Axel Juncker

Axel Juncker (born July 1, 1870 in Copenhagen , † September 29, 1952 in Copenhagen) was a publisher and bookseller who was active in Germany and Denmark. From 1901 to 1922 he headed the Axel Juncker Verlag.

Publishing work

Since 1897 Juncker ran a bookshop specializing in Scandinavian literature at Potsdamer Strasse 11 in Berlin . He had reopened his assortment , initially sold to the bookseller Karl Schnabel in 1903, as "Buchladen Axel Juncker" at Kurfürstendamm 210 in 1913 . By renting additional rooms, he ran a "book and art shop" there during the First World War , in which lectures and readings were also held.

In 1901 Juncker founded the Axel Juncker Verlag. After taking on two partners in 1920, he left the publishing house in 1922 and settled in his hometown of Copenhagen in 1924 and bought the Antiquariat Studio at Sankt Peders Stræde 39. He later moved to Store Kongensgade 68 and finally back to the antiquarian district in Studiestræde 13. His small second-hand bookshop was one of the most exclusive in town with a limited audience. As a result of increasing hearing loss, Juncker had to give up and he died at the age of eighty-two in 1952.

Juncker's specialization in Northern European literature was also reflected in the publishing program, which took up a quarter of the title list. He successfully published Gustav Wied , Karl Larsen and Laurids Bruun . German poetry also played a major role in publishing. Until 1913 this was comparable to Scandinavian literature. The group of German publishing authors included such successful authors as Else Lasker-Schuler , Anton wild goose , Max Brod , Franz Werfel , Hans Bethge , John sleeping and not least Rainer Maria Rilke , whose book dealer, he was first before the novel The Last relocated . Rilke also worked as a lecturer at Juncker. However, he did not have any publishing success with Rilke's Die Weise von Liebe und Tod des Cornets Christoph Rilke , which appeared in an edition of 300 numbered copies in 1906. It was Anton Kippenberg who made this story a global success. The text he acquired for 400 marks now has a circulation of millions as the legendary, still published number 1 of the Insel-Bücherei, which was launched in 1912 . On the other hand, Juncker had more luck with Kurt Tucholsky's first prose novel : A picture book for lovers : After the author had offered the work to several publishers in vain, Juncker acquired it with all rights for 125 marks, and in the same year it was number 3 in his Orplid series - Books with illustrations by Kurt Szafranski for the price of one mark. Just one year later, the 3rd thousand of the book, which was mainly read by young people, appeared, in 1921 the 50th and in 1931 the 100th thousand were reached.

As early as 1905 and 1906 Juncker had attempted to establish a series of poetry under the title Axel Juncker's Collection of Modern German Poetry . The one with Max Dauthendey's The Eternal Wedding. The burning calendar: love songs started series, in which Johannes Schlaf with Das Sommerlied. Poems (Vol. II) and René Schickele with Der Ritt ins Leben (Vol. IV) did not get beyond four editions.

The publisher was unable to keep most of the successful authors. In 1906 Rilke switched to Insel-Verlag . In 1910 Dauthendey left the publishing house and published from then on with Albert Langen and Ernst Rowohlt . Ultimately, Kurt Wolff Junckers was able to retain authors of the Expressionist generation such as Max Brod, Franz Werfel and Otto Pick .

Publishing program (selection)

• Axel Juncker's collection of modern German poetry (Vol. 1 to 4, 1905 and 1906)
• Juncker books , prose texts (Vol. 1 to 12, 1919–1922)
• Orplid books (Vol. 1 to 53 [?], 1912–1925)
• Max Brod: Death to the Dead (1906)
• Sören Kierkegaard : Sören Kierkegaard and his relationship to "her" (1905)
• Else Lasker-Schüler: Styx (1902)
• Else Lasker-Schüler: The Peter Hille Book . With a binding drawing by the author (1906)
• Rainer Maria Rilke: The Last (1901)
• Rainer Maria Rilke: The Book of Pictures (1902)
• Rainer Maria Rilke: The way of love and death of the cornet Christoph Rilke (1906), 1912 as No. 1 in the island library
• Kurt Tucholsky: Rheinsberg: A picture book for lovers. Pictures by Kurt Szafranski (1912)
• Gustav Wied: Farm Stories (1901)

Others

A publishing house called "Axel Juncker" is now part of the Langenscheidt publishing house based in Munich. He publishes a. a. Literature on foreign language teaching.

See also

• Cultural publisher

literature

• Birgit Kuhbandner: Entrepreneur between the market and the modern: publishers and contemporary German-language literature on the threshold of the 20th century . Otto Harrassowitz Verlag, Wiesbaben 2008.
• Renate Scharffenberg (Ed.): Rainer Maria Rilke. Letters to Axel Juncker . Insel Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1979.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Renate Scharffenberg: Rilke and his publisher Axel Juncker . in: Imprimatur. A yearbook for book lovers. New episode. Volume V. (1965-1967). Editors: Konrad F. Bauer, Bertold Hack and Heinz Sarkowski, Society of Bibliophiles, Frankfurt am Main 1967
2. ↑ See the website for Berliner Esperantoplatz [1]  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. .  
3. ↑ Birgit Kuhbandner: Entrepreneurs between the market and the modern: publishers and contemporary German-language literature on the threshold of the 20th century . Otto Harrassowitz Verlag, Wiesbaben 2008, p. 142 ff.
4. ↑ See the list in the DNB [2] .