August Robert Wolff

August Robert Wolff (born January 10, 1833 in Zgierz , Poland , † August 20, 1910 in Sopot , West Prussia ) was a well-known Warsaw publisher , bookseller and founder of a dynasty of publishers and professors at Warsaw University .

Life

August Robert (he just called himself Robert) was the son of the Zgierz sugar manufacturer Gottlieb August (1787–1833) and his wife Caroline Joanna, née. Hellmann (1793-1847). He lost his father at the age of one and his mother at the age of 14, so that from then on he had to take care of himself. In 1847 he began an apprenticeship as a bookseller in the well-known Warsaw firm of Rudolf Friedrich Friedlein, where he made friends with Gustav Adolf Gebethner , his future business partner. In 1857 the two friends opened the publishing bookstore Gebethner i Wolff on Warsaw's historic street Krakauer Vorstadt , which existed until the German invasion of Poland in 1939 and which made great contributions to Polish culture. In 1860 Robert married Julie Augusta Gall (1836–1905), the daughter of a wealthy Warsaw pharmacist. Her large dowry helped a lot in building up the young company. Wolff dealt with the internal affairs of the company, while Gebethner represented the business externally.

During the January uprising of 1863, the bookstore was a contact point for Warsaw rebels and their comrades-in-arms from Podlachia , for which Wolff had to serve a fortress sentence at the Warsaw Citadel .

In addition to his work as a publisher, Wolff also devoted himself to charity. In 1882 he founded the relief and unemployment fund for Warsaw employees in the publishing industry and in 1905 the Association of Polish Publishers . For years he was a board member of the Warsaw Music Society, which was once co-founded by Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann, and donated books from his publishing house to prison libraries.

On the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the Gebethner & Wolff company, the well-known writer Józef Ignacy Kraszewski wrote to the two owners: " I am a living witness of what you have done for our literature, the spread of light, the development of good literary taste (. ..). It is easier to write a book than to publish one ... ".

The Wolff family's hereditary funeral in Warsaw

Robert Wolff died unexpectedly during a summer cure in the Baltic resort of Sopot . The body was transferred to Warsaw and buried there in the Evangelical Cemetery. Several thousand people attended the funeral. All Warsaw publishers and many from the provinces, numerous writers headed by Henryk Sienkiewicz , and scholars and professors from Warsaw University had appeared.

After his death, the publishing house was operated by his two sons, Józef August (1862-1918) and Gustaw Kazimierz (1872-1951) until 1929, after which the shares of Wolff's heirs were bought by the Gebethners who kept the publishing house under the old one until 1939 Continued names. Roberts' third son, Stefan Karol (1879–1950), became a communist and was a close collaborator of Felix Edmundowitsch Dzerzhinsky for a while (1912/13) . A grandson of Wolff was the painter and priest Jerzy Kazimierz Wolff .

literature

• Eugeniusz Szulc: Cmentarz Ewangelicko-Augsburski w Warszawie. Zmarli i i Rodziny . Państwowy Instytut Wydawniczy, Warsaw 1989, ISBN 83-06-01606-8 ( Biblioteka Syrenki ).