Karl Johann Gottfried Wachholtz

Karl Johann Gottfried Wachholtz (born April 14, 1892 in Neumünster ; † July 20, 1962 there ) was a German publisher.

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Karl Johann Gottfried Wachholtz came from a family that had moved from Pomerania to Eutin . The grandfather had worked as a goldsmith. His father Gustav Johannes Wachholtz (* July 24, 1858 in Eutin; † October 19, 1945 in Neumünster) was considered an unusually clever and far-sighted businessman who was a member of the supervisory board of the Bank Association for Schleswig-Holstein. He had been producing colored paper since 1896 and was the owner of the Gottfried Möller Sons company in Neumünster. He was married to Marie Luise, nee Ströhmer (born June 9, 1865, † July 23, 1939 ibid).

Wachholtz attended the Holstenschule in Neumünster and completed an apprenticeship in the paper industry in Hamburg . He then studied for three semesters at the Münster and Berlin commercial colleges. During the First World War he fought as a volunteer from 1914 and was an officer at the end of the war. On May 1, 1919, he acquired half of the Holsteinischer Courier from his cousin Robert Hieronymus , combined with the obligation to run the publishing house. In the following year he also acquired the other half of the shares.

On January 7, 1920 Wachholtz married Ilse Margarethe Karoline Spangenberg (born May 18, 1896 in Neumünster) in Münster , whose father Carl Heinrich Georg Spangenberg was a high school director. The couple had their son Ulf and two daughters, one of whom Dörte married the entrepreneur Hermann Marsian .

In 1923 Wachholtz merged the Courier with the “Niederdeutsche Rundschau” and the “Tagesblatt für den Bordesholm”. In 1927 the “Generalanzeiger” was added. The purchased papers continued to appear as head newspapers for some time . The “Holsteinische Courier” gained so many new readers that modern printing presses and larger premises were necessary. Wachholtz recognized the business needs and demands of the present. He not only expanded the newspaper publisher, but immediately changed the content of the paper. In addition to the technical modernization, he himself also intervened in terms of content with the aim of giving the paper a stronger reference to Schleswig-Holstein. For this reason, he brought Ferdinand Zacchi as the main editor of the newspaper.

Since there was no well-known publisher in Schleswig-Holstein at the time, Wachholtz decided to offer a corresponding line of business. He edited Zacchi's novels, which had previously been published by the Bordersholmer Verlag Nölcke, took over Hoff's “Heimatgeschichte” from the Lipsius & Tischer bookstore in Kiel, and Theodor Möller's “The Face of Homeland” from the Handorf publisher .

In 1924 Wachholtz made Otto Mensing from Kiel an offer to publish his Schleswig-Holstein dictionary at his own risk. The work became his most successful book. He found 2500 customers for the subscription and made a big profit. Due to the associated reputation, he received many offers after a short time and was considered a well-known publisher of a dictionary. In the following years he published many other such reference works.

Wachholtz put the emphasis of the Wachholtz Verlag on the prehistory, history, regional studies of Schleswig-Holstein as well as Low German language and literature. Close cooperation with the “Society for Schleswig-Holstein History”, the “Die Heimat” association and university employees in the Prehistory Department were important. In the 1920s he opened a branch of the publishing house in Hamburg, which was particularly dedicated to the Low German language. Due to capacity bottlenecks, the focus of the publishing house shifted, to Wachholtz's regret, from works of aesthetics to scientific literature.

The Association of Schleswig-Holstein Newspaper Publishers elected Wachholtz as chairman in 1929. He held this office until 1933 and then did military service, most recently as a major. When he returned to Neumünster, the publishing house was completely destroyed. He printed advertising papers until 1949, when he received a new license to publish the Courier.

In the following years, Wachholtz suffered from a progressive paralysis disease. He spent the last ten years of his life as a bedridden and handed over the management of the publishing house to his son Ulf . Wachholtz died in July 1962 in his birthplace Neumünster.

literature

• Olaf Klose: Wachholtz, Karl Johann Gottfried . in: Schleswig-Holstein Biographical Lexicon . Volume 3. Karl Wachholtz Verlag, Neumünster 1974, pp. 274-277