Hermann Herder (publisher, 1926)

Hermann Herder (center) with Archbishop Oskar Saier (right) in Freiburg, 1981

Hermann Joseph Romano Herder-Dorneich , or Hermann Herder for short , (born January 19, 1926 in Rome , † November 12, 2011 in Freiburg im Breisgau ) was a German publisher . From 1963 to 1999 he was the fifth generation head of Herder-Verlag , the largest German publisher for Catholic theology and religion .

Life

Hermann Herder-Dorneich was born in Rome in 1926 as the eldest son of the publisher Theophil Herder-Dorneich and his wife Elisabeth, b. Herder, born. He was drafted into the Wehrmacht shortly before the end of the war and, after completing an officer course , experienced the end of the war in the Cuxhaven area .

First he began to study art history . After studying law , he was in 1952 with a thesis on publisher and copyright in Spanish-speaking countries doctorate . From 1953 to 1955 Herder-Dorneich completed an apprenticeship as a bookseller in Barcelona . Then he volunteered in a bank and a printing company . In 1957 Herder-Dorneich joined the Herder publishing house, which had been founded in Meersburg more than 150 years earlier . In 1963 Hermann Herder-Dorneich was entrusted with the management of the Catholic publishing house by the owner family. Hermann Herder-Dorneich has officially been using the name Hermann Herder since 1981 . At the end of the 1990s he withdrew from the publishing business. Hermann Herder had been married since 1960 and had four children.

Act as an entrepreneur

As the publishing director, Herder ensured the continuation of the more than 100-year-old encyclopedic work of the publisher with revised editions of the Lexicon for Theology and Church , the State Lexicon and other specialist lexicons in the fields of education ( lexicon of education in three volumes), art , music and Biology . Herder's publishing work remained centered on the religious and theological program. He also considered authors with new theological approaches, which sometimes brought him into conflict with the Catholic Church.

At the beginning of the 1990s he acquired the theological publishing house Crossroad in New York, invested in the renovation and modernization of the information technology of the Freiburg publishing house and the new construction of the publishing house's own printing company "Freiburger Graphische Betriebe". As a result, the company came under economic pressure. As part of a social plan, jobs were cut and Herder gradually withdrew from the book trade. Large parts of the real estate holdings and various company holdings - including the Badischer Verlag in Freiburg - were sold. 1997 Herder takes over the publishing house Josef Knecht / Carolusdruckerei in Frankfurt am Main. In 2000, Hermann Herder finally hands over the publishing business to three of his children - the sixth generation of publishers - Gwendolin Herder, Raimund Herder and the current managing director of Herder Manuel Herder (* 1966).

Hermann Herder's entrepreneurial skills can be viewed critically. As a result, an early restructuring of the company at the end of the 1980s might have been more advisable than the continued expansion and investment strategy, especially since the investments also made the Hermann Herders siblings as co-partners and, last but not least, the employees affected by the downsizing. In 1997, all of Hermann Herders' siblings left the group of shareholders after a legal dispute about securing investments.

Offices and Awards

From 1965 on, Hermann Herder was treasurer of the Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels and for a number of years chairman of the Association of the German Book Trade. Hermann Herder was a member of the Board of Trustees of the Eugen Biser Foundation .

Hermann Herder was invested in the Order of the Knights of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem on April 29, 1956 in Neuburg ; even his father Theophil Herder-Dorneich was a grave knight. Hermann Herder was President of the Southwest German Province of the Grave Knights. He was a member of the Association of Catholic Entrepreneurs (BKU) since 1958. In 1984 he was awarded the university medal in silver for his long-term association with the University of Freiburg . In 1986 he received the Medal of Merit of the State of Baden-Württemberg and in 2002 the Federal Cross of Merit .

literature

• Hermann Herder (Ed.): 185 years of Herder . Herder, Freiburg 1986
• Hermann Herder: Ferryman between the banks: The publisher in conversation with Michael Albus . Herder, Freiburg 2005 ISBN 3-451-29080-4
• Karl-Theo Humbach (Red.): Der Verlag Herder: 1801–2001; chronological outline of its history with synchronopses on intellectual and world events . Herder, Freiburg 2001 ISBN 3-451-20550-5
• "Shield of Achilles". Encounters with the publisher Hermann Herder. Edited by Manuel Herder. Herder, Freiburg undated [2013]

Web links

• Literature by and about Hermann Herder in the catalog of the German National Library
• Hermann Herder in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely accessible)
• The Herder publishing house mourns Hermann Herder. Retrieved November 14, 2011 .