The books of nineteen

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The books of the nineteen was a joint project carried out by 19 German publishers between the 1950s and 1970s to publish a series of sophisticated books by important philosophers and writers in good quality at very affordable prices.

history

General

The loose association of the 19 participating publishers came together at the suggestion of retail booksellers. An office, which was initially in Hamburg and then relocated to Munich , took over the coordination between the publishers. According to the publishers, the aim of their joint project was “to publish an excellent book with impeccable equipment at an exceptional price every month in the agreed order” and thus enable everyone to have access to these works. The publishers were under pressure to set up new publishers and the growing importance of book clubs and wanted to secure market shares . This can be described as successful, since a total of 6.5 million copies was achieved.

Frequency of publication

From 1954 to 1972, a total of 209 books were published monthly, the price of which initially ranged between DM 5.80 and DM 9.80. All books in this series appeared as one-time special editions with editions of up to 50,000 copies, which was the breakthrough for some young writers. A total of 11 seasons of 19 books were published.

Overview of the 11 program series

program Timeframe Volumes
1 June 1954 to February 1956 1 - 19
2 March 1956 to October 1957 20 - 38
3 November 1957 to July 1959 39-57
4th August 1959 to April 1961 58-76
5 May 1961 to December 1962 77-95
6th January 1963 to July 1964 96-115
7th August 1964 to February 1966 116-134
8th March 1966 to September 1967 135-153
9 October 1967 to March 1969 154-171
10 April 1969 to October 1970 172-190
11 November 1970 to May 1972 191-209

Program content

The first program appeared in the period from 1954 to 1956. The first volume was body and soul (Kiepenheuer & Witsch publishing house), a work by the French writer Maxence Van der Meersch . From today's perspective, one of the most important works in this program is probably Stefan Zweig's novel Impatience of the Heart . In general, it can be stated that this first program consisted of books that could have a certain popularity, but were not exclusively bestsellers of the time.

The second program appeared from 1956 to 1957 and relied increasingly on prominent authors such as Thomas Mann . In this program, for example, Thomas Mann's The Chosen appeared with S. Fischer Verlag with the number 23 and Richard Wright with Black Power with Claassen-Verlag with the number 27.

After the novels initially predominated, the series of biographies and non-fiction books followed in the other programs . Stories that used to be almost impossible to sell often achieved the highest editions and the anthology as an edition was in great demand for years. All in all, the list is sorted in a varied manner, from sophisticated entertainment novels to exemplary works of literary rank.

The last edition of the book series was Wolf Wondratschek's novel Omnibus , which appeared in 1972 as volume number 209.

Participating publishers

The following German publishers participated in the project to publish the book series The Books of the Nineteen :

The publishers could publish the works themselves and design them individually; they only had to print a vignette consisting of 19  diamonds on the title page (or elsewhere, e.g. on the inner flyleaf), which symbolized the 19 publishers.

Sources and individual references

  • Dirk Franken, Arnd Hepprich: The Origin and History of the Books of the Nineteen: 1954 - 1972 . Antiquarian publishing house and bookstore Steeler Antiquariat, Essen 2005. (CD-ROM)
  • Complete directory of German-language literature (GV) 1911–1965, Volume 20, Munich: Verlag Documentation 1976, pp. 255–257 (132 titles up to 1965)
  1. ↑ a b c Horst Willi Schors: Exitus on installments . In: buchmarkt , issue 1/1972, p. 16 ff .;
    as well as: Hans Walz: Abgesang on the "books of the nineteen" . In: Börsenblatt für den Deutschen Buchhandel , Frankfurt edition, No. 54 of July 7, 1972, p. 1550 ff.
  2. ↑ Johannes Wilms: Now it's striking nineteen. The bookstore is in crisis, but nobody wants to admit it , in: Süddeutsche Zeitung , No. 238, October 16, 1998, p. 17
  3. ↑ Excerpt from the titles of the "Books of the Nineteen"
  4. ↑ Maxence van der Meersch: Body and soul . 2., unabridged people's edition, Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne a. a. 1954 (overall title Die Bücher der Neunzehn, Vol. 1 ) (German translation from French)
  5. ^ Extract from the book title of the first program
  6. ↑ Joseph Caspar Witsch was one of the initiators of this series, cf. z. B. Died . In: Der Spiegel . No. 20 , 1967, p. 190 ( online ).
  7. ↑ See notes on the books of the nineteen book series and the diamond in footnote 17 on page 8, in: Petra Huber-Sauter: Das Ich in der autobiographischen Prosa by Marie Luise Kaschnitz . Dissertation. Institute for Literary Studies at the University of Stuttgart 2003. ( PDF file)