Franz Xaver Bachem

Franz Xaver Bachem (born June 12, 1857 in Cologne , † August 7, 1936 in Bonn ) was the head of Bachem Verlag and editor of the Kölnische Volkszeitung .

Life

Origin and family

Franz Xaver Bachem grew up as the son of the publisher Josef Bachem (1821-1893) and his wife Katharina Degen (1831-1921) together with his five siblings in a Catholic family. He was baptized in the parish church of St. Mary's Assumption in Cologne. The theologian Franz Xaver Dieringer was his godfather. After him he got his first name. On May 20, 1882, he married Elvira Ruland (1860–1927), daughter of the Bonn lawyer Johann Baptist Ruland (1820–1889) and his wife Josephine Wrede (1826–1893). Six children resulted from this marriage.

Professional career and work

Franz Xaver’s school and professional training was shaped by his father’s will to employ him and his younger brothers Karl (1858–1945), Fridolin (1861–1920) and Robert (1863–1942) at the Bachem publishing house. All children first attended the first-class secondary school in Cologne's Kreuzgasse. After a three-year apprenticeship as a book and art dealer in Bonn, Franz Xaver went to the Brockhaus publishing house in Leipzig . Before he joined his father's side as a junior manager in his own publishing house in 1881, he served as a volunteer in Infantry Regiment No. 65 for a year.His father withdrew more and more from the business for health reasons, so that Franz Xaver and his brothers Fridolin and Robert ran the business. In the 1880s, with the expansion of the “Kölnische Volkszeitung”, the publishing house became the main journalistic pillar of the German Center Party . At the end of the decade, the goal was achieved: the newspaper had made its breakthrough as a major national paper.

After the death of his father on August 21, 1893, Franz Xaver took over the helm of "JP Bachem-Verlag". His younger brothers Fridolin and Robert took over the management of the printing and commercial operations within the company. In the same year he traveled to the USA - not only to the world exhibition in Chicago , especially to study American press. He immediately implemented the knowledge he gained here and successfully started the weekly edition of his newspaper abroad. Like his father, Franz Xaver saw the focus of his work in the version of the feature pages . The editor-in-chief and head of the “domestic affairs” department were in the hands of his cousin Julius Bachem . From 1876 to 1907 Hermann Cardauns was responsible. Karl Hoeber was his successor and from 1907 to 1933 editor-in-chief of the Kölnische Volkszeitung . He also wrote a biography about Franz Xaver. In 1914, the year the war broke out, the newspaper published a separate war edition and, with a daily circulation of 130,000 copies, managed to become the most important national Catholic daily newspaper in Germany. Towards the end of the war, Joseph Froberger (1871–1931), as the paper's foreign policy advisor, had a decisive influence on the political direction. As pioneers, the editors supported the idea of ​​Rhenish separatism . Froberger and Hoeber tried several times in vain to win over the mayor of Cologne, Konrad Adenauer, for their idea.

On May 4, 1918, the "JPBachem Verlag" celebrated its centenary. With the end of the war, Germany's economic decline followed in addition to the military defeat. The monetary system collapsed. So the company lost all of its capital, which it had invested in war bonds with an amount of over one million Reichsmarks. At the end of the year, Franz Xaver separated from the local newspaper "Kölner Localanzeiger", founded in 1887 and run by his brothers Fridolin and Robert. Finally, Franz Xaver also had to part with the “Kölnische Volkszeitung”. In July 1920, a financial consortium of central Cologne politicians took over the paper. So it could be carried on in its old spirit. Bachem remained responsible for his book publisher. After his death in 1936, his youngest son Franz Carl (1898–1976) followed him as head of the publishing house.

Works

• My collector's experiences with old China bronzes , Cologne 1933.

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• Andreas Burtscheidt: Franz Xaver Bachem [1] In: Internet portal Rheinische Geschichte, accessed on March 11, 2019.