Franz Bossong

Franz Bossong (* 1872 in Wiesbaden ; † July 11, 1914 there ) was a bookseller, publisher, editor, author of non-fiction books and dialect poet.

Life

Franz Bossong's parents' house, the Adam Bossong bakery at Kirchgasse 58 in Wiesbaden, founded on April 1, 1837, existed until the 1970s. From 1899 to 1909 Franz Bossong lived in Paris , then again as a publisher in Wiesbaden. Franz Bossong's short lifetime - he died at the age of 42, shortly before the outbreak of World War I, in the Roonstr house. 17 - falls exactly in the heyday of what was then known as the world spa town of Wiesbaden as the May residence of the German emperors and a popular place of residence for the money nobility. In 1893 Franz Bossong took over the company Keppel & Müller, bookstore, publishing house and antiquarian bookstore at Kirchgasse 45, where he had completed an apprenticeship as a bookseller after graduating from high school, and expanded it to include a lithographic establishment and later a printing company. In 1893 Bossong advertised clichés, illustrations and posters in autotype, photography, chemigraphy, chromotypy, photolithography, zinc etching and collotype. He also had a drawing studio in the house under the direction of illustration artist Ferdinand Nitzsche . From 1896 he continued to run the company under his own name.

Publications by Franz Bossong

In 1893, the Illustrated Foreign Guide through Wiesbaden and the surrounding area appeared , edited by Franz Bossong in the first edition. Bossong had Christian Spielmann , Prof. Meineke, Ch. Leonhard, W. Caspari, Dr. M. Ripper and Dr. med. Rosenthal won over as authors with scientific competence. He himself had written the chapters Today's Wiesbaden, The oldest books and views of Wiesbaden and 20 excursions in Wiesbaden's surroundings . In the foreword Bossong thanks his friend Ferdinand Nitzsche for the illustration and the police advisor Höhn, who made his great collection of old Wiesbaden prints, books and views available to him. The booklet had four editions from 1893 to 1897, the fourth reached the 16th thousand. A city guide who at the time shaped the image of Wiesbaden like no other among locals and foreigners alike.

Franz Bossong as author, editor and publisher

Gelunge Gescherr was published in 1894 - a collection of cheerful poems and stories in Wiesbaden, Frankfurt, Palatinate, West Forest and Hessian dialects , edited by Franz Bossong. In 1896 E 'Virreche appeared in Berlin unn uff de Berlin trade exhibition by Franz Bossong and in 1896 for the first time his poems in Wiesbaden dialect , which were published three times by 1909.

The satirical newspaper The Laundry Bitt with the subtitle E 'Fach-, Lach- und Krach-Blättche appeared in three volumes from 1897 to 1900 in the publishing house of Franz Bossong in Wiesbaden. It followed on from the tradition of the Rhenish Kreppel newspapers that appear during the carnival. The editions that have been published over the years mostly contain satirical, political or entertaining contributions, partly in prose, partly in rhyme, partly in dialect, partly in High German. Franz Bossong wrote most of the articles himself, and edited the others.

For the soda in the Bütt

Franz Bossong was a member of the Sprudel carnival club and, in the form of Virreche (that's what the long -established Wiesbaden citizens called themselves), a popular hand-made speaker. Some of the contributions to the Laundry Bitt were made as lectures for the Sprudel Society. The Rheingau dialect poet Hedwig Witte wrote about Franz Bossong: ... as a living original and walking embodiment of the Wiesbaden archetype he created, the Virreche, he contributed to maintaining the little that the old Nassau city of Wiesbaden has to its unprecedented rise had to oppose old civil tradition.

Lord Cauliflower

Franz Bossong's nickname Lord Cauliflower alluded to his elegant appearance and urbane manners. In spite of all his motherhood, he presented himself as a man of the world. The love for Vadderstadt corresponded with cosmopolitanism and cosmopolitanism.

Political activities

Franz Bossong had a firm place in the social life of the city at that time. Franz Bossong was politically active as a representative of the interests of Wiesbaden business people, as a professional representative. It can be assumed that he was close to the Liberal Party . Little is known about party membership at this time. The city councilors saw themselves primarily as representatives of an economic group or a district. As a member or one of the secretaries of the trade association, Franz Bossong is named on the occasion of the traditional Dippehase dinner in the Nonnenhof, at which Lord Mayor Carl Bernhard von Ibell was also present. Franz Bossong was chairman of the commercial association. As such, he assured on January 16, 1897 at the 11th foundation festival of the association that he wanted to work for professional rights and human welfare. In preparation for the city council elections of 1897, Franz Bossong called a meeting of business people on October 27, 1897, to which about 60 people had appeared. He himself chaired the meeting, the hotel owner Kröner and the printer Schnegelberger were the assessors. Bossong said that as tradespeople and business people, their main aim was to reduce the number of lawyers in the city council.

For the needs of the deaf and mute

As early as the early 1890s, Franz Bossong was committed to the concerns of the deaf and mute . He was chairman of the Wiesbaden deaf and dumb association and president of the Rhenish deaf and dumb association. In 1892 the treatise The Struggle of the Deaf and Mute About Sound and Sign Language by Franz Bossong was published by Keppel & Müller. Here he took sides for the deaf and mute who threatened to become victims of a dispute over educational doctrines about the methods of spoken and sign language. Since the 18th century, people in Germany had only taught the deaf and mute - often accompanied by abuse - only spoken language . In his writing, Bossong fights against the complete suppression of sign language in the interests of the deaf and mute. His slogan and that of all members of the association is: spoken and sign language! - a concept that is no longer denied by either side.

Works

• The battle of the deaf and mute for spoken and sign language. Wiesbaden 1892.
• as editor: Gelunge Gescherr. A collection of cheerful poems and stories in Wiesbaden, Frankfurt, Palatinate, West Forest and Hessian dialects. Wiesbaden 1894.
• E 'Virreche in Berlin and the Berlin trade exhibition. Wiesbaden 1896.
• The laundry request. Born in 1897, 1898, 1899.
• as publisher: Illustrated tourist guide through Wiesbaden and the surrounding area. 4th, significantly increased and improved edition. Wiesbaden 1897.
• Poems in Wiesbaden dialect. 3rd, increased edition. Leipzig / Wiesbaden / Paris 1909.

literature

• Franz Bossong: The laundry request. Cheerful and satirical things from old Wiesbaden. Edited and commented by Brigitte Forßbohm. (= EDITION 6065). Wiesbaden 1998, ISBN 3-9804715-4-3 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Cf. on this Eckhard Hansen, Florian Tennstedt (Ed.) U. a .: Biographical lexicon on the history of German social policy from 1871 to 1945 . Volume 1: Social politicians in the German Empire 1871 to 1918. Kassel University Press, Kassel 2010, ISBN 978-3-86219-038-6 , pp. 140 f. ( Online , PDF; 2.2 MB).