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1962 - 1967: The Impossible Task

      Braun's plan was simple: Don't talk about the grand-strategy with anyone; produce outrageous products, and place them in hundreds of bookstores all over Europe. Supply will generate demand. Demand will generate money. Money will improve production and distribution. Judiciary cases will necessarily ensue. What wasn't yet a problem would soon become a huge problem. The end justified the means. Bribes would help judges and lawmakers to make the right decisions. Obscenity laws on explicit sexuality had to be changed.
      From 1962 to 1967, after helping his friend Dino out of judiciary troubles, Braun engages in fervent, incessant clandestine activities both in Europe and America. He personally felt that he was the man chosen by Destiny to accomplish that impossible task since he had all the right qualities to do that.
      Traveling everywhere with diplomatic immunity, Braun distributes new porno novels written by himself with a number of pseudonyms, and translated in various languages. With LBŐs help, the two Belgian underground publishers, print new magazines using explicit pictures, which LB was shooting with his girlfriends. Movie production was difficult. Only a couple of labs had agreed to make a few b/w 8mm copies of explicit sex under the counter.

Appealing Merchandise

      In order to promote the legalization of something, which was so much forbidden all over the world, it was necessary to create appealing merchandise despite the persistent worldwide prohibition. Only some better products could motivate new retailers and multiply the judiciary cases against pornography. Without well-produced merchandise, which could generate high profits, no merchant would carry the risks of prohibition; and without judiciary cases the legislators wouldn't take the phenomenon into consideration.

Santa Claus

      In the first three years, by concentrating his activity in Western Europe, LB spurs more than 500 retailers (bookstores and newsstands) to undertake the illegal business of pornography. Elegantly dressed, Braun would enter retail shops and ask if they carried some kind sex books or magazines. Upon denial, he offered the owners a small package with free samples of his explicit books and magazines, suggesting that they charge a high retail price in order to make a significant profit. For future orders LB would contact them again. To the most active and reliable, he gave them the address of a mailbox rented for him by a Dutch girlfriend in Amsterdam in order to speed up payments and new orders.
      Month after month, with the nickname of "Santa Claus" (because of his well-packaged free samples,) LB enormously increased the turnover and diffusion of pornography. And the judiciary cases, sometimes provoked by Braun himself against selected dealers (the necessary victims of the revolution), began to pile up on the desks of several District Attorneys in various countries.

More LB Photographs


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