Adolf von Kröner

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Adolf Kröner (around 1900)

Gustav Adolf Kröner , von Kröner since 1905 , (born May 26, 1836 in Stuttgart ; † January 29, 1911 there ) was a German publisher and chairman of the German Booksellers Association . He became particularly well-known for his demand for fixed prices for books , which was enforced in the so-called Kröner Reform and is still valid today. The publishers he managed, especially the JG Cotta'sche Buchhandlung , which was taken over and expanded in 1889 , were also among the most important publishers in the field of humanities and literary publications, especially at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries.

family

He was the son of Stabsfourier and later hospital administrator Ludwig Ferdinand Kröner (1807–1862) and Christine Magdalene Ebner (1799–1876). His brothers Carl (1835–1929) and Paul Kröner (1839–1900) became publishers like himself.

In 1860 Adolf von Kröner married Amalie Mäntler (1838–1905), the daughter of the printer's owner Carl Mäntler (1799–1859) and his wife Emilie Luise, née Brann (1806–1880). He had three children with her, including their two sons Alfred and Robert , with whom he later managed his publishing houses, and their daughter Alwine, who married the publisher Heinrich Beck .

life and work

Early years and education

Kröner attended the Eberhard-Ludwigs-Gymnasium in Stuttgart and went to study in Paris in 1853 with the desire to become an opera singer. For financial reasons he broke off his singing studies and returned to Stuttgart, in order to start studying acting in Leipzig and Weimar a year later . He broke off this too and finally decided to train as a bookseller.

In 1855 he began his training in Wilhelm Bach's bookstore in Stuttgart, then switched to L. Boshoyer's shop in Cannstatt for a few weeks and then took a job as a bookseller's assistant in Munich . Through Wilhelm Hertz and Robert von Hornstein , two childhood friends, he came into contact with the Munich artist group Die Krokodile and was significantly influenced in his literary perception by this group of writers around Emanuel Geibel and Paul Heyse . In 1857 he went back to Stuttgart and worked as an accountant at the artistic institute of F. Malté.

Founding time as a publisher and takeover of Cotta

Paul Heyse was one of the first writers whose books Kröner published

In 1859, Adolf Kröner took over the court and chancellery printing company from his father-in-law Carl Mäntler and in the same year founded his first publishing house Gebr. Mäntler (A. Kröner) together with his brother Paul . In 1861 he separated from the printing company and from then on only worked as a publisher and bookseller at Verlag A. Kröner Verlagsbuchhandlung. His first author was Melchior Meyr , followed by writers whom he got to know in Munich and whose works he published in the Munich book of poets in 1862 and 1863. Wilhelm Hertz, Paul Heyse and, above all, Hermann Kurz subsequently had their books published by him. In addition, by buying two small publishers - Becherscher Verlag 1864, Krabbescher Verlag 1870 (according to other sources, 1873) - he also won Hans Hopfen , Ernst Eckstein , Wolfgang Menzel and Robert von Hornstein as authors. Carl Kröner, his brother, joined the publishing house as a partner in 1867, while Paul Kröner took over the printing company in 1864. In 1877, both companies were merged again under one roof under the name of Gebrüder Kröner , in which Kröner's second brother Karl was also involved, although he left the business in 1883. In addition to the books mentioned, Kröner also published the conservative Swabian People's Newspaper .

Publishing sign of the Cotta'sche publishing bookstore

In 1884 Adolf Kröner enlarged his company by taking over the publishing house of the late Ernst Keil , who published the magazine Die Gartenlaube , and took over the editorial office of the magazine until it was discontinued in 1903. In 1886 his son Alfred also took over the management of the magazine and took over Management.

On January 1, 1889, he also took over the JG Cotta'sche Buchhandlung in Stuttgart founded by Johann Georg Cotta , which he had leased since 1879, and continued it as the JG Cotta'sche Buchhandlung Successor . He had already bought the Cotta'sche Druckerei in 1886 and, together with Carl von Cotta , had been relocating the library of world literature since 1882 . The Allgemeine Zeitung , acquired together with the Cottas publishing house, went to a GmbH in Munich in 1895.

In 1890 he founded the Union Deutsche Verlagsgesellschaft through the merger of the publishers of Herrmann Schönlein (taken over in 1888), Wilhelm Spemann (who was a partner in the publishing house from 1891 to 1897) and his own and took over the management and later the chairmanship of the supervisory board until 1904. Then he handed over the management to Heinrich Beck.

In 1897 Kröner acquired the architecture publishing house from Arnold Bergsträsser in Darmstadt and merged it with the technical publishing house of Cotta'schen Buchhandlung to form a publishing house, which he passed on to his son Alfred Kröner in 1898, who had been a partner in Kröner Verlag since 1892. In 1899 the Cotta'sche Buchhandlung was converted into a GmbH and Adolf Kröner ran it together with his son Robert until his death in 1911. In 1901, a branch was opened in Berlin, making the company headquarters “Stuttgart and Berlin”.

Publishing profile around the turn of the century

In 1901, after the death of the Berlin publisher Wilhelm Hertz, Adolf Kröner also took over his program and added it to the Cotta'schen Buchhandlung, which now only deals with subjects of the. By outsourcing the areas of technology and natural sciences to his son's Alfred Kröner Verlag Humanities and economics focused. The most important authors in the field of philosophy were Friedrich Theodor Vischer , Friedrich Jodl , Heinrich von Stein , Eduard Engel and Franz Brentano and in the economic and law sector Georg von Mayr , Georg Schanz , Lujo Brentano and Walter Lotz . With the latter two, the Munich economic studies appeared in over 100 volumes from 1893 until Kröner's death. With Hermann Oldenberg's Buddha , a work was also published that became one of the publisher's most successful and continued to appear in new editions until the post-war period of World War II .

Otto von Bismarck

The area of ​​history was covered by authors such as Heinrich Brunner , Alfred Doren , Veit Valentin , Heinrich Friedjung , Friedrich Meinecke and Erich Marcks , but Otto von Bismarck played the central role after 1890 , for whose memoirs Kröner was able to acquire the publishing rights. From 1892 he published The Political Speeches of Prince Bismarck in 14 volumes and after Bismarck's death from 1898 the thoughts and memories . On the basis of the great success, Kaiser Wilhelm I and Bismarck appeared in 1901, and in 1903 and 1906 Aus Bismarck's correspondence .

There were also still interesting titles in the field of literature: from 1902 to 1907 the critical complete edition of the works of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe appeared in 40 volumes in Kröner's Cotta'schen Buchhandlung , the “Jubilee Edition” in memory of the complete edition that appeared almost 100 years earlier (1806–1810) Cottas recalled. From 1904 to 1905 a complete edition of Friedrich Schiller's works followed on the 100th anniversary of the writer's death as a “secular edition”. In addition, the “Library of World Literature” was further expanded and the “Cotta'sche Volksbibliothek” (from 1889) / “Cotta'sche Handbibliothek” (from 1902) from the old Cottas program was taken up again. According to Neue Deutsche Biographie, it was "fatal that Kröner misjudged the new trends." He refused to collaborate with Detlev von Liliencron as well as Heinrich Mann and Rainer Maria Rilke and tried Arthur Schnitzler and Hermann very late Hesse to win. Hermann Sudermann provided him with high-quality literature , and he also published Theodor Fontane , Paul Heyse and Gottfried Keller , who had come to him through the takeover of Wilhelm Hertz's publishing house in 1901, and Otto Braun published Cotta's Musenalmanach from 1891 to 1900 , one of them Cross-section of German literature.

Representatives of the interests of the publishing and book trade

In addition to his direct work as a publisher, Adolf Kröner campaigned very intensively for the interests of the German publishing and book trade. In 1877 he became chairman of the Süddeutsche Buchhändlerverein as well as of the Stuttgart publishers association. A year later he was second secretary and, in 1880, deputy chairman of the Börsenverein der Deutschen Buchhandels (today's Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels ).

In 1882 he was elected first chairman of the Börsenverein and held this position first until 1888 and then again from 1889 to 1892. The New German Biography names Kröner in his work as the “most important man in this post in the second half of the century”.

Kröner became "the leader of the reform movement that sought a balance between the centers of Leipzig and Berlin on the one hand and the rest of the German book trade on the other." The conflict was related to the fact that the publishers in the two book trade metropolises operated an intensive mail order book trade with high discounts for buyers so that the situation arose for the regional booksellers that the buyers ordered books to view from them, but bought them with discounts from the "remote sellers" - the small booksellers had correspondingly massive economic problems and had to get a large part of other sales or services finance. Kröner condemned this approach sharply: in 1884 he gave his most famous speech at the general meeting of the Börsenverein, in which he called for the introduction of fixed book prices for the German book trade and emphasized the advantages for publishers, booksellers and authors:

“The slingshots in the book trade, ie the sale of new books to the public at prices at which, according to the judgment of impartial experts, a solid book trade spread across the entire German-speaking area can no longer exist, is in its consequences equally disadvantageous for writers, book sellers and Publisher."

He called for the introduction of equal market conditions for all booksellers and emphasized that this was in the interests of all interest groups. The publisher would then have the opportunity to offer and sell his books, especially the novelties , nationwide. The booksellers and buyers benefited above all from the book warehouses, which could be set up in smaller towns with uniform prices. Finally, among authors, the reforms were intended to counteract the displacement of unknown authors.

In 1887, fixed book prices and a number of other ideas from Kröner were adopted at the general meeting of the association and introduced a year later, this step is now known as Kröner's reform . Further results of his efforts were a revitalization of the association, especially at the district and local level, as well as the setting up of a commission to advise on complaints about slingshot cases. In 1888, Kröner resigned his position as chairman and handed it over to the Berlin publisher Paul Parey , who tried to enforce the reform by means of coercive measures against the publishers. This plan failed and Parey had to hand over his chairmanship again after just one year - to Adolf Kröner, who only refused to be re-elected for health reasons in 1892.

Honors

Memberships

Adolf von Kröner was a member of the Corps Teutonia Stuttgart.

swell

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Erika Porten, Weilimdorfer Heimatblatt 34, September 2012, p. 9 ( digitized version )
  2. ↑ Herrmann AL Degener (Ed.): Who is it? Our contemporaries , 4th edition 1909 and Anton Bettelheim 1914 (see literature)
  3. ↑ Neue Deutsche Biographie and Anton Bettelheim 1914 (see literature)
  4. ↑ Paul Heichen (Ed.): Pocket Lexicon of Outstanding Book Printers and Booksellers , 1884 and Karl Friedrich Pfau 1890 (see literature)
  5. ↑ after Anton Bettelheim 1914
  6. ↑ Neue Deutsche Biographie, Volume 13, page 62 (keyword "Alfred Kröner")
  7. ↑ Paul Heichen (Ed.): Pocket Lexicon of Outstanding Book Printers and Booksellers , 1884
  8. ^ Karl Friedrich Pfau 1890
  9. ↑ Neue Deutsche Biographie, Volume 13, page 61
  10. ↑ a b Neue Deutsche Biographie, Volume 13, page 60
  11. ↑ Kröner's speech from 1884, quoted from KW Bramann et al .: Assortment and Publishing Customers , 3 ed. Bramann Verlag, Frankfurt / M. 1999
  12. ↑ Court and State Manual of the Kingdom of Württemberg 1907, page 38
  13. ↑ 100 Years of the Weinheim Senior Citizens' Convention , pp. 140–141. Bochum, 1963

literature

  • Franz Menges:  Kröner, Adolf von. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 13, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1982, ISBN 3-428-00194-X , pp. 59-61 ( digitized version ).
  • Gerhard Menz (ed.): German booksellers. 24 life pictures of leading men in the book trade . Lehmann Verlag Leipzig 1925.
  • Anton Bettelheim (Hrsg.): Biographisches Jahrbuch and German Nekrolog Volume 16/1914.
  • Karl Friedrich Pfau : Biographical lexicon of the German book trade of the present: taking into account the most outstanding representatives of the book trade of the old days and abroad . Leipzig 1890.
  • Mark Lehmstedt (Ed.): History of the German Book Trade , Directmedia Publishing GmbH, Berlin 2000/2004 (CD-ROM).

Web links

This version was added to the list of articles worth reading on May 19, 2006 .
personal data
SURNAME Kröner, Adolf von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Koerner, Adolf
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German publisher, chairman of the German Booksellers Association
DATE OF BIRTH May 26, 1836
PLACE OF BIRTH Stuttgart
DATE OF DEATH January 29, 1911
Place of death Stuttgart