Jürgen Kreuzhage

Jürgen Kreuzhage (born August 19, 1936 in Berlin ) is a former German publisher . Among other things, he was the publishing director at Econ and Goldmann , and among other things, he was also the chairman of the publishers' committee in the German book trade association and president of the group of book publishers in the European Community .

Life

Jürgen Kreuzhage was born in Berlin in 1936 as the son of the publisher Eduard Günther Kreuzhage. After finishing school, he spent a year as a cabin boy on a merchant steamer. From 1957 to 1958 he did an apprenticeship as a publishing bookseller at his father's chemistry publishing house, which was rebuilt in Weinheim after the bombing in Berlin . In 1959 he worked as a trainee initially at the JF Lehmann'sche Buchhandlung in Munich and at R. Oldenbourg Verlag , before completing a traineeship at the New York Academic Press from 1960 to 1961 .

After his return from the USA, Kreuzhage supported his father at Verlag Chemie from 1962. He first rose to head of department and then to managing director in 1967 , but his father provided him with a scientist for the program and the long-standing finance and personnel manager for this area of ​​responsibility. Jürgen Kreuzhage was responsible for the administrative and publishing work within the triumvirate . With his participation, the Weinheim company developed into a major specialist publisher for scientific books and numerous specialist journals. In 1972 he also took over the management of the Physik Verlag . He demonstrated a flair for cost efficiency by publishing new editions of standard works by other publishers. After Kreuzhage had established a US subsidiary, he achieved great business success in 1978 with the founding of the magazine Spektrum der Wissenschaft , a German-language branch of Scientific American . At the same time he made a lasting breakthrough outside of his company, namely, he was significantly involved in the merger of VG Wissenschaft and VG Wort, which came into force in 1978 . Thanks to his international contacts, he increased the importance of the publishing house through branches in Basel and New York, also internationally.

In addition, he volunteered for the German Book Trade Association. In 1966 he started on the Tax and Publishing Committee, soon afterwards he took part in the tasks of the Committee for German Domestic Trade and became its chairman. Partly in parallel, he was a member (1970–1980) and chairman (1973–1976) of the publishers' committee and also chaired the new media committee between 1970 and 1982. From 1972 he sat on the supervisory board of the Ausstellungs- und Messe-GmbH in Frankfurt am Main and was its chairman for the period from 1979 to 1982. He was also a delegate of the Börsenverein in the International Publishers Union and a member of the Executive Committee. At the end of the 1970s / beginning of the 1980s he was President of the Groupe des Éditeurs de Livres de la Communauté Européenne (GELC; Group of Book Publishers in the European Community), in which the publishers' associations of the individual EC states joined together in 1967 to represent their interests who was able to face the EC authorities competently and effectively in questions of copyright , publishing and competition law .

With a nominal start on January 1, 1981, Kreuzhage moved to Bertelsmann AG in Munich, where he was appointed managing director and member of the executive board, reporting exclusively to board member Ulrich Wechsler . As head of the “strategic book business unit”, his area of ​​responsibility included setting up a new publishing division for information media in the form of books, magazines and non-books . The view should be directed towards other countries, especially towards the USA, where the “new media” area was much more advanced. Innovations should be transferred to Germany, but also direct purchases from publishers should be made, i.e. the establishment on the American market itself should be sought. To do this, he should build up a staff there and be above all managing directors and thus above the company network . In 1984 the board of directors of Bertelsmann AG appointed Kreuzhage first to equal rights and, after the resignation of his predecessor Gert Frederking, to the sole managing director of Goldmann Verlag , whose consolidation he pushed forward by first leading the paperback division on the road to success and from 1987 to divisional manager for fiction - and non-fiction department was promoted, which he was responsible for five major publishing programs. But already towards the end of 1987 Kreuzhage resigned from his position at Bertelsmann, because he considered the simultaneous appointment of Jürgen Kolbe , formerly a Munich cultural department head , to the divisional board as unacceptable. For the time being, he moved back to France with his new partner, the translator Irène Kuhn , then, in the spring of 1989, he followed Robert Maxwell's advertising and worked for his British media group until late summer 1991 as managing director, including for the Berlin printing house Friedrichshain. After another creative break, including a wedding in Provence in 1992, Kreuzhage got the offer to join Econ in Düsseldorf as head of the publishing house . In June 1994 he took up this position. As Econ publisher, Kreuzhage took advantage of a lawsuit to remove all remaining copies of the first edition of the book Feuer in die Herzen by Jutta Ditfurth , in which the author pleaded for an ecological left opposition and that in 1994 in an updated and greatly expanded new edition as an Econ paperback appeared to be crushed. In 1997, before Econ Verlag and List Verlag merged , Kreuhage left the company to live as a pensioner with his wife in Provence.

About Jürgen Kreuzhage's start at Bertelsmann

"With this, the Bertelsmann Group secured one of the best-known and most knowledgeable German specialist publishers, one who has not only made great contributions to the Chemie Verlag and its development, but also has many years of international experience and contacts."

- Hanns Lothar Schütz : Börsenblatt for the German book trade , 1980

Awards

• Golden needle of the Börsenverein for the German book trade

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i j k l} Manfred Beltz Rübelmann, Joachim Spencker: A real entrepreneur. The head of Econ-Verlag, Jürgen Kreuzhage, celebrates his 60th birthday on August 19th. The Weinheim publisher Dr. Manfred Beltz Rübelmann and his Munich colleague Joachim Spencker (he adds to Beltz Rübelmann's lines) congratulate him . In: Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels eV (Hrsg.): Börsenblatt for the German book trade . No. 66/1996 , August 16, 1996, ISSN  0940-0044 , Mitmenschen, p. 10 f .
2. ↑ ^{a b c d e f} Redaktionsbüro Harenberg: Knaurs Prominentenlexikon 1980. The personal data of celebrities from politics, economy, culture and society . With over 400 photos. Droemer Knaur, Munich / Zurich 1979, ISBN 3-426-07604-7 , Kreuzhage, Jürgen, p. 246 .
3. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g} Hanns Lothar Schütz: Personnel of the year: Kreuzhage (Verlag Chemie) to Bertelsmann. The main thrust is the USA. Managing director of the new publishing division for information media abroad . In: Börsenblatt for the German book trade . No. 83/1980 , March 10, 1980, publishers, p. 2497 .
4. ↑ Thomas Keiderling: Spirit, Law and Money. The VG Wort 1958–2008 . Ed .: Promotion and State Aid Fund Science of VG Wort GmbH. De Gruyter Recht, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-89949-450-1 , The merger of VG Wissenschaft and VG Wort 1967–1978, p. 91–98 (emphasis on merits explicitly on p. 98).
5. ↑ ^{a b} Jürgen Kreuzhage . In: Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels eV (Hrsg.): Börsenblatt for the German book trade . No. 66/2001 , August 17, 2001, ISSN  0940-0044 , Menschen, p. 23 .
6. ↑ ^{a b} hp: Quo Vadis, Goldmann . In: Hans Joachim Alpers et al. (Ed.): Science Fiction Times . Science fiction and fantasy magazine. No. 3/84 , March 1984, ISSN  0048-9654 , Nachrichten, pp. 36 ( science-fiction-times.de [PDF; 10.0 MB ; accessed on July 27, 2018]).
7. ↑ Jürgen Kreuzhage from Meerbusch - manager profile. In: moneyhouse.de. Moneyhouse Deutschland AG, accessed on July 27, 2018 . 
8. ↑ ^{a b} Hans-Karl von Kupsch: August 19, 2006: Jürgen Kreuzhage (70). Jürgen Kreuzhage is 70 years old today. The former Goldmann and Econ publisher now lives on his estate in Provence. In: buchmarkt.de. BuchMarkt Verlag K. Werner GmbH, August 28, 2006, accessed on July 27, 2018 . 
9. ↑ Peter Nowak : The enemy is man. (PDF; 292 kB) (No longer available online.) In: vetomat.net. Martin Blumentritt, archived from the original on July 27, 2018 ; Retrieved on July 27, 2018 (from Konkret , 12/1997). Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.