Konrad hemp

Konrad Hanf (born December 17, 1874 in Schiltigheim , † May 1, 1922 near Wedel ) was a German publisher .

Live and act

The life of Konrad Hanf, who was born in Alsace , is poorly documented. Before moving to Hamburg, he probably worked as a carpenter. In Hamburg he founded the Konrad-Hanf-Verlag , named after him , the exact date of which is also unknown. Hemp could have founded the company between 1899 and 1901, but the entry in the commercial register is dated April 10, 1902. Since there are no publisher's brochures or catalogs, it is not possible to determine exactly how many works the publisher published.

The publishing house had been located at Zippelhaus 7-8 not far from the Hamburg free port since 1907 . Hemp began with the North German Submissionsanzeiger printed weekly . This work, which apparently brought in good income, remained the most important in the publishing program for ten years. Hanf developed the paper, originally intended as an advertisement for advertisements, into a daily newspaper. In 1910, the publisher added the Bau-Rundschau to the program . It was one of the renowned magazines on architecture in Germany, which provided information about the “building and housing culture of the north” and exhibitions and art in Hamburg. In 1911, Hanf founded a book printing company that produced to order beyond its own needs. This company quickly became a success. The company's headquarters were at Neue Gröninger Strasse 17. In 1915 the publishing house also moved to Neue Gröninger Strasse, house number 9.

Until the end of the First World War , the Hanfs program was limited to its magazines with a few special editions of the Bau-Rundschau . In 1914 and 1916 he published two books by the Hamburg author Adolf Goetz . Hanf worked in several associations and repeatedly took on board positions: in 1919 he participated as a treasurer in the Hamburg branch of the Deutscher Werkbund , and in January 1920 together with Emil Maetzel as the cashier of the exhibition hall company . For a short time he took over the chairmanship of the Association of German Advertising Professionals . He also promoted the expressionism emerging among painters and authors in Hamburg. From 1919 he supported the Hamburg Secession . On the occasion of their artist festival in 1920, he financed the almanac The Yellow Trumpet of Seven . This work contained only a little text, including a sketch by Hans Leip , but many paintings and sculptures by artists such as Emil Maetzel, Dorothea Maetzel-Johannsen , Karl Opfermann , Anita Rée , Heinrich Steinhagen or Johannes Wüsten .

Konrad Hanf was a leader in the field of Low German literature and the most important publisher of Expressionism in Hamburg. The fact that he offered a diversified portfolio contributed to his success: a third of the works that appeared from 1918 onwards could be assigned to literary and visual expressionism. The other genres included building literature, a "series of publications on cultural issues" and roughly half of High and Low German poetry and dramas. Of the total of around eighty titles published by the publisher in 1921, around 30. In that year, Hanf also published the fourth year of the expressionist magazine Der Freihafen .

Hanf published works by Paul Duysen , who also edited for the publisher for some time, Johannes Wüsten, Hans Harbeck , Hans Henny Jahn , Hermann Claudius , Paul Schurek and Tetjus Tügel . In addition, there were Hans Friedrich Blunck and Ludwig Tügel , who later wrote nationalist works.

The publisher's creative period ended surprisingly: In early May 1922, hemp paddled a boat on the Elbe , capsized in Schulau and drowned. His publishing house existed until 1926, but the works no longer appeared under the name of the previous owner.

literature

• Angela Graf: Hemp, Konrad . In: Franklin Kopitzsch, Dirk Brietzke (Hrsg.): Hamburgische Biographie . tape 5 . Wallstein, Göttingen 2010, ISBN 978-3-8353-0640-0 , p. 169-170 .