You already have our response in the telegram sent on Sunday to [Hans-Peter] Zimmer. Here are several explications.
At the beginning of March [1961], [Asger] Jorn, [Attila] Kotanyi and I decided that it wouldn't do to have the meeting of the situationist council in Munich before making the story of [Otto] Van de Loo completely clear -- that is to say, before he made a real distribution of the rectification that he promised us. We charged [Maurice] Wyckaert with obtaining this distribution. But Wyckaert's attitude in Munich was very suspect (too friendly towards Van de Loo) and nothing was done. (Wyckaert must also explain himself to you, but, judging from the letter from Heimrad and Hekmut, he appears to have explained nothing to you.)
We warned Wyckaert and Van de Loo that we would wait no longer than 16 March. We ourselves have reproduced 5,000 copies of Van de Loo's printed text (Berichtigung),[1] of which Van de Loo has only sent us 2 (two) copies! And our copies have been distributed everywhere in Germany and Holland. Understand this well: it wasn't "Debord" who took this step against Van de Loo: it was, above all, Jorn. And also Debord, as well as all the other situationists (except for those who were in Munich, that is to say, Wyckaert and Spur).
And now, Van de Loo has avowed to you his anger and his dishonesty in the affair of Cardinal Constant's urbanism. But Van de Loo has especially shown that he is an imbecile. Indeed, he is stupid enough to think that we would let a dealer in paintings put economic pressure on certain situationist comrades, so as to create a "Van de Loo party" within the S[ituationist] I[nternational]! This is too ridiculous. The situationists are now capable of creating many dealers of paintings and a Van de Loo can not create a single situationist: he can only pick up our exclusions -- those who have very little futures. . . .
After Van de Loo acted in this fashion, we can not keep in the SI a single artist who works with Van de Loo. Jorn has left Van de Loo. And Wyckaert must also choose to leave Van de Loo immediately or leave the SI (I still do not know what Wyckaert will choose: if he chooses Van de Loo, which seems very possible to me, the SI will treat Wyckaert as an enemy).
If you (Spur) are not truly in agreement with the entirety of the SI's discipline, then here is the moment to leave the SI, before you are too compromised as situationists -- I say this to you without irony and with complete objectivity and neutrality. But if you choose to really be situationists, it is obviously necessary to leave Van de Loo and tell him so quickly. What has been posed is the question of the dignity of artists and their communal programme, with respect to censorship by a single small [art] dealer: one can not accept discussion or hesitation on this question, that is, if one wants to be a revolutionary artist.
Jorn is slightly sick. Next week, after Paques, he will come to Munich, to put in order all of the practical problems (at first, to publish Spur #5, which is quite late).
Cordially to all of you,[1] Berichtigung! (Rectification!) from Otto and Heike Van de Loo, dated 20 February 1961, specified that Arthus C. Caspari was not a member of the SI and that the Bureau of Unitary Urbanism, which was under the responsibility of the situationist Attila Kotanyi, was situated in Brussels, not in Essen.
(Published in Guy Debord, Correspondance, Volume 2, 1960-1964. Footnote by Alice Debord. Translated from the French by NOT BORED! May 2005.)