Carl Wilhelm Ettinger

Carl Wilhelm Ettinger

Carl Wilhelm Ettinger (born June 5, 1741 in Eisenach , † June 14, 1804 in Gotha ) was a German bookseller and publisher during the Enlightenment . In 1763 he founded the Almanac de Gotha the precursor of later by the publisher Justus Perthes continuing Gotha , a genealogical manual of the aristocracy. In addition, Ettinger published a 71-volume complete edition of Voltaire's works as well as the posthumous works of Friedrich II.

Life

origin

Carl Wilhelm Ettinger's first years of life are largely in the dark. The church registers of his birth town Eisenach only show his surname “Ettinger” in the form “Öttinger”. Today it is assumed that Ettinger was born in 1741 as the youngest son of Corporal Daniel Öttinger and his wife Anna Clara, born. Schröder, the daughter of a dyer, was born.

Entry into the publishing business

Almost nothing is known about Ettinger's childhood and education. What is certain is that he joined the Johann Christian Dieterich publishing house in Gotha , Thuringia , and continued the business when Dieterich left for Göttingen in 1760. In the mid-1760s, Ettinger leased Dieterichschen Verlag, and in 1776 he finally bought it. According to his brother-in-law Heinrich August Ottokar Reichhard (1751-1828), the money that Ettinger received from his marriage to Anna Caroline Seidler, a widowed Weimar court preacher's daughter in 1782, played an important role in the first years of his independence.

Independent publisher

Ettinger's ventures in the 1760s and 1780s proved so successful that he expanded his activities beyond Gotha. He opened a bookstore in Langensalza , bought a bookstore in Erfurt and founded the academic bookstore in Jena . The prerequisite for this expansion course was the good business he did above all with the Almanach de Gotha , a genealogical handbook of the nobility. At least when he founded his branch in Jena, he also benefited from his excellent relationships with the Gothaer Hof, which were also reflected in his appointments as court agent (1775) and commission council (1782) and brought clear economic advantages to publishing projects such as the Almanac .

In 1778 Ettinger concluded a partnership agreement with Johann Georg Justus Perthes (1749-1814) and Johann Friedrich Dürfeld, which was set for ten years. But as early as 1785, both Dürfeld and Perthes retired prematurely. The latter founded his own publishing house and took over the further editing and distribution of the Almanach de Gotha .

In the fourteen years between 1788 and 1802, publishing output grew sharply overall. Christoph Köhler, who systematically examined Ettinger's publishing program, states the annual production is around 400 titles in 800 volumes. While the publisher's catalog published in 1788 still listed 153 titles, the one from 1802 already contained 409 titles. Ettinger's publishing program covered a broad thematic spectrum, ranging from specialist books to works of fiction, portrait volumes on Enlightenment figures and periodicals . Up until 1802, the number of titles on educational, medical and geographical topics in particular increased sharply. In particular, the travel literature published by Ettinger enjoyed growing popularity. Overall, Köhler found an "instructive <n>, enlightening <n> impetus" in almost all of his publishing products.

One of Ettinger's most important publishing projects was the edition of the Œuvres complètes de Voltaire in 71 volumes, which appeared in Gotha between 1784 and 1790. In addition, under the title Œuvres posthumes de Frédéric II, he published four volumes with works from the estate of Frederick II. A collaboration with Schiller , which he apparently sought in 1782, did not materialize.

After Ettinger's death in 1804, his widow Karoline continued to run the publishing house with Otto, their son, before it was sold to the bookseller Carl Gläser in 1819.

literature

• Siegfried Seifert : From Voltaire to Galletti to “Gotha”: the Gotha publishing industry around 1800. In: Werner Greiling (Hrsg.): Ernst II. Von Sachsen-Gotha-Altenburg: a ruler in the Age of Enlightenment. Cologne u. a. 2005, ISBN 3-412-19905-2 , pp. 345-360.
• Christoph Köhler: "That nobody should do anything that just brings him all the advantages, but the others harm": Carl Wilhelm Ettinger's publishing company in Gotha. In: The unleashed market: publishers and book publishers in the Thuringian-Saxon cultural area around 1800. Leipzig 2004, ISBN 3-936522-87-1 , pp. 107–128.

Web links

• Works by and about Carl Wilhelm Ettinger  in the German Digital Library
• Page of the Perthes publishing house on the Almanach de Gotha

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Hermann Uhde (ed.): HOA Reichard. His autobiography , Stuttgart 1877, p. 84.
2. ↑ Köhler: That nobody should do anything. Pp. 112-115.