Gustav Hempel (publisher)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Gustav Hempel (born January 9, 1819 in Waltershausen , † January 13, 1877 in Berlin ) was a German publisher .

Life

Karl Gustav Hempel, the son of a shoemaker, did an apprenticeship as a bookseller in Bautzen and worked for a Berlin publishing house from 1840, where he soon assumed a leading position. In 1846 he founded his own " Verlag Gustav Hempel ". Hempel became prosperous through his reporting in a political sensational trial in 1849, because he was the first to take stenographic minutes of the court sessions and immediately published them in separate sheets.

In his publishing house, Hempel initially specialized in generally understandable natural science books such as Der Erdball und seine Naturwunder und Chemie für Laien by WAF Zimmermann (pseud. For Carl Gottfried Wilhelm Vollmer (1797–1864)) or the Natural Science Public Library by Aaron Bernstein , which is available in numerous Editions appeared and contributed significantly to the popularization of the natural sciences in Germany .

Hempel became famous, however, through an ambitious large-scale project, a collection of editions of German classics, which came out by delivery and at affordable prices and could thus also be acquired by low-income sections of the population: the national library of all German classics , published between 1867 and 1879 , which has a total of 246 volumes brought in over 700 deliveries. In the so-called classic year of 1867, the copyright to those authors who died thirty years ago expired. This also made the works of classical German literature free and could be reprinted by any publisher without hindrance. While Philipp Reclam concentrated on the distribution of classic individual works with his universal library , Hempel devoted himself to editions of works that were to appear as complete as possible and with a critically examined text. “Gustav Hempel's 'National Library of All German Classics', produced with enormous capital expenditure and a remarkable effort to ensure correct texts, and sold at a price of two and a half groschen per delivery, achieved an initial circulation of 150,000 copies. [...] Hempel's company only reached its [...] conclusion in 1879 with 714 deliveries. "

The editions of works by Goethe , Schiller , Herder , Lessing and Christoph Martin Wieland surpassed all previous editions in completeness and philological care and far outshone previous editions of the classic, such as those of Cotta-Verlag . Hempel was able to win excellent philologists and experienced editors for his company. These included Woldemar von Biedermann , Robert Boxberger , Heinrich Düntzer , Salomon Kalischer , Gustav von Loeper (1822–1891), Wendelin von Maltzahn , Carl Christian Redlich (1832–1900) and August Sauer . The program of Hempel's classic editions also included the works of Ewald Christian von Kleist , Johann Gottfried Seume , Heinrich von Kleist , Theodor Körner , ETA Hoffmann and Karl Immermann .

Gustav Hempel died in Berlin at the beginning of 1877, just four days after his 58th birthday, and was buried in the Old St. Matthew Cemetery in Schöneberg . The grave has not been preserved.

After Hempel's death Hugo Bernstein acquired the publishing house and soon afterwards also bought Ferdinand Dümmler Verlag in Berlin. Both companies were combined and continued under the name of Dümmler-Verlag in 1886. “In 1879 Dümmler brought the national library of all German classics to a close . At the same time a new subscription for a national library of classic German poets was issued. In 1900 the national library went to the Gustav Fock Verlag , who passed it on to the Bong publishing house , where it lived on as Bong's classic editions . "

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Reinhard Wittmann: History of the German book trade. 3rd ed. Munich, Beck, 2011, pp. 268–269.
  2. ^ Hans-Jürgen Mende: Lexicon of Berlin tombs . Haude & Spener, Berlin 2006. p. 303.
  3. ↑ Monika Estermann and Stephan Füssel: Fiction publishers. In: History of the German book trade in the 19th and 20th centuries. The Empire 1871–1918. Part 2. Frankfurt / M., 2003, p. 188.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Hempel, Gustav
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Hempel, Karl Gustav
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German publisher
DATE OF BIRTH January 9, 1819
PLACE OF BIRTH Waltershausen , Thuringia
DATE OF DEATH January 13, 1877
Place of death Berlin