Knorr & Hirth publishing house
| Knorr & Hirth publishing house | |
|---|---|
| legal form | GmbH |
| founding | February 28, 1875 |
| Seat | Munich |
| management | Julius Knorr |
| Number of employees | 1400 (1930) |
| sales | no information |
| Branch | Publishing house, media |
The Knorr & Hirth Verlag was a Munich publisher .
founding
In 1862 Julius Knorr acquired the Münchner Latest News from Karl Robert Schurich for 90,000 guilders and published it from 1875 onwards by Knorr & Hirth-Verlag.
From 1911 the Knorr & Hirth publishing house was owned by Thomas Knorr († 1911), Georg Hirth († 1916) and Elise Hirth geb. Knorr († 1920). After the death of these shareholders in 1920, the heirs sold it to mostly heavy industrial circles under the leadership of the Haniel family of industrialists .
In 1925, Knorr & Hirth-Verlag acquired the Münchner Illustrierte Presse from Richard Pflaum Verlag.
The Supervisory Board of Knorr & Hirth of sat as members Ruhrlade Paul Reusch , Gutehoffnungshütte (GHH) in Oberhausen , Karl Haniel , Dusseldorf, and Ernst Brandi , Gelsenkirchen Mining AG .
In the mid-1920s, Alfred Hugenberg , to whose empire the Munich-Augsburger Abendzeitung belonged, tried to increase his stake in Knorr & Hirth-Verlag to a dominant level. In a dispute in court, the GHH succeeded in repelling Hugenberg's access. According to an agreement brokered by the mining association , the GHH bought the shares in Hugenberg in 1928 and, after a capital increase in 1930, had 52.52% of the shares, for which it had invested 4,557,875 Reichsmarks.
time of the nationalsocialism
In June 1930 the managing director of the Knorr & Hirth publishing house Otto Pflaum died and the Ruhrlade entrusted the supervisory board member Anton Betz with the financial restructuring and political influence. From 1930 to 1932, Knorr & Hirth-Verlag's debts were reduced from 10 million to 2.8 million Reichsmarks .
Heinrich Himmler , his brother-in-law Richard Wendler , Leo house manager and his wife Charlotte Westermann (born October 13, 1883 in Nuremberg; † 1954) acted after the Reichstag fire through the ordinance of the Reich President for the protection of the people and the state with the Bavarian Political Police . On March 23, 1933, under the pretext that there was an attempted separatist coup, members of the assault department who were appointed to the auxiliary police raided the editorial offices of the publishing house and arrested four employees, including the chief editor of the MNN Fritz Büchner , the head of the domestic affairs department, Erwein von Aretin and Paul Nikolaus Cossmann , the editor of the nationalist Süddeutsche monthly magazine . The board colleague Paul Reusch tried to contact Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler, head of the Bavarian political police, and on the following day Anton Betz was arrested on presentation of a " protective custody order " signed by Heinrich Himmler . The efforts of the Nazis to open criminal proceedings against the arrested employees of the publishing house for high treason failed before the Reich Court in Leipzig. During the search they wanted to have uncovered a Catholic-monarchist and a communist group of conspirators. The archive employee Leo Hausleiter and Paul Edmund von Hahn took over the management of the publishing house on behalf of the NSDAP. Mr. Wendler, a brother-in-law of Himmler, acted as a kind of political commissioner. Leo Hausleiter fired about 50 "politically unreliable" employees, including the poet Eugen Roth, and was able to hoist Giselher Wirsing to the post of head of the domestic affairs department. In October 1935, the Knorr & Hirth publishing house was acquired by the Franz Eher publishing house .
After the Second World War
The Franz-Eher-Verlag was banned by Control Council Act No. 2 of October 10, 1945 as an organization of the NSDAP. After 1945, the Free State of Bavaria became the legal successor to Eher-Verlag, which means that Knorr & Hirth-Verlag also became part of the Bavarian state.
In 1951 the Süddeutsche Zeitung acquired the property and the publishing rights for five million DM. The book publisher was excluded. It was re-established in Munich in 1952 and published art books. The owner of the publishing house, which later relocated to Hanover, was Berthold Fricke in 1955.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Verlagshaus Knorr & Hirth (Münchner Latest News) Littmann endeavored to design the facade of this building, built in 1905, in such a way that it still formed a unit with the other buildings on the street. Internally, it should be spacious, functional and equally representative of its purpose and meet the requirements of a modern publishing house. [1]
- ↑ Peter Langer in Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte : Paul Reusch and the synchronization of the Münchner Neuesten Nachrichten, 1933 [2] (PDF; 8.2 MB), p. 205 ff
- ↑ Johannes Bähr, Die MAN : Eine deutsche Industriegeschichte, p. 287
- ↑ historisches-lexikon-bayerns, Knorr Hirth-Verlag
- ↑ Historical Lexicon of Bavaria: Knorr & Hirth