Hans von Weber

Hans von Weber (born April 22, 1872 in Dresden , † April 22, 1924 in Munich ) was a German publisher and art patron . He belonged to the group of literary individual publishers and had a decisive influence on German book art .

life and work

Parental home and upbringing

Hans von Weber came from a Saxon civil servant family; his great-grandfather, Consistorial President Karl Gottlieb von Weber created the Saxon canon law and was raised to the nobility for it; his grandfather was a cousin of Theodor Körner ; there was no family relationship with the composer Carl Maria von Weber . After completing his schooling at the Fürstenschule St. Afra and the grammar school Dresden Neustadt , he studied without a degree in Lausanne, Freiburg, Heidelberg and Leipzig and joined various artistic circles. In 1898 he moved to Munich and moved into a house in Nymphenburg. He married Anna Jäger on March 29, 1898, and his son Wolfgang was born on August 10, 1900. The poet and journalist Charlotte von Weber, who appeared as the author of the Hans von Weber publishing house in the 1920s, was his daughter-in-law.

Hans von Weber was considered an extremely wealthy bohemian and lived a corresponding life within the Schwabing art scene. He did not belong to any of the well-known artists' associations, but had numerous contacts with well-known artists such as Richard Dehmel , Eduard Graf von Keyserling or through his cousin Kurt Martens to the young writer Thomas Mann . At the turn of the century he acted as a patron and businessman. He was considered to be the discoverer of Alfred Kubin , whose first art portfolio he published between 1901 and 1903. Kubin later set him a literary monument in his novel The Other Side (1909).

The Hyperion publishing house

In 1905 Hans von Weber lost a large part of his fortune in speculation on the stock market. With the remaining funds, he founded Hyperion Verlag Hans von Weber on September 22, 1906 . Its book program was primarily dedicated to young international authors. The first German works by André Gide and Gilbert Keith Chesterton were published by Hans von Weber. From 1908 to 1910 he created the Hyperion magazine for his publishing house, an important, albeit not financially successful, figurehead. Hyperion followed the tradition of the art and literary magazines Jugend , Pan and Die Insel . As a pioneer of a new generation of artists, the magazine published texts by Hugo von Hofmannsthal , Franz Kafka , Heinrich Mann , Rainer Maria Rilke and Robert Musil, among others . There were also illustrations of the works of art by Aristide Maillol , Camille Pissarro , Auguste Rodin , Hans von Marées and others. After the third year, the Hyperion was discontinued in 1910. The reason for this was probably a falling out between Weber and his editor Franz Blei .

On July 2, 1909, Hans von Weber founded the Tempel-Verlag together with the publishers Eugen Diederichs , Samuel Fischer and Julius Zeitler , the type founder Georg Hartmann and the printer and publisher Carl Ernst Poeschel. The aim of the publishing association was to publish German classics. The idea for the joint project came up in 1906 when both Dietrichs and Fischer wanted to commission Poeschel & Trepte to print their Goethe editions. Poeschel convinced them to jointly publish an aesthetically and technically high-quality classic series.

Also from 1909 Weber changed his publishing focus. In addition to modern fiction, there were now bibliophile series works: from 1909 the Hundertdrucke , from 1912 the Hyperiondrucke, which were continued under the name Dreiangeldrucke after the sale of Hyperion Verlag in 1913, as well as the Hundred Fifty Prints published together with S. Fischer. This made the publishing house one of the pioneers of the German book art movement , which promoted the bibliophile, high-quality book. The Hundred Prints in particular were a great success. By 1929, well after the publisher's death, 44 volumes were published in small editions with a limited edition of 100 copies, signed and usually particularly high-quality bound special edition. In terms of content, they were based on the classic canon of the educated citizen: Lessing, Goethe, Schiller, Wieland, Heine, and so on. Some of the editions were illustrated, Max Unold , Emil Preetorius , Bruno Goldschmitt , Franz Kolbrand and Hans Meid were among the artists.

The row works were one mainstay that ensured the continuation of the publishing house. The second was the magazine Der Zwiebelfisch , which, originally intended only as a marketing measure, appeared between 1909 and 1948 in a total of 25 volumes. The first three issues name Franz Blei as the editor, from 1910 Hans von Weber was personally responsible for the content. In terms of content, a mixture of (book) art and satirical magazines, the onion fish met the public's taste exactly. It was also the first German magazine to deal in detail with the typographical design of books.

The publishing house Hans von Weber

In 1913 Hans von Weber sold Hyperionverlag including all rights to the works in editions of over 1000 copies to Kurt Wolff and Dr. Julius Schröder . Ernst Rowohlt took over the management and the place of publication was Berlin. Weber also gave up his shares in Tempel-Verlag and other publishers in 1914. He now operated under his own name in Munich as "Hans von Weber, Verlag, Munich" and from then on concentrated on his luxury publications and on the publication of onion fish . The publishing house was able to assert itself during the difficult war and post-war years of the First World War ; but in 1920 Hans von Weber fell ill with a cardiovascular disease with progressive vascular calcification. He withdrew more and more from public life and spent a large part of his time in the solitude of the Tölzer Mountains; on April 20, 1924, Hans von Weber suddenly developed a high fever, then passed out and died on April 22, his 52nd birthday. The publishing house was initially continued by his son Wolfgang von Weber and finally sold in 1928 to the former publishing secretary Anna Roith, who tried a fresh start in Austria. Publishing activities were stopped in the early 30s. Under the direction of Anna Roith, three more issues of the magazine Zwiebelfisch appeared from 1946 to 1948 as well as a few book editions until 1950, then the Hans von Weber Verlag finally ceased its activities.

literature

• Jürgen Eyssen: Book Art in Germany. From Art Nouveau to the painter's book . Hanover 1980
• Georg Kurt Schauer [ed.]: German book art 1890–1960 , Hamburg 1963
• Julius Rodenberg: German presses. A bibliography . Zurich, Vienna, Leipzig 1925
• W. Zils-Munich [ed.]: Intellectual and artistic Munich in autobiographies . Munich 1913
• Onion fish , XVII. Volume 3/4 (Hans von Weber memorial booklet). Munich 1924
• Ralph Berger: Hans von Weber - A publisher from Munich . Master's thesis, Erlangen 1993 (not published)

Web links

• Literature by and about Hans von Weber in the catalog of the German National Library
• Biographical information on H. v. Weber at "Wortwelle"
• The estate in the Bavarian State Library