Literary Comptoir Zurich and Winterthur
The Literarisches Comptoir Zürich und Winterthur (also Litterarisches Comptoir Zürich / Winterthur ) was a book and magazine publisher with political and propagandistic objectives. This emerged at the beginning of 1841 from the bookstore of the Winterthur printer Hegner, when the geologist Julius Froebel , a German emigrant, who lived in Zurich , took over the management. The purpose of the foundation was the journalistic struggle against the reaction that came back to power in Zurich in 1839 . At the same time, the publisher should enable oppositional German writers to circumvent the censorship prevailing in the territory of the German Confederation . The Literarisches Comptoir fulfilled this task until 1845. The most prominent author of the publishing house was the poet Georg Herwegh .
history
prehistory
In the Karlovy Vary resolutions of 1819, the governments of the German Confederation agreed to implement censorship of the press in addition to other measures against revolutionary overthrow. Newspapers, pamphlets and books up to 20 sheets (corresponding to 320 printed pages) were subject to censorship. H. they had to be presented to a censorship authority, which could prohibit printing in whole or in part, and had already printed documents confiscated . The censors often understood criticism of the existing political conditions as a call to overthrow and prohibited its publication. Publishers and booksellers who, in disregard of the duty of censorship, brought subversive writings to the people, risked the loss of their property and their business license. They also faced fines and prison terms. The authors of critical writings were persecuted as demagogues . They could be imprisoned for high treason and expelled from the country after their release. The press censorship was handled differently in the individual German states, the strictest in Prussia. The "Guillotine of the Spirit" was abolished for the first time during the German Revolution of 1848/49 .
The repressive climate after 1819 drove German opposition members into exile in large numbers. Many sought refuge and work in Switzerland, especially after a turnaround took place there in 1831 that brought liberals to government in several cantons . For example in Zurich , where new educational institutions were soon established that were like magnets for the university graduates among the German refugees.
founding
The geologist Julius Froebel , who later became a member of the Frankfurt National Assembly, taught in Zurich from 1833 . Radicalized by the Züriputsch , with which the conservatives temporarily returned to power in 1839 , Froebel turned to political journalism and at the turn of the year 1840/41 became co-owner and manager of a company owned by the Winterthur printer Ulrich Reinhart Hegner (1791-1880), which from then on dealt with literary works Comptoir Zurich and Winterthur named. Fröbel's goal was "to found a publishing bookstore that took over and distributed censored publications to promote the political spirit awakened in Germany and, at the same time, the literary fight against the reaction that broke out in Switzerland."
The literary office worked far beyond Switzerland's borders: Opposition German newspapers such as the Rheinische Zeitung edited by Karl Marx discussed the writings published there and reprinted them. In 1843, after the “Rheinische” had been banned, Marx applied for the editing of a journal Der Deutsche Bote from Switzerland planned by the Zurich-Winterthur publishing house .
Publishing program (selection)
Froebel, who himself wrote under the pseudonym C. Junius, published, among others, the following writings in the five years that the publisher existed:
- 1841: Songs of a living man , poems by Georg Herwegh .
- 1842: The good cause of freedom and my own business , pamphlet by Bruno Bauer .
- 1842–43: Der Schweizer Republikaner , magazine edited by Julius Froebel.
- 1843: refugees from censorship. 12 freedom songs , by Rudolf Gottschall .
- 1843: Principles of the Philosophy of the Future , program by Ludwig Feuerbach .
- 1843: The death of pastor Dr. Friedrich Ludwig Weidig . A documented and documented contribution to the assessment of the secret criminal process and the political conditions in Germany , documentation by Friedrich Wilhelm Schulz .
- 1843: Anecdota on the latest German philosophy and journalism , two anthologies, ed. by Arnold Ruge , as a continuation of his yearbooks that were banned in Prussia and Saxony .
- 1843: Christianity discovered. A memory of the 18th century and a contribution to the crisis of the 19th , polemic by Bruno Bauer.
- 1843: Twenty-one sheets from Switzerland , anthology ed. by Georg Herwegh as a replacement for the journal Der Deutsche Bote from Switzerland , which was banned at the planning stage and which Herwegh was supposed to edit, which failed because he was expelled from Zurich; with contributions by Bruno Bauer, David Friedrich Strauss , Friedrich Engels , Friedrich Hecker , Moses Heß , Reinhold Jachmann , Johann Jacoby , Karl Nauwerck , Ludwig Seeger .
- 1843: German songs from Switzerland , by August Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben
- 1843: German street songs , by Hoffmann von Fallersleben
- 1844: The crime of religious disorder under the laws of the Canton of Zurich. An illumination for the education of the people, linked to the process of the literary department because of the two writings: “Das discovered Christianentum” and “Twenty-one sheets from Switzerland” , by Julius Froebel.
- 1844: Deutsche Salonlieder , by Hoffmann vo Fallersleben
- 1844: Hoffmannsche Drops , poems by Hoffmann von Fallersleben .
- 1845: The political nursery , comedy by Robert Prutz .
- 1845: Songs by an autodidact , poems by Gottfried Keller .
- 1846: Fire idyll. An allegory , poetry by Gottfried Keller.
The rise and fall of the literary department
The very first publication, the songs of a living person , which Herwegh earned the nickname of the “iron lark of the Vormärz ”, brought the publisher an overwhelming success: the volume of poetry saw seven editions with a total of 19,000 copies in a year and a half. Nevertheless - or perhaps because of it - he soon ran into political and economic difficulties. The conservative constitutional lawyer Johann Caspar Bluntschli , member of the Zurich government since 1839, brought about the expulsion of Herwegh, the arrest and condemnation of the early socialist agitator Wilhelm Weitling , with whom Froebel was connected, as well as the confiscation of the Discovered Christianity and the twenty-one sheets in 1843 . Froebel and his printer Hegner were sentenced the following year to heavy fines and two and three months' imprisonment for religious disorder. The publisher lost several thousand francs in assets.
Help came from other emigrants, mainly from the former fraternity member Adolf Ludwig Follen , who had gained fortune by marrying a Swiss woman and was the center of the Zurich emigrant group. Follen became a co-owner in 1843; also Herwegh's wealthy brother-in-law, Gustav Siegmund from Berlin and, in the same year, Arnold Ruge, who had previously published the yearbooks for German art and science in Halle and Dresden and, hard pressed by the Prussian and Saxon censors, was looking for a new one Domicile for this respected magazine.
The appearance of the left-wing Hegelian Ruge and his follower Karl Heinzen heightened tensions among the Zurich opposition. Follen, Hoffmann, Schulz and Keller took offense at Ruge's atheism . After Heinzen's defamatory attacks on Follen and Schulz, the "Zurich atheism controversy" escalated into a journalistic spring war, partly fought out in verse, which dragged on until the end of 1847 and "took away later ideological disputes within the left in miniature." Follen withdrew his capital, Ruge took his place.
After the German Bundestag had put all the publications published by the publisher on the prohibited list in mid-1845 and had books and sales proceeds confiscated as far as it could get hold of them, Froebel withdrew from the management of the publishing house in view of the losses he had suffered and turned his back on Zurich in 1846. Ruge did the same. Ulrich Hegner continued the literary office for several years without the prominent authors of the German Vormärz.
literature
- Walter Grab: A man who gave Marx ideas. Wilhelm Schulz, companion of Georg Büchner, Democrat of the Paulskirche. A political biography. Droste Verlag, Düsseldorf 1979, ISBN 3-7700-0552-X . In it especially the 4th chapter: “The literary and journalistic struggles of the Zurich refugee colony around Julius Fröbel and the Literary Comptoir Zurich and Winterthur ”, pp. 177–210, as well as on the “Zurich atheism dispute” pp. 257–276.
- Ingrid Pepperle: Twenty-one sheets from Switzerland. Edited by Georg Herwegh. With two unprinted letters from Herwegh. Reclam jun., Leipzig 1989. (Reclam's Universal Library, 1282). ISBN 3-379-00419-7
- Dietmar Schuler: State, Society and German Question with Julius Fröbel (1805-1893). Studies on the origin and development of German liberalism in the 19th century. Innsbruck 1984.
- Dietmar Schuler: Julius Froebel (1805-1893). A life between liberal claims and national realpolitik. In: Innsbruck historical studies. Vol. 7/8. Innsbruck 1985. pp. 179-261.
- Karl-Wilhelm Frhr. von Wintzingerode-Knorr: Hoffmann von Fallersleben and Julius Fröbel's Literarisches Comptoir in Switzerland. In: Norbert Eke, Kurt GP Schuster and Günter Tiggesbäumker (Ed.): Hoffmann von Fallersleben. International Symposium Corvey / Höxter 2008. Bielefeld 2009 ( Braunschweiger Contributions to German Language and Literature , Vol. 11), pp. 39–56. ISBN 978-3-89534-851-8 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Julius Froebel: A curriculum vitae. Records, Memories, and Confessions . Stuttgart 1890, vol. IS 97; quoted from Walter Grab: A man who gave Marx ideas . Droste Verlag, Düsseldorf 1979, p. 191.
- ↑ Cf. Ingrid Pepperle: Introduction to the new edition of the Twenty-One Arches from Switzerland , Leipzig 1989.
- ^ Walter Grab, p. 263.