Henry Goverts

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Wilhelm Henry Goverts (born May 28, 1892 in Hamburg , † May 30, 1988 in Vaduz , Liechtenstein ) was a German publisher .

Life

Goverts came from a wealthy Hamburg merchant family, whose male members mostly worked as insurance brokers . In 1912 he passed his Abitur at the Lichterfelder Realgymnasium in Berlin. After training as a businessman in a Hamburg export and import company, he did his military service as a one-year volunteer . During this time the First World War broke out, during which Goverts served as adjutant in Berlin from December 1916 . During the November Revolution of 1918, Goverts was a member of a workers 'and soldiers' council for a short time . After that he was an assistant director with Max Reinhardt .

Goverts studied sociology at Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg from 1919 , where he found a circle of friends that included Carl Zuckmayer , Carlo Mierendorff and Theodor Haubach . In 1924 Goverts received his doctorate on the popular education program of John Ruskin under Alfred Weber . He then worked for Weber as his assistant.

In 1927 Goverts gave lectures at the University of Hamburg on Old and New England in Culture and Art. As a result of these lecturing activities, he was able to teach at the Hamburg Adult Education Center and work as a journalist. In Hamburg he joined the club on October 3rd - a social liberal association whose members were mostly younger SPD and DDP politicians.

After the Nazis came to power in 1933, Goverts lost his teaching and journalistic activities because of his political stance. In the spring of 1934 Henry Goverts and Eugen Claassen began planning in Frankfurt am Main to found their own publishing house. There the two publishers founded the H. Goverts Verlag in December 1934, with its headquarters in Hamburg. The first book published in October 1935 was the novel Anna Linde by Editha Klipstein . The publishers avoided publishing National Socialist literature . Rather, they focused on novels, poetry, humanities and science. Above all, the publishing house promoted young authors such as Emil Barth , Horst Lange , Otto Karsten, Gerhard Hering and HG Rexroth. This program also showed the signet: A naked youth carries an amphora .

The publisher also published translations of Italian and American literature. A particular success in 1937 was the German edition of Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind , translated by Martin Beheim-Schwarzbach . In 1938, Herman Melville's novel Moby Dick was published in German.

Goverts kept in touch with emigrated writers, such as his Heidelberg friend Carl Zuckmayer, and found a position as a lecturer for the dismissed rector of the Lichtwark School Heinrich Landahl in his publishing house . Both knew each other from the club on October 3rd.

In March 1945 Goverts had to flee to Vaduz (Liechtenstein), where his mother lived, because of his connections to the Kreisau District resistance group . There he stayed even after the end of the Second World War .

After the war, Goverts and his partners received a license from the British occupying forces to re-establish the publishing house under the name Claassen & Goverts. In 1947 Goverts separated from this publishing house, which Eugen Claassen now continued under the name Claassen-Verlag .

Cushion stone for Henry Goverts on the family grave at Ohlsdorf cemetery

Goverts received the writer Wolfgang Borchert at the Swiss border when he wanted to travel by train from Hamburg on September 18, 1947 to Davos to relax . Borchert was already seriously ill, was admitted to the St. Clara Hospital in Basel , continued to write and died there two months later.

Together with Alfred Scherz from the Swiss Scherz Verlag , Goverts founded the Scherz & Goverts Verlag GmbH branch in Stuttgart in 1950 . After the death of Alfred Scherz, Rudolf Streit-Scherz took over the publishing house. 1957 followed Govert's separation from Scherz and the establishment of Henry Goverts Verlag , which he led until 1964. The Holtzbrinck Group then took over the publishing house . Published by Goverts Verlag a. a. Wolfgang Koeppen , Richard Gerlach , Editha Klipstein , Horst Lange and Erich Kuby .

Goverts was a founding member of the Liechtenstein PEN Club .

Henry Goverts was buried in the Goverts family grave , Ohlsdorfer Friedhof in Hamburg, grid square V24 ( Waldstrasse southeast of Nordteich ).

Publications

  • Hendrik Goverts: The way. Early poems. The attic, Darmstadt 1923
  • Henry Goverts (Ed.): The Student Abroad. Heidelberg reports on contemporary university life. Hörning, Heidelberg 1930.

literature

  • Dietrich Schaefer (ed.): Encounter with Henry Goverts. On his 80th birthday presented by his friends on May 28, 1972. Goverts Krüger Stahlberg Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1972
  • Dietrich Schaefer (ed.): Henry Goverts on his 90th birthday. A selection of his letters from 1937–1955. Studio print, Nürtingen-Raidwangen 1982
  • Anne-Margret Wallrath-Janssen. The publishing house H. Goverts in the Third Reich. Dissertation University of Göttingen 1999. Saur, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-598-24904-4 Google Books.
  • Bernhard Zeller (Ed.) Eugen Claassen. From the work of a publisher. With a bibliography by the publishers H. Goverts, Claassen & Goverts, Claassen 1935–1966. Catalog for the exhibition from June to August 1981 in the Schiller National Museum in Marbach, edited by Reinhard Tgahrt, Huguette Herrmann, Gudrun Karlewski, Monika Waldmüller. Marbacher Magazin 19/1981
  • Carl Zuckmayer: Secret report . Deutscher Taschenbuch-Verlag, Munich 2004, ISBN 3423131896 , bibliography, pp. 481–509.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hamburg Gender Book , Volume 4, DGB Volume 23; Year 1913, p. 129.
  2. ^ Munzinger: biography of Henry Govert
  3. ↑ a b c d Dietrich Schaefer (ed.): Encounter with Henry Goverts. On his 80th birthday presented by the friends on May 28, 1972. Goverts Krüger Stahlberg Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1972, p. 65 f.
  4. ^ Christof Brauers: The FDP in Hamburg 1945 to 1953. P. 70.
  5. ^ Hilde Claassen: Letter from May 1972. In: Dietrich Schaefer (Ed.): Encounter with Henry Goverts. On his 80th birthday presented by the friends on May 28, 1972. Goverts Krüger Stahlberg Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1972, pp. 11-15.
  6. ^ Dietrich Schaefer (ed.): Encounter with Henry Goverts. On his 80th birthday presented by his friends on May 28, 1972. Goverts Krüger Stahlberg Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1972, p. 12.
  7. ^ Christof Brauers: The FDP in Hamburg 1945 to 1953. P. 73.
  8. ↑ a b c Publisher Henry Goverts has died. In: Hamburger Abendblatt from June 3, 1988.
  9. ^ Curt Vinz, Günter Olzog (ed.): Documentation of German-language publishers. 8th edition. Günter Olzog Verlag, Munich / Vienna 1983, p. 86 f.
  10. ^ Curt Vinz, Günter Olzog (ed.): Documentation of German-language publishers. 8th edition. Günter Olzog Verlag, Munich / Vienna 1983, p. 335 f.
  11. ↑ Celebrity Graves

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Goverts, Henry
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Goverts, Wilhelm Henry
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German publisher and founder of the publishing house
DATE OF BIRTH May 28, 1892
PLACE OF BIRTH Hamburg
DATE OF DEATH May 30, 1988
Place of death Vaduz , Liechtenstein