Georg Joseph Manz

Georg Joseph Manz (born February 1, 1808 in Würzburg ; † December 11, 1894 ) was the founder of the GJ Manz publishing house .

School and education

Georg Joseph Manz was the son of a businessman. From 1812 to 1823 he attended the German cathedral school , the Latin school and the Progymnasium in Würzburg. Although his father had intended him to be his successor, he began an apprenticeship as a bookseller with JJ Lechner in Nuremberg in 1824 . Since his business mainly consisted of a lending library , he soon switched to the prestigious Bauer & Raspe bookstore and finished his apprenticeship there.

In his memoirs he describes how his love for book printing was awakened in his childhood: “On October 1, 1822, the inventors of the printing machine Koenig & Bauer in Oberzell Abbey put the first machine they built into operation and invited several people from Würzburg to take part . My father was among those invited and when he came home in the evening he brought a printed sheet with him, the title of which is: Some Poems by Schiller, printed with the machine intended for the Königliche Oberhofbuchdruckerei in Berlin ... I took this sheet with me and preserved it with special care ... It was, so to speak, the talisman of my future profession. "

After his apprenticeship, Manz first worked as an assistant to Tobias Dannheimer in Kempten , then to Wolff in Augsburg and later to Ph. Krüll in Landshut .

Company formation

Former office building of the Manz publishing house

In 1830 Manz bought the Krüll University bookstore in Landshut and founded the GJ Manz publishing house. In 1834 he expanded his business with a branch in Freising . After the university had been relocated to Munich in 1826 and Landshut had therefore lost its importance as a publishing location, Manz acquired Montag & Weiß, the oldest Catholic bookstore founded by Johann Leopold Montag in 1737, from Barbara Schmidt, the widow of the bookseller Johann Friedrich Schmidt in Regensburg . Manz moved his Landshut publishing house and also his residence to Regensburg, where he bought three neighboring medieval canonical courtyards in the corner of Schwarze-Bären-Straße , Pfauengasse . The three buildings were combined into a stately building behind a uniform, three-storey facade with house edging under a continuous mansard hipped roof with a neo-Gothic portal and surrounding wooden arbors in the inner courtyard. The publishing house GJ Manz soon made a name for itself through the use of modern machines and techniques as one of the most important Catholic publishers in Germany. In 1836 Manz left the bookstore in Landshut and the Freising branch to J. Wölfle.

expansion

In the years 1843 to 1845 Manz acquired the publishers from C. Etlinger in Würzburg (founded in 1823), from A. Attenkofer in Ingolstadt and from C. Klöber in Amberg and merged them with his publishing house. In 1850 J. Giel's publishing house in Munich was added. In 1855 he ceded the range and antiquarian bookstore to his son-in-law Alfred Coppenrath, who later moved it to the south wing of the Heuporthaus on Domplatz - today the cathedral bookstore .

In 1856 Manz acquired the Hochfürstliche Bischöfliche und Hochfürstliche Thurn und Taxissche Hofbuchdruckerei from J. Russwurm in Regensburg. There he set up a copper printer in 1862, because an important part of his publishing work was the devotional image in the technique of the steel self . Numerous confession, communion and confirmation pictures left his picture factory in Weißbräugasse .

In 1866 Manz took over the product range and publishing business of his brother Friedrich Manz in Vienna, which he left to his son Hermann in 1870 and who continued it under the company Manzsche kk Hofverlags- und Universitäts-Buchhandlung . In 1874 the publishing house of Fr. Hurter in Schaffhausen was added, in 1875 the publishing house of Karl Kollmann in Augsburg and in 1877 the publishing house of C. Sartorius in Vienna .

At the 50th anniversary of the GJ Manz company in Regensburg in 1880, the publisher's directory comprised 6,390 articles with 7,666 volumes. 200 people were employed in the publishing house and printer, including 80 hand setters . In 1885 the company had nine steam-powered high - speed presses , a stereotype foundry and a bookbindery .

In 1886 it was converted into a stock corporation with the new name Verlagsanstalt vorm. GJ Manz, book and art printing A.-G .

Georg Joseph Manz commented on the first publication of his publishing house with the title Pray and Work by Riedhofer: "The first grip was good, because God's blessing rested on my more distant undertakings."

Political activities in Regensburg

Manz was a supporter of the conservative Catholic Bavarian Patriot Party, which was founded in 1689 and called itself the Bavarian Center Party from 1887. In Regensburg, Manz and the publisher Friedrich Pustet conducted their political disputes with the Protestant conservative-liberal mayors Gottlieb von Thon-Dittmer and Oskar von Stobäus , who were elected in Regensburg, and the Protestant community representatives, to a large extent from a denominational point of view. Manz proclaimed an indissoluble connection between liberalism and Protestantism and described the liberalism practiced by the political majority in Regensburg as alienated from God and misunderstood. He postulated that this liberalism mocked and insulted that which is venerable for Catholics and claimed that Catholic thinking and feeling had nothing to hope for from false liberalism. Manz castigated the liberal supremacy that ruled Regensburg from 1869 to 1912 as a snub for the Catholic part of the population, which at that time made up 80% of the population, but was mostly unable to obtain citizenship because of insufficient income. He countered the objection that a considerable number of Catholics were represented in the parish bodies by stating that these people could not represent Catholic interests because they were not representatives of the Catholic Center Party.

As early as March 1840, Manz had become known in Regensburg through an extensive petition to King Ludwig I , in which he explained to the king that two thirds of the Catholic population in Regensburg were excluded from community life because they had no real estate and no assets. The few Catholics elected by Protestants do not have the confidence of the Catholic residents and do not have enough intelligence to make decisions independently of the Protestant magistrate. This situation in Regensburg can be traced back to the 200-year oppression of the Catholics.

From 1869 Manz and Pustet granted interest-free loans to poor Catholic people, who could then buy citizenship and thus the right to vote in local councils. Manz himself was a municipal representative from 1845 to 1854 and from 1863 to 1878. In 1850, together with Pustet, he founded a support fund for needy and distressed book printers.

Awards

• Silver Medal of Merit of Pope Gregory XVI.
• Order of knights of St. Gregory and Sylvester from Pope Pius IX.
• Order of Charles III.
• Bavarian Order of Merit of St. Michael , II class
• Large gold medal of Emperor Franz Joseph with the motto viribus unitis
• Medal of the industrial and commercial exhibition in Munich
• Medal of the world exhibition in Vienna
• Medal of the World Exhibition in Paris
• Medal of the Exhibition of Religious Art in Rome

literature

• Wilhelm Eggerer: Manz 1830–1980. Festschrift for the 150th anniversary. Munich / Dillingen on the Danube 1980.
• Memorial sheets by GJ Manz , 2 volumes, Regensburg 1880 and 1892.
• Annemarie Meiner: GJ Manz. Person and work 1830-1955 , Munich / Dillingen 1957.
• Rudolf Schmidt : German bookseller. German book printer. Volume 4, Berlin / Eberswalde 1907, pp. 654-658.
• Karl Friedrich Pfau :  Manz, Georg Josef . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 52, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1906, p. 186 f.

Individual evidence

1. ^ ^{A b c} Karl Bauer: Regensburg Art, Culture and Everyday History . 6th edition. MZ-Buchverlag in H. Gietl Verlag & Publication Service GmbH, Regenstauf 2014, ISBN 978-3-86646-300-4 , p. 110 .
2. ↑ Dieter Albrecht: Regensburg im Wandel, studies on the history of the city in the 19th and 20th centuries . In: Museums and Archives of the City of Regensburg (Hrsg.): Studies and sources on the history of Regensburg . tape 2 . Mittelbayerische Verlags-Gesellschaft mbH, Regensburg 1984, ISBN 3-921114-11-X , p. 21, 33, 70, 81, 85 f .