Lasse Braun

Lasse Braun
Lasse Braun in 1976.
Born	Alberto Ferro 1936 Algiers, Alger, France (now Algiers, Algeria)
Died	16 February 2015 (aged 78) Rome, Italy
Nationality	Italian
Occupation	Pornographer, film director, producer, screenwriter, novelist and researcher
Years active	1961– 2015
Children	Axel Braun

Lasse Braun (born Alberto Ferro; 1936 – 16 February 2015) was an Italian pornographer, film director, producer, screenwriter, novelist and researcher.

Braun earned a law degree from the University of Milan (1956–63). He initially accumulated the funds for his lavish productions from the profit gained with so-called loops, ten-minute hardcore movies sold to Reuben Sturman, who distributed them to 60,000 American peep show booths.

Braun was born into a wealthy, aristocratic Italian family as Alberto Ferro, and was destined to become a diplomat, following in his father's footsteps. He passed all of his law exams at the State University of Milan (1956–63), and while FOR preparing the defense FOR his doctoral dissertation entitled Judiciary Censorship in the Western World, its contents and underlying radical ideas provoked so much controversy that it was promptly dismissed.

A Member of Parliament from Denmark translated the thesis into Danish; and the translation laid the foundation for the legalisation of pornography in Denmark on 4 June 1969.

Braun placed himself firmly in the tradition of 18th century pornographers such as Rétif de la Bretonne, who was the first author to coin the word "pornography" in his plea for the institutionalisation of brothels in Le Pornographe (1769) and to describe a comprehensive range of sexual variations in L'Anti-Justine ou les Délices de l'Amour (1798).

Another source of inspiration for Braun consisted of the Priapistic rituals and orgiastic festivals of the Dionysus cult, as well as ceremonies in veneration of Aphrodite (Porne), the goddess of lust and patroness of courtesans. According to Braun, censorship itself is obscene, and the suppression of sexual desire by the political and religious establishment over the centuries has only led to psychological damage and frustration. In his 740-page novel Lady Caligula, Braun goes against the grain by portraying Caligula as a brilliant character, instead of the deranged emperor described in Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire and in I, Claudius.