Franz Cornelsen

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Franz Cornelsen (born July 22, 1908 in Minden / Westphalia ; † October 31, 1989 in Berlin ) was a German publisher and the founder of Cornelsen Verlag .

Life

Franz Cornelsen was born on July 22, 1908 as the son of District Administrator Franz Cornelsen and his wife Emily Cornelsen (née Gädeke) in Minden. He attended the Athenaeum grammar school in Stade after his father had become district administrator there, and then studied electrical engineering a. a. in Munich . After completing his studies, Franz Cornelsen worked as a graduate engineer in the foreign department of Siemens AG until the end of the Second World War in 1945 .

In 1938 he married the graphic artist and later textbook author Hildegard Friedrichs . 1947 adopted , he and his wife, his nephew Dirk Cornelsen , whose parents in 1945 to escape from the Red Army had taken in the presence of the child's life.

In 1981 his wife Hildegard died. In 1984 he married the divorced Ruth Schaefer (* 1928) and one year later adopted her then grown-up daughter Andrea (* 1957). Franz Cornelsen died in 1989 and - like his first wife Hildegard - was buried in the Schmargendorf cemetery.

Work and honors

In 1946 Cornelsen founded the Minerva Verlag together with Gert H. Theunissen and Sinus Sinodoru and soon afterwards in the artist colony in Berlin-Wilmersdorf together with his wife Hildegard, the author of the later bestseller Peter Pim and Billy Ball - the Cornelsen Verlag , which became one of the leading textbook publishers for the whole of Germany.

In 1954, Franz Cornelsen and his wife took over the old and well-known book publisher Velhagen & Klasing (publications including: Putzger and Velhagen & Klasing's monthly books ) in Bielefeld , which was about to go bankrupt , and restructured it and integrated it into Cornelsen Verlag. In 1970 he founded the "Franz Cornelsen Foundation", the property of which passed to the publishing house after his only son Dirk Cornelsen decided not to join the publishing house immediately after completing his studies, as his father had wished.

Franz Cornelsen set up two non-profit foundations to promote education and upbringing .

In 1978 he received the Ernst Reuter plaque and in 1981 he received the Master of Arts h.c. Oxford honored.

literature

  • Dirk Cornelsen: The trampled fishing game - a Berlin childhood after 1945 . Klartext Verlag, Essen 2003, ISBN 3-89861-213-9
  • Anonyma : A woman in Berlin. Diary entries from April 20 to June 22, 1945 . Eichborn Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2002, ISBN 3-8218-4737-9
  • Margret Boveri: Days of Survival. Berlin 1945 . Eichborn Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1996, ISBN 3-8218-4136-2

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Dirk Cornelsen: The trampled fishing game
  2. ↑ Cornelsen Verlagsholding GmbH & Co., development and position of the group. In: Verena Brandenberg: Legal and economic aspects of publishing school books - with a case study on the Bavarian admission procedure , Alles Buch. Studies of Erlangen Book Studies XVIII. Book studies / University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, ISBN 3-9809664-8-8 , p. 17f.
personal data
SURNAME Cornelsen, Franz
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German publisher who is one of the historical residents of the Berlin artists' colony
DATE OF BIRTH July 22, 1908
PLACE OF BIRTH Minden , Westphalia
DATE OF DEATH October 31, 1989
Place of death Berlin