Josef Wintjes

Josef "Biby" Wintjes (born March 25, 1947 ; † September 24, 1995 in Bottrop ) was a German alternative magazine publisher and mail order book dealer .

Live and act

While still an employee in the IT department of the Krupp company , he founded the “Literary Information Center” (originally: Nonconformist Literary Information Center ) in Bottrop in 1969 , which he ran until the end of his life - mostly as a one-man business, occasionally supported by his respective wife. The literary information center functioned as a dispatch and distribution point for magazines and books from the alternative and counterculture scene .

In 1974, Wintjes resigned from Krupp and made the literary information center and the publication of his magazines his "full-time task" .

From 1969 to 1990 he published the magazine Ulcus Molle Info monthly, but for the longest time every two months , which saw itself as a newsletter and discussion forum for the literary, spiritual and political counterculture scene. From 1987 onwards, Wintjes also published the bimonthly (later quarterly) magazine Imprint , which was primarily dedicated to promoting young authors and which, after his death, was continued by Bruno Runzheimer and Monika Laakes until the end of 1999. In addition, Wintjes also managed the publication of various book anthologies for the underground and alternative press of the 1970s ( Szene-Reader 1972 ff.).

Wintjes was known or friends with several later established authors. In Jörg Fauser's novel Rohstoff he appears as a bookseller who loves to drink under the name “Aldo Moll”. Among other things, he published original articles in the political-satirical magazine Der Metzger .

In the literary scene of the 1970s and 1980s, which saw itself as an alternative, he was seen by many as a figure of integration, as Wintjes and his mail order service were an important point of contact for their offers and inquiries. His extensive estate of print products from this period is kept in the archive for alternative culture at the Humboldt University in Berlin .

Josef Wintjes was married twice and has two sons.

literature

• Imprint. Succession. No. 1, January - March 1996, ISSN  0944-2391 .
• Literary correspondence. No. 1, 1996.
• Josef Wintjes, Jens Gehret (Ed.): Ulcus Molle Info Service. Reprint from the years 1969–1974. AZID Presse, Amsterdam 1979, ISBN 90-70215-05-5 .
• Jens Gehret (ed.): Counterculture today. The alternative movement from Woodstock to Tunix . 2nd Edition. AZID Presse, Amsterdam 1979, ISBN 90-70215-03-9 , pp. 41-44.
• "Delete alternative press without replacement". Interview by Peter Peterson with Josef Wintjes. In: Trafik. International Journal of Libertarian Culture and Politics, No. 35, November 1992, ISSN  0177-1361 , pp. 45-51
• Peter Salomon : Josef Wintjes . In: Autobiographical Footnotes . Eggingen, Edition Isele 2009, ISBN 978-3-86142-467-3 , pp. 66-70
• Kai Böhne: Cultural rocker and alternative culture - Josef Wintjes took on inappropriate literature , essay in book culture , issue 104, April / May 2006, PDF file, page 24 and 25 of 68 pages.

Web links

• Literature by and about Josef Wintjes in the catalog of the German National Library
• Archive for Alternative Culture - Josef Wintjes Collection ( Memento from September 4, 2017 in the Internet Archive ), online at fis-kultur.de
• Archive for Alternative Culture , in the Institute for European Ethnology at the Humboldt University in Berlin , online at sammlungen.hu-berlin.de .
• Biby, a cultural rocker from Bottrop - attempted a portrait of Werner Streletz.