Holle publishing house

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The Holle Verlag in Baden-Baden was founded in 1933 in Berlin and existed until 1988. The publisher was Gérard Du Ry van Beest Holle from the Netherlands (born June 27, 1907 in The Hague , † January 10, 1986 in Karlsruhe ). His focus was initially on fiction and from the 1950s on encyclopedias and general presentations, particularly on history and art history.

From 1933 to 1944 the publishing house was based in Berlin, from 1949 to 1951 near Frankfurt am Main , from 1952 to 1954/55 in Darmstadt and then in Baden-Baden.

Du Ry van Beest Holle had studied law in Leiden, but fell out with the strictly Catholic family in The Hague after marrying a Protestant and had moved to Berlin, where he worked with Hugo Zehder , formerly editor of the Neue Schaubühne , in autumn 1933 Co-partner and managing director founded Holle Verlag. Since Zehder was not wanted by the National Socialists, he resigned at their pressure in 1936. In the 1930s, Holle published mainly homeland and family novels , but also foreign translations, including from Dutch, such as Willy Corsari (WA Douwes-Schmidt, she published in the publishing house under the name Ly Corsari), with her doctor novel Der Mann ohne Uniform also caused conflicts with the National Socialists in 1937, since he addressed the question of the ethical justification of euthanasia, and Madelon Székely-Lulofs , whose plantation novel Gummi reached a circulation of over 100,000 in 1934, Hungary ( Sandor Marai ) and Scandinavia ( Aleksis Kivi , Albin Widén and others) and Estonia ( Anton Hansen Tammsaare ). Among the German authors were Klaus-Erich Boerner , whose companion my summer by the end of the war had a circulation of 100,000, Paul Brock , Nikolaus Schwarzkopf , Walter von Molo , Hans Franck , Paul Gurk and others. a. He also published a series in the style of the island library, for example with Sappho poems and Russian fairy tales ( Die kleine Holle books ). However, he did not publish any outspoken party literature to Altenhein.

In 1941 he founded a branch in The Hague (as early as the 1930s he worked a lot with Dutch printers and publishers), where he printed translations under license from Hoffmann and Campe and Reclam , among other things . He was active in professional associations in the occupied Netherlands. After the war, his Dutch citizenship was revoked for ten years and he was banned from practicing the Netherlands for five years (1946–1951). The family went to France during this time.

In 2017 a family chronicle was published in the Netherlands under the title 'Jalna'. The author was the publisher's son. The family chronicle was only possible because of the documents in the Dutch "Nationaal Archief". The summary in the German language is:

Because of his many years of publishing activity in Berlin, my father, the publisher G. Du Ry van Beest Holle, was suspected of collaborating with the National Socialists after the war in the Netherlands. He and his wife were imprisoned for many months and his property was placed under the Dutch administration (Nederlands Beheersinstituut = NBI). Due to anonymous slander, my parents feared a lawsuit the outcome of which was too uncertain for them. They went into exile in France with their three children and lived there in poverty for three years. Their youngest daughter was born there in 1947. After the forced administration was lifted on June 14, 1949, they left their exile and returned to the Netherlands. This four year administration of the NBI had devastating consequences. Their fortune was completely run down, the couple only had debts.

On December 28, 1949, the NBI came to the conclusion that the suspicion against the publisher G. Du Ry van Beest Holle could not be substantiated. Literally it said:  Temeer wij deze gang van zaken, aangezien sedert dien niet gebleken is, dat enige tegen U rezen verdenking founded was. Freely translated:  We regret this happening all the more because it has not been proven since then that any suspicion against you was justified.

In March of the same year, the NBI testified that Holle Verlag “ obviously had not published any Nazi propaganda ”, but the publisher's ban was not lifted. In the Netherlands he was not allowed to start his publishing house again until 1951. He had no choice but to move to Germany with his family. He started again in Darmstadt and moved to Baden-Baden in 1954.

Despite the grave errors of the administration, no claims for damages were recognized by the publisher. The NBI had been given legal immunity early on. Finally, the publisher was charged for the administrative costs.

Because he was banned from practicing his profession after 1949, he was unable to re-establish his publishing house in the Netherlands. He was only able to start again from 1949 in Germany, first in Frankfurt, where he brought out a thin print edition of the works of Georg Christoph Lichtenberg , with old publishing titles, first art volumes (from England, with licenses from the Netherlands), a Shakespeare edition of Hans Rothe , but also new translations of foreign literature similar to rororo (for example Sartre , Marguerite Duras , also some Dutch). Some newer German authors like Burkhard Nadolny were among them. In 1952 he moved to Darmstadt, where he followed Werner Stichnote (1908-1994), whom he still knew from Berlin and Potsdam and became a partner and also had his own publishing house ( Das Goldene Vlies ). He had moved from Potsdam (where he had problems as a publisher with the Soviet occupation authorities) first to West Berlin and then to Darmstadt, where Werner Jahn founded a new publishing district. In 1954, Stichnote and Holle achieved a great coup when they acquired the bankrupt Alfons Bürger Verlag , which had gone bankrupt with an early attempt at a paperback series like rororo. The Ullstein publishing house was interested in the remains and Holle and Stichnote could resell to this, with Stichnote left the Holle Publishing and later rose at Ullstein in the management. In 1953, Han Suyin's novel All Glory on Earth , also known as a film at the time, was a great success for the publisher.

Via the Swiss publisher Helmut Kossodo (1915–1994), from whom he took over a Robert Walser edition for his publishing house, among other things , Holle founded an offshoot in Geneva that gave the publisher an international look.

The Holle Verlag published the series Kunst der Welt from 1959 to 1971 and several series on world history:

  • Comparative world history . Published by Hans H. Hofstätter , Hannes Pixa, 16 volumes, 1962 to 1967.
  • Great world and cultural history . 18 volumes and volume "today". Editor Gerard Du Ry van Beest Holle. With the collaboration of Hans H. Hofstätter u. a., 1970 to 1976.
  • Holle The image of humanity . 9 volumes and additional volume, 1976/77 (special edition of world and cultural history).
  • Holle Universalgeschichte , publisher Uwe Paschke 1976 (licensed edition in 2 volumes, Salzburg: Andreas 1978 and 1996 a licensed edition by Weltbild Verlag.)
  • Holle encyclopedia of world history . 2 volumes, editor Uwe Paschke, 1980, 1986.
  • From 1967 Art in Pictures - The New Way to Understand World Art. 18 volumes.
  • Other series were: Holle Art Library , Past Cultures

From 1971 to 1973 Holle's art history (editor Gérard Du Ry van Beest Holle) appeared in three volumes. There are also licensed editions of Holle Kunstgeschichte at Parkland (1975, Parkland Art History ). Other publications were Holle's Animal Encyclopedia (from 1972, 6 volumes), a translation of Elsevier's Animal Encyclopedia .

Gérard Du Ry van Beest Holle was often the editor of the series and also a partner of Holle & Co. International Art Publishers in Voorburg . One of the authors was his nephew, the art historian Carel Jan Du Ry van Beest Holle (1930–2013), full-time museum director in Rotterdam (in Het Schielandshuis ).

In the 1970s, when trying to sell the art volumes directly, the publisher ran into financial problems and afterwards the publisher lived mainly from the exploitation of secondary rights - the volumes (increasingly outdated, but well-stocked) continued to be published in book clubs and under license. Even after the publishing house ended in 1988, the Holle picture archive in Baden-Baden existed for further exploitation of picture rights.

The art historian Hans H. Hofstätter was chief editor from 1961 to 1972 . Then Uwe Paschke was chief editor in the 1970s.

literature

  • Hans Altenhein: The Holle publishing house. A search for traces between 1933 and 1988. In: Gutenberg-Jahrbuch. Volume 88, 2013, pp. 229–245.
  • Olav Du Ry van Beest Holle: Jalna. My zoektocht en leven. ISBN 978-90-827137-0-1 Not available in bookshops. One copy is in the 'Koninklijke Bibliotheek' in The Hague. See: www.almansgeest.nl/deutsche-zammlungung