Hans Preiss (bookseller)

Hans Preiss (born July 4, 1891 in Berlin , † January 1, 1949 in London ) was a German-English bookseller.

Life and activity

Preiss completed his school days at the Luisenstädtischen Realgymnasium in Berlin, where he passed the Abitur at Easter 1910. He then studied law and political science at the Universities of Freiburg im Breisgau and Berlin. On November 23, 1913, he passed the first state examination in law at the Royal Court of Appeal in Berlin. He was then transferred to the Royal District Court in Crossen, where he remained until the outbreak of the First World War .

On August 4, 1914, Preiss joined the Telegraph Battalion No. 5 as a war volunteer and took part in the campaign against Russia from January 1915 to September 1916. A shot that he suffered in 1916 or 1917 on the Romanian border near Kronstadt , where he was deployed as a deputy sergeant in the reserve, led to a lengthy hospital stay, followed by a transfer to the Western Front, where he was reinserted due to the worsening of his wound Hospital came. During this hospital stay, he presented his 1918 by Albert Coenders supervised dissertation on the bankruptcy estate as a party ready with which he this year at the University of Greifswald to Dr. jur. PhD.

From 1920 Preiss was the owner of the legal publishing bookstore founded in 1912 at Dorotheenstrasse 4 in Berlin-Mitte. As an antiquarian, he specialized in literature on the subjects of law, political science, law and economics. In 1924 the shop set up its own department for foreign books. From 1930 he prepared an expansion of his range in the field of aesthetic literature. According to Fritz Homeyer, Preiss, who, in addition to individual customers, mainly supplied universal and university libraries, was “of particular respect and reputation” as an antiquarian.

Due to his rejection of the National Socialist ideology and his (distant) Jewish descent, Preiss moved to Great Britain a few weeks after the National Socialists came to power in the spring of 1933, taking his book storage with him. He settled in London, where, with the help of publisher Stanley Unwin, he joined the established company WJ Bryce, within which he founded the International Bookstore, a bookstore specializing in German-language literature, which is located in 41a Museum Street (the Unwins Verlag) near the British Library.

Customers of Preiss' London bookstore were mainly German-speaking emigrants in Great Britain, whom the International Bookstore supplied with books in their mother tongue. Preiss also exported books on a large scale to the United States, and he also supplied British ministries with material, in particular the War Office, which was founded after the outbreak of World War II.

Preiss' shop soon developed into one of the most important meeting places for German emigrants in London, especially writers, many of whom were personal friends of Preiss. In the 1930s, he organized numerous readings and lecture evenings at which emigrated writers such as Ernst Toller and Stefan Zweig read from their new works in his shop or in larger meeting rooms.

Preiss' store, which the Zentralblatt für Buchhandel described as "important" and "well regarded far beyond the borders of England" after his death, existed at Bury Place until at least 1981.

After the outbreak of war, Preiss was temporarily interned as an enemy national, but was released again in September 1940: at the intercession of Unwin and the Board of Trade, the British Department of Commerce, who certified that he was willing and able to perform an important service in the war in his host country Afford.

In the spring of 1940, the Reich Security Main Office in Berlin placed Preiss on the special wanted list GB compiled by this agency in the event of a successful invasion of Great Britain , a directory of people who should be automatically and primarily arrested by special units of the SS in the event of a German occupation of the country Circumstance that probably resulted from Preiss' exposure as the owner of one of the most important meeting places for the Nazi opponents who fled to Great Britain.

Fonts

• The bankruptcy estate as a party to the litigation, at the same time a contribution to the theory of the party concept. Greifswald 1918 (dissertation).

literature

• Judith Claudia Joos: Trustees for the Public? 2008, p. 174.
• Ernst Fischer : Publishers, booksellers & antiquarians from Germany and Austria who emigrated after 1933. A biographical handbook. Elbingen 2011, ISBN 978-3-9812223-2-6 , p. 247.

Remarks

1. ↑ Date and place of death according to: Gerhard Reincke : Chronik . In: Zentralblatt für Bibliothekswesen 63 (1949) Issue 3/4, pp. 143–149, here p. 148 ( Digisites ).
2. ^ Fritz Homeyer: German Jews as Bibliophiles and Antiquaries , 1966, p. 143.
3. ^ Special wanted list GB (entry on price) .