Herbert Grossberger

Herbert Grossberger (born December 10, 1890 in Bodenwies, Austria; † April 28, 1954 in Israel ) was a German poet , publisher and draftsman .

Life

Herbert Grossberger ( Hebrew form of name: Zwi Golan ) came to Heidelberg at a young age . As a school friend, he shared with Hermann Meister and two other classmates the great passion of reading books and the desire to be a publisher himself. A first club newspaper, each consisting of a small handwritten sheet of paper, mainly with sports news from the school competitions, was published in 1904, on Wednesdays and Saturdays, and cost 2 pfennigs or 12 pfennigs for subscription. It was followed by theater news and book directories with a request for book donations and an address where you can borrow them (parents' stationery shop). In 1908, the newspaper Der Pendler , which was still distributed as handwriting, grew into a publishing house that published at least the first printed version of Hermann Meister.

Also since 1908, the two one had cabaret program off the ground, which extended in 1910 to the friends Theo angels and Maxim Schneider, as a small theater The water ass occurred and only a select audience without women was accessible since it about phallic Psalms sung by him were; however, there were no more than six performances. A further three years were saved to found the Saturn publishing house until the new company could get started in 1911. Herbert Großberger had the double function of the poetic contributor and the artistic designer. With the appearance of the second volume of the expressionist newspaper Saturn under the editorship of Großberger, the inclusion of the Austrian contributors Ernst Weiß , Heinrich Nowak and Oscar Baum, who were listed as correspondents, began.

From 1914 to 1918 he took part in the First World War. After his return he finished his studies in art history in 1924 with a doctorate on Carl Philipp Fohr . The dissertation was not printed, but is in the Heidelberg University Library.

Politically, Großberg decided in favor of Zionism after his time as a soldier . In 1921 he acted as the responsible editor of the Free Zionist Papers , edited by Jakob Klatzkin and Nachum Goldmann . The two-month publication was discontinued after four issues in August 1921. The program of the magazine deliberately represented the "standpoint of radical Zionism", which they basically classified as "an ideal and revolutionary movement" (Zum Geleit, No. 1, January 1921, p. 3). Accordingly, the Free Zionist Papers saw themselves as "a free, independent platform [...] for discussing current issues of Jewish and primarily Zionist life" (ibid., P. 1). At a time when the Zionist movement was in a phase of profound upheaval, the magazine was primarily intended to critically evaluate and enliven the "Practice of Zionism from the standpoint of the Zionist idea" (ibid., P. 2). Despite their short publication time, the Free Zionist Papers were able to recruit a number of well-known authors as collaborators, including Hugo Bergmann, Eugen Hoeflich, Israel Zangwill and Arnold Zweig , who focused in their articles on Zionist politics, the colonization of Palestine and the so-called Arab question.

In 1924 he published the newspaper Die Freude with Robert Renato Schmidt . A two-month publication out. In 1925 he became managing director and editor of the newly founded Merlin publishing house. The registration of the publisher's headquarters was for Großberger's private apartment; At the same time, it was also registered as an independent publisher. Books on Shakespeare , medicine, education, philology and, at least for 1926, the magazine Verlagsbedarf - the monthly for book publishers - appeared in the Herbert Großberger publishing house ; but not more than 10 titles in total, too few to survive as a publisher.

From the mid-twenties he was head of the Heidelberg local group of the Zionist Association of Germany, which also promoted land purchase in Palestine and was a member of the Upper Council of the Israelites in Baden. In 1934 his wife gave lectures on Zionist Israel, in 1936 he was banned from practicing his profession, in 1937 his branch was liquidated and he had to sign a consultancy contract for the Aryanized company. In 1939 he emigrated to Tel Aviv , from where, after a two-year stay as an educator, he moved to a children's home in Kiryat Biyalik near Haifa (he had published a book about German health resorts for children in 1930). He dies in Israel in 1954.

Großberger was a member of the Soncino Society - Friends of the Jewish Book .

effect

At the same time as the publication of a small volume of stories, Die Pantöffelchen , Großberger was represented in the Kondor , the most important poetry anthology from the early days of literary expressionism , which in Hiller's memoirs sounds like this: "One year after I joined the war fleet of literature, I (at Richard Weißbach in Heidelberg) released the Kondor, in 1911, `` a rigorous collection of radical stanzas. '' Fourteen collaborators: Blass, Max Brod, Arthur Drey, S. Friedlaender, Herbert Großberger, Hardekopf, Heym, Hiller, Kronfeld, the Lasker students , Rubiner, Schickele, Werfel and Paul Zech. Grossberger is the only one among them whom I have never met personally and whose fate I know nothing about. I recorded his poems at the time, simply because I liked them. "1913 appeared a volume with erotic poems Exhibitions and also in 1913 Die Reise in die Lung , a series of fantastic texts. "Grossberger's text reverses the contemporary myth of the romantic, idyllic Heidelberg into its opposite, in that it forbids the regressive flight into an ideal past as well as the withdrawal from the literary [...]".

Numerous books by Hermann Meister Verlag were furnished by him (the publisher's signature goes back to him too). In some cases the publisher also sold special editions of the woodcuts or linocuts as single sheets, which were also colored.

Fonts

• Miscellaneous. In: Saturn. A monthly , ed. by Hermann Meister and Herbert Großberger; later: Robert Renato Schmidt. Saturn Verlag, Heidelberg 1911–1920. 5 years.
• The slippers. Little stories . Saturn-Verlag, Heidelberg 1912. 16 pp.
• Poems. In: Der Kondor , ed. by Kurt Hiller . Publishing house by Richard Weissbach , Heidelberg 1912, pp. 53–56.
• Exhibitions. Poems. Saturn-Verlag Hermann Meister, Heidelberg 1913. 31 pp.
• The journey to the lungs and other fairy tales . Saturn-Verlag, Heidelberg 1913. 61 pp.
• Carl Philipp Fohr. An outline of his artistic development . Dissertation Heidelberg 1924. 126 pp. (Typewriter).

literature

• Paul Raabe : The authors and books of literary expressionism. Metzler, Stuttgart 1985. p. 174 No. 92.
• Roland Krischke: A master of his field (series: Vergierter Verlage (4): Meister-Verlag). In: Börsenblatt for the German book trade 87/2. November 1999 pp. 16-20
• Roland Krischke: Kurt Wildhagen 1871-1949 - The sage from Heidelberg . HVA, Heidelberg 1997, p. 32f., 197
• Joseph Walk (ed.): Short biographies on the history of the Jews 1918–1945. Edited by the Leo Baeck Institute, Jerusalem. Saur, Munich 1988, ISBN 3-598-10477-4 , pp.?.
• Thomas Hatry: Off the beaten track. Robert R. Schmidt and the Merlin publishing house. Summary of life and bibliography . Heidelberg 2015.

Remarks

1. ↑ Heidelberg University Library W 3162. The results, however, are of Kuno von Hardenberg and Edmund Schilling been evaluated. Kuno von Hardenberg, Edmund Schilling: Karl Philipp Fohr. Life and works of a German romantic painter . Urban-Verlag, Freiburg im Breisgau 1925.
2. ↑ See Weckbecker or GLA KA.
3. ↑ Kurt Hiller: Life against Time . P. 94.
4. ↑ Quoted from Andreas Kramer: Regionalism and Modernism . 2006, p. 171.

Web links

• Literature by and about Herbert Grossberger in the catalog of the German National Library