Kurt Saucke

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Kurt Heinrich Wilhelm Saucke (born September 10, 1895 in Hamburg ; † February 22, 1970 there ) was a German bookseller and publisher .

Training and first years as a bookseller

Kurt Saucke was born the son of a banker in Hamburg. Until 1911 he attended the Heinrich-Hertz-Realgymnasium and then began vocational training in the book trade. The bookseller Richard Friedrichsen sen. advised him to a commercial apprenticeship, which he in the export companies Hülsz & Co. completed. When the First World War broke out , he finished his training and volunteered for military service. Saucke spent several years in captivity, during which he continued his literary and scientific training. In October 1919 he returned to Hamburg and in the same year took over the range business of the bookstore L. Friedrichsen & Co. , which mainly offered geographic specialist literature and cartography. Saucke built up departments for fiction and humanities and had shares in the company from 1922. He also added a bibliophile second-hand bookshop to the bookstore.

In the mid-1920s, Saucke introduced a series of public lectures. Authors and scientists such as Stefan Zweig , Jakob Wassermann , Ludwig Klages and Hans Prinzhorn gave lectures for the Hamburg-Altonaer Booksellers Association (HABV) during the events . Together with his nephew Ernst Hauswedell and the printer Rudolf Hartung, he founded the German Book Club in 1927 with the help of Siegfried Buchenau , for whose honorary presidency he won Hugo von Hofmannsthal , among others . In 1928 Saucke parted ways with his business partner Friedrichsen. On April 19 of the same year he opened Kurt Saucke & Co. in the premises taken over by Friedrichsen . It was a literary and humanities-oriented bookstore, in which reading and lecture evenings were held. Since such regular events were new in Hamburg, the Sauckes bookstore developed into a center of cultural and literary life there. The first authors to speak here were Hans Carossa , Albrecht Schaeffer , Ludwig Klages, Hermann Stehr and Rudolf Alexander Schröder .

At the end of the 1920s Saucke became a board member of the Society of Book Friends in Hamburg. He maintained friendly contacts with the bookbinders Annie Peters and Ilse Hahne and the art historian Wilhelm Niemeyer . In 1929 he wrote a benevolent obituary for Aby Warburg , who was one of the founding members of the Society for Book Friends. The bookseller added departments for art, bibliophilia and medicine to Kurt Saucke & Co. As one of the first providers in Hamburg, he also set up his own division with literature for children and young people. In 1930 and 1931 he organized two extensive, nationally recognized exhibitions of European children's books. In the early 1930s, he planned many events for the University of Hamburg's international office that took place as vacation courses for foreign students. At that time Saucke was a member of the HABV and sat for some time on the board of the booksellers' association in the North District .

After the National Socialists came to power , the book trade changed. Existing bookshops were merged with the Reichsschrifttumskammer (RSK) or had to stop their business. When membership in the RSK became mandatory for all booksellers, Saucke also joined the organization. From August 1933 he headed the Hamburg lecture office of the Kampfbund for German Culture , but initially did not want to hold any offices in the Hamburg regional association of the RSK. From 1936 he held the position of "student council" in the Hamburg regional association of the Federal Reich German Booksellers and in 1939 took over the "regional management" in the RSK for several months.

When the Second World War broke out , Saucke resigned from all offices and joined the Wehrmacht as an officer . In 1943 he supported his publisher friend Christian Wegner , who was on trial on charges of undermining military strength .

Active as a dealer and publisher after the Second World War

Saucke remained in American captivity until August 1945. The British military government granted him a license to open a new bookstore just a month later. In the first few years after the end of the war, Saucke rebuilt his bookstore and published several works. Since 1950 he has been welcoming authors, scientists and artists to his shop (since 1957 at Paulstraße 6). Erhart Kästner , Hannah Arendt , Martin Buber , Paul Celan , Hans Erich Nossack , Hermann Kasack , Marguerite Yourcenar , Günter Eich , Max Frisch , Günter Grass , Heimito von Doderer , Ingeborg Bachmann , Uwe Johnson , Walter spoke at more than 160 events Jens , Paul Flora and Siegfried Lenz . Albrecht Schaeffer read here for the first time in Germany after his return from exile.

Saucke was a member of the boards of several literary associations in Hamburg, whose event programs he played a key role in shaping. In planning his own events, he worked with the Hamburg section of the Goethe Society and set up an office for the society in his own bookstore. Saucke has been committed to authors such as Ludwig Klages , Kurt Kluge , Erhart Kästner, Hans Erich Nossack and Heimito von Doderer for many years . He supported publishers such as Christian Wegner , Anton Kippenberg , Ernst Rowohlt , Carl Hanser , Peter Suhrkamp , Siegfried Unseld , Klaus Wagenbach and others with questions about the book trade and literature. In 1958, the Senator for Culture, Hans-Harder Biermann-Ratjen , appointed Saucke to the jury of the Hamburg Lessing Prize . The North German Publishers and Booksellers Association made him an honorary member in 1970.

Kurt Saucke died in 1970 in his hometown. 19 years after his death, the publisher Siegfried Unseld described him as the “bookseller of the century”.

literature

personal data
SURNAME Saucke, Kurt
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Saucke, Kurt Heinrich Wilhelm
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German bookseller and publisher
DATE OF BIRTH September 10, 1895
PLACE OF BIRTH Hamburg
DATE OF DEATH February 22, 1970
Place of death Hamburg