German book community

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The German Book Association (DBG) was in 1924 Berlin was founded and primarily a middle-class clientele appealing book club . After the Second World War, it moved its headquarters to Darmstadt and in 1970 sold a 50 percent stake to Bertelsmann AG , which became its sole owner in 1988 and henceforth used the name for its book club business in the new federal states .

Liberation of the book from the nimbus of the luxury article

A. Seydel & Cie. in Berlin provided a share capital of RM 10,000 in 1924  for the establishment of the Deutsche Buch-Gemeinschaft GmbH. Paul Leonhard (1888–1934) became managing director - he was already a board member at Seydel & Cie. - and Friedrich Possekel . The idea, which developed into a “true jubilee procession” within a year, was to use existing means of production for a broad readership that was interested in books with good content, to deliver them tastefully and still affordable. Basically, you were offered completely free choice from a continuously growing range. Among various variants, the simplest form of membership cost 3.90 RM per quarter, for which a book was delivered. 250,000 readers did not miss the chance until 1925. Among the 42 new book clubs of the Weimar Republic , the DBG soon took second place in membership after the Volksverband der Bücherfreunde .

Werner Bergengruen , an author well represented at DBG, described his observations:

“The beginning was a time of struggle. As so often happens: the new was perceived as a deadly threat, publishers and booksellers believed they were facing unbearable competition. One tried to mobilize the press, one spoke of paternalism, incapacitation of the reader, yes, of the "crudest form of book distribution". It rained angry boycott threats against those authors who were guilty of collaborating with a book club. "

The DBG opposed this with a remarkable willingness to litigate and recorded successes: It obtained a judgment that from September 1925 onwards exclusively allowed it to use the word “book club” in the company name and as a trademark. It was not until the beginning of 1931 that a further judgment allowed the term , which had become a generic name , to be used in publications of all kinds. However, in the same year the German Booksellers Association managed to have the DBG legally forbidding the use of the designation "members" for its customers. The accusation that it was acting as a non-profit organization but in reality was a profit-oriented company could not be accepted by the Hand wise. The claim to be “a general cultural educational factor” could be associated more with the Gutenberg Book Guild, but the DBG made efforts to make the character of a trading company disappear behind the image of a “cultural community” 10,000 RM - “an extraordinary sum at the time” - endowed with the youth award of German storytellers in January 1926, followed in 1930 by a foundation of the German Book Association , which was supposed to promote the development of German community and school libraries abroad. The DBG expanded its range of aesthetic books, supplemented by popular scientific works, as early as 1925 with a classic edition by means of a contract with the Leipziger Tempel-Verlag, which was taken over including all rights. Among the so-called “temple classics”, the bilingual Shakespeare edition was obviously of particular importance.

Unfortunately, Gustav Kiepenheuer's realization that "the wider the spread, the more surely the circulation increases" did not get through to the Börsenverein: In April 1933 he worked quickly with the new rulers with an "immediate program for the German book trade" and called for the " Dismantling all kinds of book clubs and transferring them to the publishing house for production, to the range for distribution. ”But the DBG managed not to be captured by the Eher publishing house , the“ central publishing house of the NSDAP ”, and did not print a single National Socialist book . There was no propaganda in their members' magazine, instead the address "Dear friends" and the signature "In friendship and devotedly" in 1943.

Economic miracle also with the book clubs

As a result of the Second World War, only heavily dismantled production facilities remained of the former backbone, but the successor to Seydel & Cie., Berliner Druck- und Buchbinderei GmbH, was rebuilt. The increase in the importance of offset printing in Darmstadt, from April 1951 at the new headquarters, led to the integration of a modern offset printing company, the May & Co. Nachf printing and bookbinding workshops. In the same year, 1963, the company was established through the acquisition of a data center ( Type ICT 1500 ) the first German publishing company with EDP . The DBG now had 600,000 members - the term has established itself for subscribers in book clubs - and the DBG magazine Die Lesestunde ( The Newspaper Book in the early years ) has survived over the years . In more than 130 bookstores, there were opportunities to choose from the 600 volumes on offer, or to listen to the records of the DSG (German Record Association), founded in 1956.

When the quarrels between the assortment sellers and the book clubs had subsided , Paul Eipper pointed out that the members of the DBG were “mostly people who, for various reasons, used to barely go into bookstores”. The German Committee for Education provided a more precise outline of the customer base in a report, with the figure of 73 percent among employees and civil servants. Here, the "tried and tested" item was the item you were looking for, for buyers of avant-garde literature (e.g. Beckett , Böll , Camus , Grass or Sartre ), an experiment was ventured with the founding of the Modern Book Club (MBC) in 1958, which was already successful developed into a self-supporting offshoot after six years. A special members' magazine published work analyzes and author portraits, but the MBC soon renounced the independence of the MBC and integrated the special works into the DBG selection series. In the 1970s, there was no longer any question of the feared “tutelage” or “incapacitation”: 85 percent of the members voted according to their own taste and did not have the so-called “main proposal volume” sent to them.

Production of television games

In 1963, the DBG television department, initially active in Hamburg and later relocated to Berlin, was founded and produced 23 films within ten years. In cooperation with the ZDF , the focus was on literary television games with epic or dramatic models and it was hoped that if the audience familiarized themselves with the subjects of world literature, they could continue to occupy themselves with literary products - but such a beneficial effect of literary adaptations was publicly discussed controversially. The audience accepted the plays, for example Anton Chekhov's Ivanov was repeated several times, and Hannelore Elsner received the Golden Camera for her acting performance .

Limit of growth and mergers

Of the 85 book clubs found in Germany in the late 1950s, eight still existed in 1964. At the beginning of the 1980s, the annual turnover of DBG was around 80 million marks . The economic crisis at the time made itself felt in badly affected regions such as the Ruhr area through a decline in membership. For the book club headed by Ernst Paul Leonhard (1926–2004), the question of merging with the Holtzbrinck group had arisen as early as 1969/70 , but in the end they feared “becoming too much integrated”. The contract was therefore awarded to the Bertelsmann company, which acquired a 50% stake in DBG, although Leonhard's “independent management continued to be secured”. Ultimately, however, Bertelsmann bought DBG entirely in 1988. Ernst Leonhard kept the large printing and binding company May & Co. He was also the owner of the Berliner Spielkartenfabrik , the bookstore chain Carl Habel and the Paul Zsolnay Verlag . Before the DBG in Darmstadt closed at the end of September 1989, it still had 180 employees there. After the fall of the Berlin Wall , the Bertelsmann company used the name of the German Book Association to expand its business to the territory of the former GDR . On March 31, 2015, however, the era of its readers' ring ended for Bertelsmann when the last two book club branches in Gütersloh and Rheda were closed.

proof

  • The book creates community. (Festschrift for the 40th anniversary of the German Book Association), German Book Association, Berlin / Darmstadt / Vienna 1964
  • 50 years of the German Book Association . German Book Community, Darmstadt 1974

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Urban van Melis: The book clubs in the Weimar Republic. With a case study on the social democratic workers' book community "Der Bücherkreis" , Verlag Anton Hiersemann, Stuttgart 2002, ISBN 3-7772-0237-1 , p. 69
  2. ^ Michael Kollmannsberger: Book clubs in the German book market. Functions, services, interactions . Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 1995, ISBN 3-447-03628-1 , p. 26
  3. ↑ Werner Bergengruen: The book creates community . In: Festschrift for the 40th anniversary of the DBG, Berlin a. a. 1964, p. 9 f.
  4. ↑ a b u. v. Melis: Book clubs in the Weimar Republic . Stuttgart 2002, p. 61
  5. ^ M. Kollmannsberger: Book clubs in the German book market . Wiesbaden 1995, p. 65
  6. ↑ Josef Martin Bauer : Proud of this readership . In: Festschrift for the 40th anniversary of the DBG, Berlin a. a. 1964, p. 16
  7. ↑ Festschrift for the 40th anniversary of the DBG, Berlin a. a. 1964, p. 87
  8. ↑ Festschrift for the 40th anniversary of the DBG, Berlin a. a. 1964, p. 72 and 82
  9. ↑ Festschrift for the 40th anniversary of the DBG, Berlin a. a. 1964, p. 59
  10. ↑ U. v. Melis: Book clubs in the Weimar Republic . Stuttgart 2002, p. 249
  11. ↑ [o. V.]: 50 years of the German Book Association , Darmstadt 1974, p. 12 u. 18th
  12. ^ Paul Eipper: Ancient contacts . In: Festschrift for the 40th anniversary of the DBG, Berlin a. a. 1964, p. 29
  13. ↑ Festschrift for the 40th anniversary of the DBG, Berlin a. a. 1964, p. 65
  14. ↑ Festschrift for the 40th anniversary of the DBG, Berlin a. a. 1964, p. 103
  15. ^ Georg Hensel : Fifty years of book club . In O. V.]: 50 Years of the German Book Association , Darmstadt 1974, p. 13 f.
  16. ↑ 50 Years of the German Book Association , Darmstadt 1974, p. 57 f.
  17. ↑ a b M. Kollmannsberger: Book clubs in the German book market . Wiesbaden 1995, p. 41
  18. ↑ Klaus-Peter Reiss: A unique way between classics and bestsellers , Darmstädter Echo , March 3, 1983, p. 25
  19. ↑ Can buy . In: Der Spiegel . No. 18 , 1970, pp. 241 ( online ).
  20. ↑ German Book Association: An era is coming to an end , Darmstädte Echo, July 12, 1988
  21. ^ DBG closes earlier than planned , Darmstädte Echo, April 4, 1989
  22. ^ M. Kollmannsberger: Book clubs in the German book market . Wiesbaden 1995, p. 42
  23. ↑ End of an Era - Bertelsmann Club sends out last book. Derwesten.de , December 23, 2015, accessed on December 23, 2015 .