Société Parisienne d'Édition

The five Offenstadt brothers – Charles, Georges, Maurice, Nathan and Villefranche – had a wide range of publications within their portfolio, exploiting technical advances in low-cost colour lithography.

[1] They are best known for publishing popular periodicals aimed at the youth market, such as L'Épatant, L'Intrépide and L'Illustré; and comics, often featuring larger than life characters like Les Pieds nickelés, L'Espiègle Lili and Bibi Fricotin.

[1] They also published magazines aimed at adult audiences, providing a platform for emerging and sometimes controversial writers and artists – such as Maurice de Vlaminck and André Derain.

[2] The Offenstadt brothers were often the target of the moral censure of the period, particularly from French senator, René Bérenger, popularly known as père pudeur ("papa prudity").

[3] Because of the brothers' Jewish origins, they were stripped of ownership of their publishing house in 1940 under the Aryanisation laws during the Occupation.