Helga Weyhe

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Helga Weyhe (2016)

Helga Weyhe (born December 11, 1922 in Salzwedel ; † January 4, 2021 there ) was a German bookseller . She ran the Weyhe bookstore in Salzwedel from 1965 until her death and was considered the oldest active bookseller in Germany.

Life

Helga Weyhe was born on December 11, 1922 in her parents' house, which also housed the bookstore founded in 1840, at Altperverstrasse 11 in Salzwedel. After graduating from the Salzwedeler Lyceum in 1941, she was obliged to do the Reich Labor Service in Upper Silesia . She then enrolled at the University of Breslau , began studying German and history and continued her education at the Albertus University in Königsberg and in Vienna . However, she could not finish her studies.

After the end of the war , she got into her father's business and worked as a bookseller first in the Soviet occupation zone and from 1949 in the GDR , where she received the business license in 1965 and took over the bookstore. Her grandfather Heinrich Weyhe (* 1846) bought the bookstore shortly after the end of the Franco-Prussian War in 1871 and then passed it on to his son, Walter Weyhe. Her great-great-grandmother was the godmother of Jenny von Westphalen , also from Salzwedel , who later became the wife of Karl Marx .

In 1985 she was allowed to travel abroad and spent several months in Rome and New York City , where her uncle Erhard Weyhe had founded an art bookstore and the Weyhe Gallery at 794 Lexington Avenue . She was in Rome for the first time after the end of the war in the early 1950s, after her father had also traveled to Italy for a long time . Her dream of holding a reading with Paul Auster in her small shop did not come true.

On January 4, 2021, she was found dead in her apartment. Since Weyhe had no descendants, a family business that had been run by only three generations for 150 years goes out. On January 7th, the police confirmed a break-in into Weyhe's residential and commercial building after her death.

Honors

Helga Weyhe had been an honorary citizen of the Hanseatic city of Salzwedel since her 90th birthday in December 2012 . In August 2017 she was honored for her life's work with the Deutscher Buchhandlungspreis (special prize for long-standing and outstanding services to the German book trade).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Christoph D. Richter: Germany's oldest bookseller Helga Weyhe - bookstore is threatened with closure after 177 years. In: Deutschlandfunk-Kultur broadcast “Country Report”. November 15, 2017, accessed January 6, 2021 .
  2. ^ Dörte Hein: Germany's oldest bookseller: retired? I'm only 90! In: Spiegel Online . December 9, 2012, accessed January 6, 2021 .
  3. ↑ a b c Christoph Richter: Germany's oldest bookseller - advocate of the book tradition. In: Deutschlandfunk broadcast “Germany today”. August 31, 2017, accessed January 6, 2021 .
  4. ↑ Holger Benecke: Hansestadt Salzwedel loses honorary citizen: Germany's oldest bookseller, Helga Weyhe from Salzwedel, is dead. In: AZ-online.de . January 5, 2021, accessed January 6, 2021 .
  5. ↑ Bernd-Volker Brahms: Germany's oldest bookseller: Helga Weyhe from Salzwedel is dead. In: MDR Sachsen-Anhalt . January 5, 2021, accessed January 5, 2021 .
  6. ↑ Burglary in the Weyhe store. In: mz Saxony-Anhalt. Retrieved January 7, 2021 .
  7. ↑ Helga Weyhe is an honorary citizen of the city of Salzwedel. In: Volksstimme.de . December 11, 2012, accessed January 6, 2021 .
personal data
SURNAME Weyhe, Helga
SHORT DESCRIPTION German bookseller
DATE OF BIRTH December 11, 1922
PLACE OF BIRTH Salzwedel
DATE OF DEATH January 4, 2021
Place of death Salzwedel