Langen Müller publishing house

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The Langen Müller Verlag merged in 1932 from the previously founded Albert Langen Verlag and Georg Müller Verlag . In 1967 Herbert Fleissner acquired all of the shares; today the house belongs to the publishing group "Langen Müller Herbig nymphenburger terra magica" based in Stuttgart .

history

Albert Langen

In 1893 Albert Langen founded his publishing, book and art dealer in Paris and Cologne , which he sold soon afterwards in order to be able to move to Leipzig and finally Munich. The company in Munich was affiliated with an art publisher and stage distributor. One of Langen's main concerns was to publish contemporary Scandinavian authors such as Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson , Knut Hamsun and Georg Brandes . He was considered a pioneer of Scandinavian modernism in Germany.

Bauhaus books , advert in the Börsenblatt (1925)

In 1896 the satirical weekly Simplicissimus appeared for the first time at the publishing house, but it was quickly banned again due to the "lese majesty" affair. The authors of the paper had to leave Germany and Albert Langen also went into exile for five years . Only in 1903 was he pardoned against a payment of 30,000 marks. The attorney for the publisher was meanwhile his colleague Korfiz Holm .

The catalog from 1904 already had 117 authors with 354 titles. Important writers of those years were Marcel Prévost , Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson , Herman Bang , Guy de Maupassant , Knut Hamsun , Émile Zola , Heinrich Heine and Jakob Wassermann . The program now spanned German, French and Scandinavian fiction . The furnishings of the books played an important role for the publisher , and so the strikingly designed titles stood out from the usual book covers on the market. The series of Bauhaus books by Walter Gropius and László Moholy-Nagy has been published near Langen since 1925 .

After the Simplicissimus affair, Langen founded the bi-monthly publication for German culture , March , in 1907 , which he published together with Hermann Hesse and Ludwig Thoma . Two years later he died of a carried otitis media. In his will he appointed four curators and long-time employees (Otto Friedrich, Reinhold Geheeb , August Gommel and Korfiz Holm) for the publishing house. They took over the company and finally acquired it in 1918.

Georg Müller

On October 1, 1903, Georg Müller founded his publishing house of the same name at Königinstrasse 59 in Munich. Previously he had acquired the rights of the Georg Heinrich Meyer Verlag and thus brought authors such as Rudolf Huch , Wilhelm Weingand, Wilhelm Fischer-Graz and Adolf Pichler to his home. In the same year he founded the initially fictional journal Süddeutsche Monatshefte , which, however, was transferred to the publishing house Ad in June 1905 . Bonz & Comp. passed in Stuttgart.

His long-standing friendship with Reinhard Piper finally led to the joint Reinhard Piper & Co. Verlag in 1904 , which, however, had to be dissolved two years later because Müller's publishing house developed too strong a dynamic of its own.

The program focuses on art publications, fine literature by German and international authors, as well as classics and complete editions. Müller opened many series such as the library of the Thelem Abbey , Gastrosophische Bücherei , Lebenskunst and Memories from Old Austria . Complete editions have been published by August Strindberg , Frank Wedekind , Friedrich Hölderlin , Shakespeare , Edgar Allan Poe , Stendhal and Heinrich Heine .

After Georg Müller died in 1917, Siegfried Neuhöfer and Hans Winand took over the company. They converted the company into a limited liability company and tried to save the publishing house by selling parts, as it was weakened economically in the course of inflation and the resulting drop in purchasing power of the population. In addition, the new owners founded a subsidiary in 1919, Thespis Verlag , which offered entertainment and folk literature at affordable prices and was intended to support Georg Müller Verlag financially. The company merged with its parent company again in 1927 and was dissolved in 1928.

The inner realm . Title page of the first edition (April 1934)

In the same year, due to lack of capital, the publishing house was sold to the Deutschnationalen Handlungsgehilfen-Verband , a national employee union , and was to be managed by Gustav Pezold in the future. In 1932 there was finally a merger with Albert Langen Verlag , which sparked heated controversy in the media. In 1936 the Langen-Müller Verlag was affiliated with the German Labor Front , an NSDAP organization. Nevertheless, the company tried not to allow itself to be completely absorbed by the party and, in addition to "loyal to the line" authors, also published books by writers who could be assigned to "internal resistance" (e.g. Ernst Wiechert ). The magazine Das Innere Reich (1934–1944; directed by Paul Alverdes ) was even considered a secret collection point for counter-literature.

In 1938 Gustav Pezold, who was already a party member in 1922, fell out with those in power and was then dismissed by Robert Ley . After the management changed several times, the company was transferred to Knorr & Hirth-Verlag in 1943 , which at that time was affiliated with the central publishing house of the NSDAP Franz Eher and was therefore placed under trusteeship by the victorious powers in 1945.

Langen Müller publishing house

After the end of the Second World War, the American military authorities confiscated the company as party property and gave a large part of the publishing rights to other publishers. In 1950 they wanted to dissolve the company, which was prevented by the Bavarian State Office for Asset Management and Reparation.

Two years later, Langen Müller became part of the German salaried union (legal successor to the German Labor Front) and was rebuilt by Joachim Schondorff and Günther Hauffe. Eventually Schondorff acquired the publishing house and became the sole owner in 1964. The book series Theater of the Centuries , in which dramas by Gerhart Hauptmann , Hugo von Hofmannsthal , Euripides and Sophocles appeared, can be regarded as an outstanding achievement . Former authors such as Frank Wedekind, Otto Julius Bierbaum and August Strindberg found their way back into the program.

Today's publisher

In 1967 the company passed to the publisher Herbert Fleissner . The publishers Langen Müller, Herbig and Nymphenburger operated under the name FA Herbig Verlagsbuchhandlung GmbH , which was managed by Fleissner's daughter Brigitte Fleissner-Mikorey until November 2016 after Fleissner's withdrawal. Today the publishers belong to Franckh-Kosmos Verlags-GmbH & Co. KG, which is managed by Fleissner's son Michael. The publishing program is divided into the departments of fiction, non-fiction and biographies. In addition to an extensive audio book series, the series Art in the Square and Star Legends are part of the current program. In the aesthetic area there are authors such as Knut Hamsun , Mark Twain , Jack London , Truman Capote , Ephraim Kishon and Stefanie Zweig . The non-fiction segment includes particularly contemporary and political titles, for example by Thilo Sarrazin and Markus Krall . In 2017 the publishing house was relocated from Munich to Stuttgart.

literature

  • Andreas Meyer: The publishing merger Langen – Müller. On the book market and cultural policy of the German National Handlers Association in the final phase of the Weimar Republic . In: Archives for the history of books, Volume 32. Booksellers Association, Frankfurt am Main 1989, ISBN 978-3-7657-1510-5 .
  • Hannsludwig Geiger : It was around the turn of the century: shaping under the spell of the book; Albert Langen / Georg Müller . Munich: Langen-Müller 1953.
  • Helga Abret: Albert Langen: a European publisher . Munich: Langen Müller 1993, ISBN 3-7844-2459-7 .
  • Aesthetics of the newer book: prints from English and German presses, bibliophile editions of the publishers Georg Müller, Insel, Cassirer, Diederichs as well as some other important first editions . Rotthalmünster: Thelem Antiquariat Heribert Tenschert 1978/79.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. About the book publishers Langen Müller Herbig nymphenburger terra magica ( Memento of the original from November 25, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.herbig.net
  2. See The Little Book of Poet Pictures. The authors of the small library. Langen-Müller, Munich 1941, with photo portraits by 73 authors.
  3. ^ Ernst Klee : The culture lexicon for the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-10-039326-5 , p. 455.
  4. Langen-Müller moves from Munich to Stuttgart , Stuttgarter Nachrichten, January 26, 2017, accessed on March 7, 2020.