Benjamin Wedel

Benjamin Wedel, engraving by Wolfgang Philipp Kilian

Benjamin Wedel (* 1673 in Geringswalde ; † 1736 ) was a bookseller and publisher in Hamburg and later in Nuremberg and Altdorf near Nuremberg .

Life

Benjamin Wedel gained professional experience in the book trade in the shop that Gottfried Liebernickel ran in Hamburg's cathedral . For Liebernickel, he traveled to the book fairs in Frankfurt and Leipzig . In 1705 he married Dorothea (?) Wehrmann in Braunschweig, but she died in the summer of 1706 in her first childbed; the child survived the birth. Wedel seems to have had contacts to Nuremberg as early as 1710. The letter that Christian Friedrich Hunold wrote to his friend this year has survived, complaining that he went from Leipzig to Nuremberg without visiting him in Halle. The letter offers a profile that Hunold asked him to publish in a Nuremberg newspaper:

Dearest brother.

Let it be put in the paper in Nuremberg whether a man of mediocre stature, with a strong body, in a brown Peruque, more elongated than round in face, brown and red in color, (when he is drinking wine) curled eyes, morally evil mouths , free forehead, and bulging calves, his age 36 years, with the name BW in Francken would like to be found; because he lost himself long ago in Leipzig, so that many friends do not know where he went and where he flew. If you should inquire about it, put a pen in his hand and force him to write to me: I have been a lazy rascal up to now, and I no longer want to do this. If he does this, give him a glass of wine to drink, and tell him about me that I am still healthy in Halle and in the previous condition. This is doing me a curious favor, and I stand by it

My dear mister brother

Halle, 22 Aug

1710

faithful servant

Hunold

Wedel finally married one of the two daughters of the Nuremberg publisher Johann Daniel Tauber, who died in 1716, and in 1719 took over his publishing business, which was closely connected to the University of Altdorf . He wrote the biography of Christian Friedrich Hunold , whose scandalous satyrical novel he published in Hamburg in 1706.

literature

• Benjamin Wedel: Secret Messages and Letters from Mr. Menante's Life and Writings. (Cöln: Oelscher, 1731), reprint: (Leipzig: Zentralantiquariat der DDR, 1977).
• Johann Goldfriedrich : History of the German book trade , 2nd vol. (1648-1740), p. 2303 (cf. Kapp / Goldfr. Vol. 2, p. 340).

Web links

• Works by and about Benjamin Wedel  in the German Digital Library