Fritz Helmut Landshoff

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Fritz Helmut Landshoff (born July 29, 1901 in Berlin , † March 30, 1988 in Haarlem ) was a German-Dutch publisher .

Life

Fritz Helmut Landshoff grew up in a wealthy family of Jewish descent. His mother awakened in him a special fondness for music and literature at an early age. He was a student at the humanistic Mommsen-Gymnasium in Berlin, was politically active and in 1918, under the influence of the Russian Revolution, became a member of the USPD . He broke off the medical studies he had begun in Freiburg in 1919 due to a lack of scientific knowledge and began to study German in Munich and Frankfurt am Main. 1923 received his doctorate to Dr. phil. In 1926 he became co-owner and managing director of Gustav Kiepenheuer Verlag in Potsdam. His colleagues there were Hermann Kesten and Walter Landauer . After the “ seizure of power ” by the National Socialists, the publishing house had to close in 1933 and was later re-established with a different program.

In April 1933, the Dutch publisher Emanuel Querido Fritz Landshoff offered to set up a German-speaking exile department in his Querido's Uitgeverij in Amsterdam , Keizersgracht 333 - the Querido Verlag . This publishing house was supposed to fight against National Socialism and to do this by using German authors who had gone into exile. Landshoff accepted the offer and won numerous persecuted renowned authors for the publisher such as Alfred Döblin , Heinrich Eduard Jacob , Lion Feuchtwanger , Emil Ludwig , Klaus Mann , Heinrich Mann , Thomas Mann , Gustav Regulator , Anna Seghers , Ernst Toller , Arnold Zweig and many other. In addition to many literary titles, non-fiction books directed against Hitler's Germany were also published. Heinrich Mann's collection of essays, Der Haß , appeared as early as 1933, and in September 1933 the first issue of the literary and political journal Die Sammlung, published by Klaus Mann . This created the Querido Verlag, the most important publisher of German-speaking exile and resistance to National Socialism.

Landshoff was friends with Klaus and Erika Mann ; Klaus Mann describes him in his autobiography The Turning Point (page 420/21) as a “brotherly friend” and as the “most beautiful human relationship” after the suicide of his best friend Ricki Hallgarten in 1932. Landshoff was also the one who wrote the first English version of the book The Turning Point moved to New York in 1942.

The authors received their fees in monthly payments, which began with the conclusion of the contract and lasted until the delivery of the manuscript. In this way, the publisher guaranteed them a regular income (albeit a small one) with which they could survive.

After the German occupation of the Netherlands in May 1940, the publishing house in Amsterdam was immediately closed by the Gestapo . Landshoff had recently traveled to London for negotiations and was therefore beyond the reach of the Gestapo. Emanuel Querido and his wife were arrested and murdered in the Sobibor extermination camp in 1943 . Landshoff emigrated to the USA via Mexico in January 1941 and founded the L. B. Fischer Publishing Corporation in New York in 1942 together with Gottfried Bermann Fischer , which existed until 1946. After the war, Bermann Fischer / Querido Verlag NV was founded in Amsterdam in 1948 with him as a partner, whose successor was S. Fischer Verlag NV Amsterdam in 1951.

From 1953 to 1986 Landshoff worked for the New York art publisher Harry N. Abrams as managing vice-director . On May 5, 1982, he and his friend Hermann Kesten received an honorary doctorate from the Free University of Berlin, and in 1987 the Gutenberg Prize of the City of Leipzig . He received state recognition in the Federal Republic of Germany, such as the Federal Cross of Merit , in 1976 and 1983. Hans-Albert Walter , Nestor of Exile Research, considered Landshoff to be one of the outstanding German publishers of the 20th century.

Others

He was temporarily in a relationship with the actress Ruth Hellberg . As Elisabeth Mann Borgese frankly describes in Heinrich Breloer's docudrama Die Manns - Ein Jahrhundertertroman , she was immortally in love with Fritz Landshoff at the age of fifteen, while he adored her sister Erika Mann very much. Erika, however, didn't really love him, but tried hard to free him from his longing for drugs and death, which Landshoff and her brother Klaus Mann suffered from. In 1939 she even suggested him marry him, which Landshoff refused to her relief.

Literature and Sources

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Fritz Helmut Landshoff in the Munzinger Archive ( beginning of article freely accessible)
  2. ↑ Claus-Dieter Krohn , Patrik von zur Mühlen , Gerhard Paul, Lutz Winckler (eds.): Handbook of German-speaking Emigration 1933–1945 . WBG / Primus. 1998/2008, ISBN 3-89678-086-7 , p. 112
  3. ↑ Landshoff 1991, p. 86
  4. ↑ Irmela von der Lühe: Erika Mann , p. 214 ff.
personal data
SURNAME Landshoff, Fritz Helmut
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-American publisher
DATE OF BIRTH July 29, 1901
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH March 30, 1988
Place of death Haarlem