Rough House Agency
The Rauhen Haus agency is the name given to the publishing house and the former bookstore of the Rauhen Haus in Hamburg , both of which were founded around 1844.
The publishing house continues to exist today under the name of the Agentur des Rauhen Haus Hamburg GmbH and mainly publishes Christian and non- denominational literature and materials for community work. In addition, the travel and mail order bookstore exists as a subsidiary of the publisher, which sells the publisher's products and other books and materials from the aforementioned areas nationwide. The income from both societies flows into the diaconal work of the Rauhe Haus Foundation.
The Hamburg bookstore Agentur des Rauhen Haus was renamed Buchhandlung am Jungfernstieg Anneliese Tuchel in 1960 and existed until 1998. It gained historical importance because it developed during National Socialism as a meeting place for opposition students and intellectuals and what was later known as the White Rose Hamburg served as the central point of contact.
Foundation and development
When the Rauhe Haus was founded in 1833 in what is now the Hamburg-Horn district , it was a village under the rule of the Geestland , a good seven kilometers from the then city limits of Hamburg. In order to be able to better convey goods orders and product deliveries , his founder Johann Hinrich Wichern set up the Rauhen Haus agency as a messenger station in Hamburg's old town (at Hahntrapp ) in 1841 . From 1842 a printing works was also established. In 1844 Wichern founded a publishing house and a bookstore, the latter was established in the messenger post and took over the name of the Agency of the Rough House . The program initially only comprised Bibles and Christian pamphlets.
With the publishing house, whose works were created in the printing house, Wichern pursued the goal of informing about Christian values. In addition to individual works of fiction, primarily writings were published for the purpose of the Inner Mission , as well as the "Fliegende Blätter" edited by Wichern since 1844 as an organ of the Rauhe Haus.
In 1903 Johannes Paul Meyer took over the management of the bookstore. On the one hand, he expanded the small branch into the largest Protestant bookstore in Northern Germany and, on the other hand, expanded the range to include cultural-historical, literary and artistic works. In 1926, the Rauhen Haus agency moved into a shop on Jungfernstieg , where it existed until 1998.
White Rose Hamburg
From around 1940, Johannes P. Meyer, together with the Hamburg architect Bernhard Hopp and the editor Hugo Sieker , organized art exhibitions in the shops, so works by painters such as Hans Hermann Hagedorn and Hans Reiche were presented whose pictures did not conform to National Socialist Germany. In the summer of 1942, Friedrich Karl Gotsch , a student of Oskar Kokoschka , was able to exhibit here. The bookstore, especially under the direction of Reinhold Meyer , the son of Johannes P. Meyer, developed into a contact point for Hamburg students and intellectuals who were critical of the Nazi regime. Reinhold Meyer studied German at the Philosophical Faculty of the University of Hamburg from 1940 . From 1940 to 1942 he also trained as a bookstore assistant and, after passing his assistant examination, became the junior manager of his father's company that same year.
After the air raids on Hamburg in July 1943, the meeting focused on various resistance circles of the White Rose Hamburg whose core alongside Reinhold Meyer, the students in the basement of the bookstore, Heinz Kucharski , Margaretha Rothe , Albert Suhr , Karl Ludwig Schneider and the bookseller Hannelore Willbrandt included .
“The evenings in the agency of the Rauhe Haus almost had the character of an organizing community. We met here in a larger circle, new people who were also opposition were constantly arriving and all questions that moved us young people were discussed almost systematically at a high level. "
The themes were initially modern painting, music and literature, especially the works of so-called “degenerate art” , the participants advocated freedom of opinion, the press, research and teaching as well as art and culture. The White Rose leaflets, which came from Munich to Hamburg via Hans Leipelt, promoted discussions about the possibility of active resistance.
"Above all, however, it must be mentioned that the shock caused by the events in Munich (...) immensely increased the opposition excitement of part of the Hamburg student body and urged our group to take action."
In addition to the resistance groups, many artists found a "refuge for their inner emigration " in the agency of the Rauhen Haus , such as the painters Apelles Sobeczko and Adolf Wriggers , the actor Wolf Beneckendorff , the musician Olaf Hudtwalcker and the writer Egon Vietta .
After the smuggling of Gestapo agent Maurice Sachs , a wave of arrests began against the group, which affected a total of 30 people. Reinhold Meyer was arrested on December 19, 1943 on charges of having participated in a "treasonable enterprise". Until the beginning of June 1944 he was in solitary confinement in the Fuhlsbüttel police prison , then he was transferred as a police prisoner to the Neuengamme concentration camp for several weeks . After being transferred back to Fuhlsbüttel, he died there on November 12, 1944, according to official announcements of diphtheria . The family doubted the representation, fellow prisoners reported that Reinhold Meyer had died after an interrogation in his cell.
Post war history
After the death of Johannes P. Meyer in 1950, his daughter Anneliese Tuchel took over the business, which from 1960 operated under the name Buchhandlung am Jungfernstieg Anneliese Tuchel . She died in 2000 at the age of 73. She ran the bookstore until 1998 and was given the name "Iron Lady of the Book Trade" in her later years.
A memorial plaque on the facade of Jungfernstieg 50 has been a reminder of the resistance group of the White Rose Hamburg since 1984.
The publishing house still exists today. The basis of the program continues to include Protestant and Christian books, illustrated books, maps and other writings, as well as working aids for parishes and parishes and non-denominational literature. In 1971, the travel and mail order bookstore of the Rauhen Haus Hamburg GmbH (r + v) was founded as a subsidiary, whose range includes a similar range in addition to publishing products.
literature
- Angela Bottin: Tight time. Traces of displaced and persecuted people at the University of Hamburg. Catalog for the exhibition of the same name in the Audimax of the University of Hamburg from February 22 to May 17, 1991. Hamburg Contributions to the History of Science Volume 11, Hamburg 1992, ISBN 3-496-00419-3
- Hinrich CG Westphal: He doesn't need flowers. In memory of Reinhold Meyer . Bookstore on Jungfernstieg Anneliese Tuchel, Hamburg 1994
- Thorsten Müller: The White Rose of Hamburg. From the 125-year history of the bookstore on Jungfernstieg . In: Die Zeit , No. 37/1969
Web links
- Homepage of today's publisher: Agentur des Rauhen Haus , accessed on October 17, 2016
- Homepage of the travel and mail order bookstore: Travel and mail order bookstore of the Rauhen Haus Hamburg
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Report by Heinz Kucharski, quoted from: Ursel Hochmuth , Gertrud Meyer : Streiflichter from the Hamburg resistance. 1933-1945 . Frankfurt 1980, ISBN 3-87682-036-7 , page 405 f.
- ^ Felix Jud: Reinhold Meyer and the bookstore of the agency of the rough house . In: Ursel Hochmuth: Candidates of Humanity. Documentation on the Hamburg White Rose on the occasion of Hans Leipelt's 50th birthday . Editor: Association of Antifascists and Persecuted Persons of the Nazi Regime Hamburg e. V., Hamburg 1971, page 49
- ↑ Hinrich CG Westphal: A conversation with Anneliese Tuchel about her brother Reinhold Meyer . In: He doesn't need flowers. In memory of Reinhold Meyer , p. 27
- ↑ Monika Nellissen: Mourning for the Iron Lady of the book trade ; Obituary for Anneliese Tuchel in Die Welt , March 1, 2000