Erich Reiss

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Erich Caesar Reiss (mostly Reiss from the mid-1920s ) (born February 1, 1887 in Berlin , † May 8, 1951 in New York ) was a German publisher . His publishing house of the same name existed from 1908 to 1936 and was one of the leading literary publishers in Germany. The well-known magazine Die Schaubühne was published here from 1909 to mid-1912 .

Live and act

Erich Reiss, the son of the factory owner Alexander Reiss, founded the Erich Reiss publishing house of the same name on 23 November 1908 at the age of 21 with part of the inherited property . The publisher's first publication was Leo Greiner's drama The Duke of Boccanera . In the following decades, numerous other publications by Greiner appeared in the Reiss-Verlag. In 1910, Reiss published Alfred Polgar's double monograph Brahms Ibsen . In 1921 Polgar's monograph on Max Pallenberg followed (in the series “The Actor”). Reiss became Egon Erwin Kisch's publisher in the 1920s . As a theater publisher, Reiss was close friends with Max Reinhardt . In addition to popular classics, Reiß also published other outstanding authors of his time such as Hugo von Hofmannsthal , Gabriele d'Annunzio , Ernst Toller , André Gide , Klabund , Julius Bab , Eduard Stucken , Maximilian Harden , Kasimir Edschmid , Richard Huelsenbeck , Maurice Maeterlinck , Hugo Ball , Herbert Eulenberg , Johannes R. Becher and Gottfried Benn . In addition to literary works, he also published historical and political representations, for example by Poincaré and Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk . Reiss hired artists such as George Grosz to furnish his books . In addition to the Weltbühne , other leading magazines appeared in his publishing house, such as the Tribune of Art and Time , Der Anbruch , Styl , Faust and the Future . Embezzlement by one of its employees brought the publishing house into financial difficulties in 1926, from which it was not to recover until it was confiscated in 1936.

In 1934 the Erich Reiss Verlag, which from 1933 on (before the official ban on Jewish publishers to publish books by non-Jewish authors) only published books by Jewish authors, published Gerson Stern's first novel Weg ohne Ende . This debut by a hitherto unknown author was published in an edition of 5,000 copies, which was quite high for the circumstances at the time, and a second edition of a further 4,000 copies followed a few months later.

In the course of the November pogrom in 1938, Erich Reiss was interned in Sachsenhausen concentration camp for several weeks before he was released on the intercession of the Danish writer Karin Michaëlis and Selma Lagerlöf . Then Reiss emigrated first to Sweden and then to the USA. There he worked as a theater critic and in 1940 married the photographer Lotte Jacobi , who had already emigrated in 1935 , in whose photo studio he later worked.

Erich Reiss died in New York in 1951 at the age of 64.

Fonts

  • Dear Bennito - Letters to Gottfried Benn 1946-1951 (edited by Helmut Heintel), Warmbronn 1995.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Article on Gerson Stern. Pearl divers .
  2. ↑ Article on Lotte Jacobi.
personal data
SURNAME Tear, Erich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Reiss, Erich Caesar (full name); Reiss, Erich Caesar
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German publisher
DATE OF BIRTH February 1, 1887
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH May 8, 1951
Place of death New York City