Géza Kohn

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Géza Kohn (Serbian Geca Kon / Геца Кон, born August 2, 1873 in Csongrád , Austria-Hungary ; † 1941 ) was a bookseller and publisher . His publishing bookstore, founded in Belgrade in 1901, was one of the most important in Serbia even before the First World War. In the period between the world wars, Geca Kon Aktiengesellschaft was the most important publishing house in Yugoslavia. Probably shortly after the Wehrmacht invaded Serbia, Kohn was captured and murdered in April or May 1941 because of his Jewish origins.

Origin education

Geza Kohn came from an Ashkenazi family in Hungary. His father was a rabbi. Shortly after Geza's birth, his family settled in Semlin on what was then the Hungarian-Serbian border. After primary school in Semlin, Kohn attended high school in Neusatz , which he left in 1889 without a degree. Kohn accepted a position at the Belgrade bookseller Friedrich Breslauer. In 1894 he returned to Neusatz and worked in Arsa Pajevic's bookstore until 1904. Since 1898 he was managing director there.

Bookseller in Belgrade

In December 1900, Kohn applied for Serbian citizenship because this was the prerequisite for starting his own company in Belgrade. On May 1, 1901, he opened his bookstore in Knez Mihajlova , the central shopping street of the Serbian capital. He offered both Serbian and foreign language books there.

In 1902 Kohn married Luisa Weiss from Vienna. The couple had two daughters. From 1905 onwards, Kohn also worked as a publisher. He did not pursue a specific program, but rather brought out books of various characters. He published school books and fiction as well as titles from all scientific fields. For example, he edited Machiavelli, Sigmund Freud, Karl Marx, Benedetto Croce and the Grimm Brothers' fairy tales in Serbian. Up until the end of the First World War, publishing output was still relatively low and the retail book trade was the main focus of Kohn's activity. In the 1920s, the work as a publisher came to the fore.

The First World War brought a serious turning point for the Kohn bookstore. After the occupation of Belgrade by the Austro-Hungarian troops in 1916, Kohn challenged the occupying power because of the exchange rate between the Austrian and Serbian currency, and they became aware of his business. Since he had also published patriotic titles, such as the army newspaper Ratnik (Eng. The Warrior), he was arrested and interned in a prison camp. Russian, French and English titles from his bookstore were publicly burned and the shop remained closed until the end of the war.

After the war, Kohn expanded his business into the largest publishing house in the newly formed Yugoslav state. In the 40 years of its existence, the publisher has published around 80 titles a year. In 1939 the publisher's catalog had a circulation of 20,000 copies. In the interwar period, Kohn was still the most important importer of foreign-language books and, conversely, now also the most important source of supply of foreign bookshops for Serbo-Croatian literature. A significant part of his business connected him with Germany, and he was a member of the German Booksellers Association until he was expelled in 1938 because of his Jewish origins.

In 1921 Kohn was a co-founder of the Serbian Booksellers Association, and in 1929 he was elected President. After criticism of his work by his colleagues in the association, Kohn committed himself to the formation of a common booksellers association for all of Yugoslavia, which was then formed in 1933.

Although very successful in business, Kohn never thought of opening branches in other Yugoslav cities. On the other hand, he had colporteurs travel to the Serbian hinterland. In 1934, the publishing house was converted into a stock corporation, with Kohn merging his business with that of his son-in-law Franz Bach, who became a shareholder together with his wife Elvira. Kohn's younger daughter Malvina was also involved in the company.

When the German troops marched into Belgrade, Kohn fled into the interior of Serbia. After the end of the war, eyewitnesses reported that he had been caught and shot by German soldiers. The same happened to his family members, who, with the exception of his son-in-law Leopold Hercog, were all shot in a camp near Pančevo in 1941 .

The end of the publishing bookstore

The Kohnsche Aktiengesellschaft was liquidated by the occupation authorities in autumn 1941. The bookstore's stock was given partly to German libraries and partly to a Serbian publisher ready for collaboration. The director of the Vienna National Library, Paul Heigl , had actively sought to take over the books stolen in Belgrade, and Hermann Gerstner took care of the book theft on site. Some of the looted property that had reached Leipzig was rediscovered in 2007 and returned to the Serbian National Library.

In 1944 a bookstore of the newly founded Prosveta publishing house moved into the premises of the Kohn shop. It was named after Géza Kohn and exists to this day (2009).

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Christina Köstner: Book theft in the Balkans. The National Library Vienna and the Belgrade publisher Geca Kon , in: Regine Dehmel (Ed.): Jewish book possession as looted property: Second Hanover Symposium. Klostermann, 2006, ISBN 3-465-03448-1 , pp. 96-106
  2. ↑ Leipzig University Library returns looted property: 796 books from the Geca Kon publishing house for the Serbian National Library. In: Leipziger Internet Zeitung (March 7, 2008)
personal data
SURNAME Kohn, Géza
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Geca Kon; Геца Кон
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Booksellers and publishers
DATE OF BIRTH August 2, 1873
PLACE OF BIRTH Csongrád
DATE OF DEATH 1941