Academic publishing company

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The Akademische Verlagsgesellschaft (AV), later Akademische Verlagsgesellschaft Geest & Portig , in Leipzig was an important scientific publisher that was founded in 1906 and was wound up after the end of the GDR.

history

The Akademische Verlagsgesellschaft was founded in 1906 by Leo Jolowicz (born August 12, 1868 in Posen, † 1940 in Leipzig), who previously took over the bookstore from Gustav Fock in 1898 and expanded it into the largest and best-known academic antiquarian bookshop in Germany. His publishing house became one of the best-known scientific publishers, in which well-known journals appeared such as the Zeitschrift für physical Chemie , the Handbuch der Experimentalphysik , the Handbuch der Radiologie , Rabenhorsts Kryptogamen Flora , Bronns Klassen und Ordorders der Tierreich , the results of the enzyme research and the results of the Vitamin and hormone research . In addition to the Leipzig luminary in physical chemistry, Wilhelm Ostwald , Svante Arrhenius , Pierre Curie and Marie Curie were among the authors . From 1921 they also published the well-known series of new editions of the scientific classics Ostwald's Classics of Exact Sciences (taken over from the Wilhelm Engelmann publishing house in Leipzig). This was also continued by the publisher's successors in West and East Germany. Jolowicz also published Hebraica and Judaica.

The son-in-law of Jolowicz Kurt Jacoby (* 1893 in Insterburg; † August 1968 in New York), who became deputy manager in 1923 and had previously worked for Ferdinand Springer, was also involved in the expansion . In 1930 the son Walter Jolowicz (1908-1996, who called himself Walter J. Johnson after emigrating to the USA ) entered the business. When the National Socialists came to power, the publishing house was " Aryanized " (Jolowicz was Jewish) and Jolowicz was gradually pushed out. In 1937 he left the publishing house. He applied to leave Germany in 1939, but could no longer leave Germany and died in 1940, possibly by suicide. The book inventory of Gustav Fock GmbH burned in 1943 in a bomb attack on Leipzig. His son Walter and son-in-law Kurt Jacoby were sent to a concentration camp in 1938, but were then able to leave Germany and emigrate via Russia, Japan and other countries to New York, where they arrived in 1941 and 1942 and founded the Academic Press publishing house . Other former members founded Interscience in New York as emigrants in 1940 , and the Dutchman M. D. Frank, who had learned at the publishing house in the 1930s, built up the North Holland publishing house (later part of Elsevier ) based on the latter's model .

Jolowicz was followed by Johannes Geest and Felix Portig as publishing directors. In 1940 their names were replaced in the commercial register (by Becker & Erlig). Formally, they were a limited partnership (KG).

In 1947, Geest and Portig re-established the AV in the Soviet occupation zone, and in 1951 they also received a renewed license from the GDR. Johannes Geest died in 1947 and his heiress Marianne Lotze took over the shares; After Portig's death in 1953, the majority of the shares in the KG were taken over by the state. In 1959 these were transferred to VEB Gustav Fischer Verlag , and the remaining heiress Gertrud Margarete Portig was pushed out completely until 1972 (the publisher became the property of VEB Gustav Fischer). The publishing programs of Fischer and AV were very different. From 1964 onwards, AV was practically affiliated with BG Teubner Verlag in terms of its publishing activities . Together they continued to publish Ostwald's classics and a series of biographies by important scientists. In addition, the AV Geest & Portig also published numerous university textbooks in the GDR (such as the outline of inorganic chemistry by an author collective, which had a circulation of 100,000). After the reunification, the AV Geest & Portig fell to the Treuhandanstalt , which closed the publishing house in 1991. Archive material of the publisher that is still available is located in the Saxon State Archives, Leipzig State Archives , where it forms part of the 21091 Academic Publishing Company Geest & Portig KG, Leipzig .

In West Germany there was also an academic publishing company as a successor in Frankfurt am Main after the war . It existed until 1983.

literature

  • 50 years of literary creation 1906–1956. Academic Publishing Company, Leipzig 1956.
  • Richard Abel, Gordon Graham (Eds.): Immigrant Publishers. Transaction Publ., New Brunswick 2009.
  • Erich Carlsohn: Gustav Fock and Dr. Leo Jolowicz. In: Erich Carlsohn, Lebensbilder Leipziger booksellers. Memories of publishers, antiquarians, export booksellers, commission agents, assistants and market helpers. List & Francke, Meersburg am Bodensee 1987.
  • Andrea Lorz: Strive forward. Life pictures of Jewish entrepreneurs in Leipzig. Passage Verlag, 1999, pp. 83-123 (on Leo Jolowicz).
  • Fritz Homeyer: German Jews as Bibliophiles and Antiquaries. Mohr Siebeck, 1966 (on Leo Jolowicz).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Nature, Volume 142, 1938, p. 244, on Jolowicz's 70th birthday
  2. ↑ Abel, Graham (Ed.): Immigrant Publishers, p. 70.
  3. ↑ Barbara Kowalzik: Jewish working life in the inner Nordvorstadt Leipzig from 1900 to 1933. Leipziger Universitätsverlag, 1999, p. 40 (with life data of Jolowicz).
  4. ↑ State Archive in Leipzig, inventory 21091 Akad. Verlagsges. Geest and Portig
  5. ↑ Christoph Links: The fate of the GDR publishers. Privatization and its consequences. Christoph Links Verlag, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-86153-595-9 , p. 306ff. (at the same time dissertation from links).