Bugra

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The Bugra Exhibition Grounds in 1914

Bugra is an abbreviation for the International Exhibition for Book Trade and Graphics , which was held for the first time in 1914 in Leipzig , the then leading German “book city” .

The 1914 exhibition

The exhibition was organized by the Leipzig-based German Book Trade Association from May 6 to October 18, 1914. The initiator of the exhibition was Max Seliger , the director of the Royal Academy for Graphic Arts and Book Industry in Leipzig. The external reason was the 150th anniversary of the institution he directed. Ludwig Volkmann , the chairman of the book trade association, was elected president of the exhibition .

The exhibition grounds were located in the area of ​​what would later become the Technical Exhibition Center , where the International Building Exhibition had taken place a year earlier . In addition to the host Germany, guests from a total of 22 countries were represented, five of them with national exhibitions in their own pavilions. From Germany alone 2300 companies and people took part.

The focus was not only on the production and distribution of the book, but also on the production of the necessary raw materials and machines and the graphic arts. For this purpose, the exhibition was divided into 16 main groups and around 60 subgroups. The palette ranged from machines and products for paper production to type foundries , printing processes , repro technology , bookbinding and bookshops to newspapers and news , librarianship and bibliophilia . The company Wolf Netter & Jacobi showed a three-storey free-standing shelving system for archives and libraries, which received a lot of attention at home and abroad.

There were special exhibitions for certain professional and interest groups such as "The woman in the book trade and in graphics", "The merchant", "School and book trade", "Germany in pictures" and others. In the Halle der Kultur (now Hall 16, Eventpalast ), artists were given the opportunity to present their graphic works, book illustrations and posters. The Haynsburger paper mill, in which paper was handcrafted from 1700 to 1909, was also on display .

The best work and products were awarded medals, which were awarded by a jury of experts in which u. a. the typographer Georg Belwe , the publisher Hans von Weber and the graphic artist Walter Tiemann contributed. Among the companies awarded were the printing works Oscar Brandstetter and Fischer & Wittig as well as the paper mill Ferdinand Flinsch. Prize winners among the visual artists included Max Klinger , Edvard Munch , Käthe Kollwitz , Gustav Klimt and Erich Gruner . The painter Carl Otto Czeschka was awarded the Royal Saxon State Prize for his work .

2.3 million visitors from all social classes were counted to the exhibition. However, the main part came by the start of the war, two million, after which the visit dropped drastically from August 1914 onwards due to the outbreak of the First World War . The Bugra remained open, but the pavilions of the now hostile states Russia, England, France, Belgium and Japan were closed. Financially, the exhibition therefore resulted in a loss of half a million Reichsmarks for the city of Leipzig as the host. After closing on October 18, most of the buildings were demolished. A parade field was created on the site. The remains of the exhibits were taken over by the German Museum of Books and Writing in Leipzig. On December 4, 1943, the museum burned down after Leipzig was bombed during World War II . Many pieces were lost or damaged. The original wax seal from Johannes Gutenberg , which was centrally exhibited at the time, melted, only the packaging, a wooden box, remained.

Follow-up exhibitions

Subsequently, the book fairs took place in the context of the Leipzig sample fair , the largest international world sample show, in spring and autumn. Both a trade fair building on Petersstrasse in downtown Leipzig and a hall on the exhibition grounds, in which a major fire broke out during the autumn fair in 1919, were used. Eventually the company moved into its own premises in the German Book Trade House, to which the name Bugra-Messehaus then passed.

The Bugra tradition was continued in the GDR as part of the Leipzig book fairs that take place at the spring fairs . However, she did not survive the difficult post-turnaround phase. The last world exhibition for the book trade and graphics (Bugra) took place in 1993 in the absence of the large West German mechanical engineering companies and industry associations. The exhibition planned for August 1994 was canceled four months before the start of the fair. “The 'difficult economic situation and a currently less attractive market in the new federal states' would have prevented many potential exhibitors from taking part in this trade fair for the graphics industry.” Exhibitors and customers now mainly meet at the, since 1951, all three to five years, since 2000 every four years, the print media fair drupa in Düsseldorf .

Exhibitions

literature

  • Official leader. International book trade and graphics exhibition . Leipzig 1914
  • Directory of the exhibition (ed.): What will the world exhibition for book trade and graphics in Leipzig in 1914 bring us? With the cooperation of the group leader . Leipzig 1914
  • Lothar Poethe: Bugra views Leipzig 1914. Historical pictures of the International Exhibition for Book Trade and Graphics Leipzig 1914 . Leipzig, Kunstverlag HC Schmiedicke 1988
  • P. Roth: Leipzig as the center of the book trade . (Leipzig 1914, published for Bugra 1914)
  • Andrea Paar: The Austrian publishing book trade at book fairs in Leipzig and Vienna and at world exhibitions from 1850 to 1930. , Diploma thesis University of Vienna 2000 ( digitized ; PDF; 907 kB)
  • Heinz-Jürgen Böhme , Günter Clemens: Bilderbogen - Leipzig picture postcard series from 1895 to 1945 , PRO LEIPZIG 2010, ISBN 978-3-936508-39-0 , p. 257.
  • Ernst Fischer (Ed.): The world in Leipzig: Bugra 1914 . Maximilian Society , Stuttgart 2014, ISBN 978-3-921743-63-8 .

Web links

Commons : Bugra 1914  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. The big Brockhaus . Leipzig, FA Brockhaus 1929, vol. 3, p. 485
  2. See, for example, the report of the American delegation in Library Journal 39 (1914), p. 592
  3. ^ Andreas Platthaus : Genius in the world fire. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , March 14, 2014, accessed on April 7, 2014 .
  4. Pictures in the object database of the City History Museum Leipzig
  5. Werner Starke: The Leipzig trade fair buildings. Shape and history . Leipzig, Leipziger Messeamt 1961, p. 35
  6. Börsenblatt 93/1994, p. 3