Heinrich Becker (librarian)

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Heinrich Becker (born May 25, 1891 in Berlin , † July 28, 1971 in Leipzig ) was a German librarian and from 1946 to 1960 head of the Bibliographisches Institut publishing house in Leipzig.

Life

1910, the son of a Prussian state official Heinrich Becker put Berlin-Steglitz , the High School and studied until 1914 not finish the story , philosophy , German literature and theology at the universities of Berlin and Marburg . From 1903 to 1914 he was active in the Wandervogel movement and the German Christian Student Association. In 1914 Becker volunteered and fought as a lieutenant in the First World War . In 1916 he was taken prisoner by the French, from which he was released in 1920.

From 1920 to 1924 Becker was an employee of the pedagogical department of the German League for the League of Nations and the German section in the World Association for the Renewal of Education and employee of the magazine Das Werdende Zeitalter . In 1923 he joined the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). During this time, Becker was close to the Quakers and worked from 1924 to 1926 alongside his work as a freelance publisher at Quäker Verlag in Berlin-Lübars . In 1925 he was managing director of the German Annual Assembly , the umbrella organization of the German Quakers.

From 1926 to 1930 Becker was first an employee and then managing director of the German Central Office for Popular Libraries in Leipzig. From 1930 to 1932 Becker was Ministerialrat for Library and Elementary Schools in the Prussian Ministry for Science, Art and Public Education . After the National Socialists came to power , Becker was released in February 1933. Until 1936 he stayed in rural Bad Freienwalde (Oder) and completed a seminar abroad at the Quaker College Woodbrooke in Great Britain .

From 1936 to 1945 Becker worked as a catalog processor and head of the publishing department at the Otto Harrassowitz publishing house in Leipzig. In September 1939 Becker broke with the Quakers for unknown reasons and resigned from the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) in 1941 .

From the end of the war until 1946, Becker was acting head of the city library and the city book halls in Leipzig and head of the book and library department in the city's public education office. Until 1952 he contributed to the list of Nazi literature to be sorted out and politically undesirable literature from government offices and public libraries.

In 1946 Becker became a member of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED). From 1946 to 1960 he was managing director, later director of the VEB Bibliographisches Institut Leipzig and from 1956 also director of VEB Verlag Enzyklopädie . Here he worked on the publication of new encyclopedias as well as multi-volume Goethe , Schiller and Lessing editions.

From 1946 to 1960 Becker was also deputy chairman and from 1948, as successor to Ernst Reclam , the first head of the Booksellers Association of the German Booksellers in Leipzig . In 1960 Becker retired.

Honors

Publications

  • Concise dictionary of the German popular education system . Wroclaw 1932.
  • Ballad by Johnie Cock . Leipzig 1936.
  • Between delusion and truth, autobiography . Berlin 1972.

literature

  • H.Otto: Quaker of the beginning: The memory of Heinrich Becker In: The Quaker. Monthly magazine of the German friends XLVII . 1973.
  • G. Faust: Heinrich Becker's autobiography "Between Delusion and Truth". In: Quakers. Journal of the German Friends LVII . 2003.
  • Bernd-Rainer Barth :  Becker, Heinrich . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 1. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Berliner Zeitung , June 16, 1961, p. 2
personal data
SURNAME Becker, Heinrich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German librarian
DATE OF BIRTH May 25, 1891
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH July 28, 1971
Place of death Leipzig