Vita Nova

Vita Nova (meaning New Life in Latin) was a Swiss publishing house in Lucerne, Switzerland, that was established in January 1934 and co-founded by Rudolf Roessler along with the Catholic bookseller Josef Stocker and the financier Henriette Racine.[1] It was run by Rudolf Roessler, one of the most enigmatic characters in the history of espionage. Stocker had been encouraged to help co-found the publishing firm by Jesuit and Roman Catholic priest and theological philosopher Otto Karrer.[2] Vita Nova was an anti-Nazi publishing house[3] that primarily published German writers in exile.[4] Vita Nova published some fifty brochures and books that attacked both Nazism and Stalinism, contrasting them with the Christian values of the older Germany and Russia.[2] The small firm also published books that were critical of Francoist Spain.[2] Indeed, the firm provided the only real publishing house for exiled Christian, Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox writer and playwrights to publish their work.[2]