisher of Knaus Verlag, said the imprint bowed to the author's wishes. "Deirdre Bair simply forbade me to publish any German edition with annotations regarding information from the Jung family," she said. Initially, Random House was concerned the biography would become entangled in a legal case because of stricter privacy rulings in Germany courts. But with the backing of the Authors Guild in New York, Bair invoked her contract and refused to accept the changes. "It would have set an awful precedent.," said Paul Aiken, executive director of the guild.
Ulrich Hoerni, Jung's grandson and the chairman of Jung's estate, declined to express his reaction to the publication of the German book, referring to his earlier written statement about the matter: "We are concerned that the book contains a significant number of factual errors and that some statements made by family members have been presented in an incorrect and misleading manner."
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