Kurt Leo Maschler

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Kurt Leo Maschler (born January 19, 1898 in Berlin , † March 25, 1986 in London ) was a publisher from Germany.

Life

Maschler's father came from Tarnow in Galicia , he died in Berlin in 1940, his mother was from Berlin and was a victim of the Holocaust in the Theresienstadt ghetto in 1942 . Maschler's sister Margarete survived the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp , and three other siblings were able to emigrate in time. Maschler married Rita Lechner in 1930 and they had their son Tom Michael Maschler , who as a publisher was one of the initiators of the Booker Prize .

Maschler completed an apprenticeship as a bookseller and worked in the book wholesale business from 1918 to 1927 . He then became the owner of the Singer Verlag and the Schlesische Verlagsanstalt. In 1920 he took part in Axel Juncker Verlag . Maschler acquired the Williams & Co. publishing house from Edith Jacobsohn in 1933 . In the same year he received Austrian citizenship.

In 1935 founded Maschler in Basel the Atrium Verlag order after the book burning on 10 May 1933, the forbidden works of Erich Kastner to publish. For this purpose, the publisher transferred almost all rights of the German Williams publishing house to the Swiss Atrium publishing house, which he managed from Germany until 1937. Possibly because of his Austrian citizenship, Maschler was only excluded from the Reichsschrifttumskammer in 1937 because of his Jewish origins and stayed in Vienna until the annexation of Austria in 1938 . He fled to Amsterdam and from there moved with the family to London in early 1939.

From England he managed the Atrium Verlag until 1976 - then it was sold to the Oetinger publishing group . In England he had to limit himself to the licensing business. He now also worked for Faber & Faber and published the art book series Fama , the total edition of which exceeded one million. In 1946 Atrium published Erich Fried's second volume of poetry Austria . Maschler made the publishing house a prominent publisher in children's and youth literature.

In 1982, the publisher first presented the “Kurt Maschler Award” in London, which was presented annually for children's books. The last award was in 1999. Maschler bequeathed the originals of Walter Trier's illustrations to the Kästner books of the International Youth Library in Munich.

literature

  • Werner Röder, Herbert A. Strauss (Hrsg.): Biographical manual of German-speaking emigration after 1933. Vol. 1: Politics, economy, public life . Munich: Saur 1980, p. 480
  • Maschler, Kurt Leo , in: Joseph Walk (ed.): Short biographies on the history of the Jews 1918–1945 . Munich: Saur, 1988, ISBN 3-598-10477-4 , p. 258

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Susanne Blume Berger, Michael Doppelhofer, Gabriele Mauthe: Manual Austrian authors of Jewish origin 18th to 20th century . Volume 2: J-R. Edited by the Austrian National Library. Saur, Munich 2002, ISBN 3-598-11545-8 , p. 905.
  2. ↑ 75 years of "Erich Kästner Verlag" Atrium Book Market from September 23, 2010.
  3. ↑ Sven Hanuscheck: Brave, even foolhardy . Biographical essay, in: The Literary World , November 21, 2015, p. 4f.
  4. ↑ Book Awards: Kurt Maschler Award.


personal data
SURNAME Maschler, Kurt Leo
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German publisher
DATE OF BIRTH January 19, 1898
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH March 25, 1986
Place of death London