J. Berger bookstore
The J. Berger bookstore at Wiener Kohlmarkt 3 existed from 1900 to 2012. It was called the F. Lang bookstore until 1931 and came into the possession of the Berger family in the 1930s.
history
On November 20, 1870, the bookstore and antiquarian bookshop Franz Lang was founded at Singerstraße 8 in Vienna's inner city . The commercial law logging took place in 1874. The establishment fell in a time of general upswing, the construction of the Vienna Ringstrasse and strongly increasing demand for cultural goods of all kinds. The number of Viennese book, art and music dealers almost tripled between 1859 and 1890. Over the years, the owner also acquired a license to trade in art. In 1897 the flourishing business moved to Neuer Markt 17. At that point there were four houses, a little later the so-called Herrnhuterhaus - in the style of the Secession - was built on the property . In 1899 the entire front of the house was demolished and at the same time the first change of ownership. Franz Lang handed the business over to Karl Wehle. Lang became an expert and appraiser, but still ran a book and art trade, now in Baumgasse in the third district of Vienna .
Wehle had to find a new location and decided on the residential and commercial building that had just been built at Kohlmarkt 3, within sight of Michaelerplatz and Hofburg . Viktor Fink, the bookstore's chronicler, writes: “The choice of location shows that we were consciously looking for a location that could be developed.” Kohlmarkt, Graben, Hof and Hoher Markt were densely populated, and the area was already considered to be extremely elegant back then. There were already two bookstores there, the traditional Artaria since 1789 , Vienna's first cinema since 1896 and two art dealers in the immediate vicinity. This created good conditions for coping with the crisis-ridden times of the 20th century. The bookstore quickly gained a reputation. On May 1, 1917, the next change of ownership took place, the young Hans Sachsel (1893–1950) took over.
The future owner Josef Berger , who had completed his apprenticeship years at the Stetter company and then worked for Kirsch in Singerstraße from 1909 to 1912 and later for Braumüller , joined the bookstore and was appointed authorized signatory in 1924. Berger, born on March 15, 1891, came from a Catholic weaving family from Rýmařov , in German: Roman town . He became a bookseller's assistant, married Rosa Knell and continuously worked his way up until he was finally entrusted with a management position at the F. Lang bookstore. The couple had a son, Gottfried. Berger was a distinctly bibliophile character, looked after both the classic range and the modern second-hand bookshop and was able to bind a considerable customer base with his competent and authoritative manner. Sachsel, from 1919 also owner of the bookstore Wilhelm Braumüller & Sohn am Graben 21, decided to sell it, Josef Berger and his partner Heinrich Fischer took over the bookstore on July 1, 1931, which was now called Berger & Fischer, vorm. F. Lang, bookstore and second-hand bookshop . From December 1, 1936, J. Berger was the sole owner and namesake of the bookstore.
He cultivated friendly contacts with several writers, whereby his ideological neutrality stands out. The spectrum of poets who frequented the bookstore ranged from Theodor Kramer , who used to be a volunteer there, a Jew and founding member of the Association of Socialist Writers , to Bruno Brehm and Josef Weinheber , both anti-Semites, and Weinträger also a member of the NSDAP from 1931 onwards the annexation of Austria to Hitler's Germany, all bookstores had to deliver unwanted literature. In the Berger bookstore, the Gestapo book delivery office confiscated 1,509 volumes, but not the remaining volumes with poetry by Theodor Kramer. These were hidden in the upper window cladding by the then apprentice Viktor Fink on the orders of his boss and survived the Nazi era.
During the Nazi era, the bookshop - together with A. Pichler's Witwe & Sohn, Wilhelm Maudrich, the Beck'schen Universitäts-Buchhandlung , Karl Mück, the Eckart-Buchhandlung, Hans Knoll and Rudolf Krey - belonged to the guild of the so-called Nazi booksellers from Vienna.
After Josef Berger's unexpected death in 1947, his widow initially took over management of the business. Their son, Gottfried Berger , became the owner in 1955. In 1960, together with Heimito von Doderer and Hans Weigel, he founded the hour of encounter , literary evenings on the floor above the bookstore with readings from almost all of Austria's major writers. Four hundred events had taken place by 2001. The bookstore was run by his daughter Astrid in the last few years of its existence. After Gottfried Berger's death, the family no longer felt it would be profitable to continue the business due to the size of the business of just under 30 m², especially since the rent was gradually "raised to the level of local rents".
literature
- Gottfried Berger: 400 hours of encounter , Vienna: J. Berger Buchhandlung 2001, 129 pages
- Viktor Fink: Encounters of a bookseller , Verlagshaus Hernals 2007, ISBN 978-3-9502577-1-7 , 228 pages
- Beatrice Weinmann: Gottfried Berger , bookseller and Austrian with passion, Vienna: Molden 2002. ISBN 3-85485-086-7 , 384 pages
- Gerald Schnitten (ed.): Festschrift for the 80th birthday of Gottfried Berger , Vienna, April 2002, 168 pages
Web links
- Georg Hupfer: On the history of the antiquarian book trade in Vienna , diploma thesis at the University of Vienna, 2003
Individual evidence
- ↑ Viktor Fink, Encounters of a Bookseller , Vienna 2009, p. 146
- ↑ Michael Freund: Expensive rents in the city of Vienna: Books have to give way to clocks , Der Standard (Vienna), July 16, 2012