Malik publishing house

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Malik publishing house logo

The Malik-Verlag was from 1916 to 1947 existing German publisher and political and aesthetic avant-garde art and communist literature aligned.

The foundation

Already in his youth, Wieland Herzfelde , the founder of Malik Verlag, decided to devote himself entirely to literature. After starting out as a poet, he followed his older brother Helmut to Berlin in 1914 and hoped to be able to continue his writing career there. In the same year he had to register for military service and finally take a job as a medic. While he was still working as a nurse, he made an agreement with his brother to publish an anti-war magazine . The experiences at the front should shape him for a lifetime and be decisive for his future publishing work.

The new youth

When the publishing house was founded, he received moral and financial support from Count Harry Kessler , Felix J. Weil , Julian Gumperz , George Grosz , Franz Jung , Else Lasker-Schüler , Johannes R. Becher and Walter Benjamin . However, the start-up capital to create the company initially represented the minor hurdle. The creation of a new newspaper, magazine or publishing house was prohibited during the war without the express permission of the military authorities. However, Wieland Herzfelde found a legal loophole: He founded the company with a printing license from the pre-war period. In 1916 he acquired the rights to the school magazine Die neue Jugend for 200 marks . The beginning was difficult because the financial means for the premises of a proper editorial office and for the materials for the production of printed matter were lacking. Nevertheless, the brothers did not skimp on the printing press, as the aesthetic quality of the publications was important to them from the start. In July, the seventh edition of the Neue Jugend (the first under the direction of the Herzfelde brothers in the Neue Jugend publishing house) appeared in an edition of 3,000 copies and at a price of 50 pfennigs. Johannes R. Becher's Ode to Peace was printed on the front page , thus defining the political direction of the magazine. After constant quarrels and quarrels with the former publisher of the magazine, Heinz Barger, the publisher was renamed.

John Heartfield , as Helmut Herzfeld now called himself in protest, resorted to a ruse to get the official approval of the politically explosive monthly. He wrote to the head of the censorship in Potsdam that he absolutely had to finish printing the novel Der Malik by Else Lasker-Schüler, once it had begun . The Malik , according to Heartfield, is a Turkish prince and thus an ally of the German Empire. The publication of the work could only help the German triumphant advance. The license was granted immediately, and so Malik-Verlag was entered in the company register of the city of Berlin on March 1, 1917 . This could mean, however, that the officials at the censorship authority had not read the excerpts from the novel that had already been published, as the “idiosyncratic” content by John Heartfield should have stood in the way of approval. The work has a poetically coded socio-critical and pacifist statement as the basis, which would undermine the official war propaganda.

The first issue of Neue Jugend published by Malik-Verlag (February / March 1917, No. 11/12) only used seven pages for the continuation of the novel. The rest of the space was used as usual for poems , prose pieces and drawings .

First publications: magazines and George Grosz folders

In addition to Neue Jugend, the publisher's first work was a portfolio of drawings by George Grosz , which contained a total of nine lithographs . Herzfelde met Grosz as early as 1915 and, after seeing his drawings, immediately persuaded him to work at the publishing house. Herzfelde was able to publish his own literary pieces in the spring with the help of Harry Graf Kessler , who had the expressionist love poems printed on Zanders hand-made paper as "war print by the Cranach-Presse Weimar" and was thus able to maintain the publisher's high graphic standards. Die Neue Jugend now appeared in a weekly edition, but was banned in April, as was the entire publishing work. It was finally decided to publish the magazine illegally. However, some of the editors, including the Malik publisher, were involved in the war while the early publications were being edited (Herzfelde was drafted again after his dismissal in 1915), which, in addition to the constant financial problems, placed an enormous burden on the work. The publishing activity was inevitably stopped until the end of the war.

After the war, Herzfelde did everything in his power to bring the publishing house back to life. Together with Heartfield, Grosz and Erwin Piscator , whom he had met during his training as a radio operator, he joined the newly founded KPD on January 1, 1919 . After the Malik publisher had initially made resistance to the war his main task, he now wanted to fight alongside the working class (including his colleagues Erwin Piscator, Alois Erbach , Rudolf Schlichter and Walter Mehring ). The first (and at the same time the last) issue of the magazine Jedermann his own football will appear in February, the title of which said that you should not let yourself be kicked, but act yourself. As the content was half grotesque, half serious, the magazine criticized the style of government of the SPD , it was immediately banned and even brought the publisher to court. From this point on, Wieland Herzfelde was to continuously grapple with the judiciary of the time and suffer an odyssey through Berlin's prisons. As with the Neue Jugend , John Heartfield's typographical skills were decisive for the extraordinary format of the sheet. Already with the first publication of the publisher he used the collage technique and, contrary to convention, did not design the headline in one color, but in red / green, arranging the upper and lower case letters as desired. Not only did he use the photo montage skillfully for the various Malik titles, but he can even be named as a forerunner or inventor of the same in this area.

The year 1919 was to be all about magazines. The successor to Jedermann his own football was Die Pleite , which was equipped with large-format Grosz drawings, but had to be discontinued after six issues in 1920. The principles to which Malik-Verlag felt obliged and which it was to uphold throughout the entire Weimar Republic were already clearly recognizable in Die Bleite . He called for uncompromising participation in the fight against the reaction in his own country and stood up for the support of the Soviet Union . In the future, however , Die Pleite was allowed to appear as a satirical supplement in the magazine Der Demokratie , which was first printed by Malik Verlag in mid-1919. The magazine was initially under the direction of Julian Gumperz , dealt in detail with the building of socialism and advocated the fight against the exploitation and oppression of the working class . The content of Die Pleite and The Opponent later merged into one magazine, until this magazine had to be abandoned in 1922.

The Malik publishing house and Dada

1916 saw Dadaism his birth in Zurich and later from a year Richard Huelsenbeck , one of the founders of this new art and literary direction of Germany brought. Together with George Grosz, he organized the first Dada evenings in the Berlin Secession on Kurfürstendamm and was a member of the legendary Club Dada , which included John Heartfield, Erwin Piscator, Walter Mehring and Hannah Höch . Wieland Herzfelde also joined this group and from April to December 1920 even set up a separate department for Dadaist products in his publishing house. He was supposed to bring out a total of nine publications, such as B. the magazine dada 3 and some writings by Huelsenbeck. At the first (and last) international Dada fair in the summer of 1920, the judiciary and Herzfelde clashed again, as the God with us folder exhibited by Grosz represented an “insult to the Reichswehr” for the government. Ultimately, both the publisher and the artist got away with a fine after initially facing a six-week prison sentence. After the exhibition, the Dada movement in Germany gradually ebbed. Above all, the current should bring impulses for the further development of the collage technique and thus also shape the design of the publisher in a lasting manner.

1920-1933

At the beginning of the twenties, the company gradually changed from a magazine to a book publisher . In 1920 the program comprised only nine book titles , a year later it had grown to 23 works . The range of the published content was wide and contained progressive contemporary art, literary and political essay writing as well as scientific treatises, fairy tale books and George Grosz portfolios. A total of six book series were opened in the next few years, including the Small Revolutionary Library , 1920–1923, 12 volumes and the Red Novel Series , 1920–1924, 13 volumes, which covered both domestic and foreign authors. The publishing house soon became the leading edition house for left-wing literature in the Weimar Republic, but it nonetheless had to struggle with a constant shortage of money. This company was also hit by the inflation of those years (the last issue of The Opponent cost 40 marks!), Which would not have survived without the support of various patrons .

For Herzfelde, the question of the relationship between artist and society played a decisive role in the early twenties, which he discussed in detail in his magazine The Opponent under the sequel to Society, Artists and Communism . After the World War, many "artists" hoped for a fundamental intellectual and political reorganization and wanted to take part in it too. The Malik publisher saw art as a concrete weapon with which he wanted to unmask the bourgeoisie and expose their machinations. He was in contact with most of Berlin's painters and writers in one way or another and was thus able to establish connections to publishers directly through personal relationships. Early authors of the house included Martin Andersen Nexø , Karl August Wittfogel , Upton Sinclair , Alexander Blok , John Dos Passos , Oskar Maria Graf and Franz Jung .

1924 was the year of the title record. A total of 30 new publications and eight re-editions should be published, whereby the selection of titles has now been narrowed down. Initially almost all genres found their way into the publisher's directory , but now it should be restricted to international authors , especially Soviet authors . This reshuffle also resulted in the closure of all ranks and the departure of most of the German writers from the program. The publication of art portfolios was also discontinued and plays were only published in connection with editions of works. Herzfelde put his main focus now on artistic literature and limited himself as far as possible to works of fiction. Authors such as Maxim Gorki , Alexander Guidony ( Dizzy ), Wladimir Mayakowski , Marietta Schaginjan and Upton Sinclair now shaped the publisher's profile . The only new series of those years was the Malik library , which existed from 1924 to 1926 and had 20 volumes.

In the same year the publishing house moved from the attic on Kurfürstendamm to Köthener Straße. Another dream came true for the Malik publisher, as the change of location gave him the opportunity to open a bookstore with an attached art gallery ( Grosz Gallery ). However, since the landlords of the apartment quickly found out what kind of company they were accommodating there, Herzfelde and his employees were thrown out of the domicile again in 1925. Since 1926 the publishing house has had its headquarters in Passauer Straße . The Grosz bookstore and gallery could not be continued and the branch in Vienna founded in 1924 had to be closed two years later. The resignation of Julian Gumperz as a business associate, who had joined the publishing house in 1921, again brought the house to the brink of financial ruin.

In the following year, the company's financial position improved as it became a stock corporation. This upward trend continued for the next five years, which was not least thanks to the sophisticated pricing policy of Wieland Herzfeld. The number of permanent employees has also increased from six to ten over the past three years. The publisher's plan, especially to establish authors from the Soviet Union with readers, did not change until 1933. However, at the end of the twenties, more and more German writers were included in the program, here would be Walter Bauer ( voice from the Leunawerk ), Johannes R. Becher , Walter Müller ( When we mention 1918 ), Theodor Plievier or Ludwig Turek , and again brought out some Grosz editions.

Between 1922 and 1929, Wieland Herzfelde took on one of the darkest chapters of the time, namely the resurgence of German militarism and the Reichswehr. At the same time, the first marching steps of the National Socialists were closely observed and then heavily criticized. The fact that the Malik publisher hit the mark with his early premonition was evident not only from the sales figures for the books, but also from the extreme counter-reactions (he received death threats, among other things) that he evoked with his opinion. Hitler's rise to power in 1933 had a direct impact on his publishing house and should make further work in Germany impossible.

The publisher's pricing policy

One of the most important goals of the publishing house was to supply large sections of the population with inexpensive but high-quality books. On the basis of an article by Kurt Tucholsky in the Weltbühne in 1928, a public discussion developed on the question "Is the German book too expensive?" So said Ernst Rowohlt that the average demanded M 8, - were fully justified for a book and substantiated their claim a detailed calculation example. However, Wieland Herzfelde saw it differently and asked the publishers not to calculate any profit from the start, as this could significantly reduce costs. He himself published expensive bibliophile editions, which were intended for a readership with a higher income, in order to support the same title of the inexpensive mass edition. In addition, a planned high circulation had a cost-effective effect on production and it was not uncommon for the prices of Malik books to be below those of financially strong competition. The majority of the editions appeared in up to six variations cover: paperback , cardboard , paperback, half linen , linen and half leather. The cardboard version of Harry Domela's The False Prince (1927) cost M 2.40, while the linen version was M 4.40. With this price philosophy, Herzfelde was not only able to bring his published works to the people, but was also always competitive on the market. He also distinguished himself from the primarily profit-oriented publishers and saw his work only as a means to an end, namely to bring ideas to the people.

Exile and the foundation of the Aurora publishing house

With the rise of National Socialism , the publication of left-wing books becomes more and more difficult. In 1933 the publishing house and its employees as well as many of its authors are driven into exile. Herzfelde only barely escapes the Gestapo grasp and flees to Prague after the Reichstag fire without belongings. 40,000 of his titles stored in Germany were confiscated and burned by the National Socialists along with other works of world literature . Another part was sold abroad for hard currency . When the publisher arrived in Prague, he had only a few publications by Ilja Ehrenburg , Theodor Plievier and Upton Sinclair with him, but in April he began to work again tirelessly. His room, which he shared with his wife and mother-in-law, also served him as an office in which he continued the company until 1939. The aim of the publishing house was now to fight against the brown culture in Germany and thus publicly show the plans of the National Socialists. From September 1933 to 1935 Herzfelde published the magazine Neue Deutsche Blätter , in which he saw his intentions come true. As early as 1934, the Malik-Verlag was deleted from the company register of the city of Berlin and should now be continued under the name Malik-Verlag / Publishing Company London for legal reasons . The exile publishing published in the five years to include texts by Ilya Ehrenburg, Willi Bredel , Oskar Maria Graf , Adam Scharrer and Mikhail Sholokhov .

Shortly before the German troops marched into the Sudetenland in 1938, Herzfelde wanted to publish the complete edition of Bertolt Brecht's previously published works . However, only the first two volumes of the edition could be published because the publisher and his family had to flee from Prague to London at the last minute, where he continued to manage the business for a short time. Before he emigrated to New York in 1939, Brecht's Svendborn poems were the publisher's last new edition .

Aurora logo: a ship sailing towards the (political) dawn

In contrast to his brother John, who stayed in London after fleeing together, Herzfelde traveled to the USA . Perhaps one of his hardest times began here. First he had to keep himself and his family afloat by selling postcards and, among other things, work as a layouter for the left newspaper Friday . He was constantly in need of money and this time could not hope for generous loans from friends. Although he could count on the moral help of old confidants abroad, a continuation of the publishing activity was unthinkable due to the lack of capital. After the unsuccessful attempt to convert the Workers' Community Tribune for Free German Literature , founded in 1941, into a German exile publisher, it was not until 1944 that he succeeded in setting up the Aurora Verlag . Together with Ernst Bloch , Bertolt Brecht , Ferdinand Bruckner , Alfred Döblin , Lion Feuchtwanger , Oskar Maria Graf, Heinrich Mann , Berthold Viertel , Ernst Waldinger and FC Weiskopf , Herzfelde founded the company, of which the former Malik publisher became the managing director. In addition to the goal of giving emigrated writers from Germany a voice, Herzfelde also wanted to publish translations of American books into German in order to bring this literature closer to his compatriots. He developed the layout of all books and the publisher's logo himself. In 1945 the first Aurora volumes appeared, including Furcht und Elend des III. Reiches von Brecht or The Excursion of the Dead Girls and other stories by Anna Seghers . Eleven publications and just two years later, the publisher had to announce its end because the manager was very heavily in debt. With Oskar Maria Graf's unrest over a peacemaker , Wieland Herzfeld's work as a publisher ended, as did the history of the legendary and internationally known publisher. In 1948, the Aufbau-Verlag took over the rights to some of the works of the non-profit company and finally brought out the Aurora library .

After Herzfelde had paid his debts, he returned to Germany in 1949 and took on a professorship at Leipzig University. He lived in East Berlin until his death in 1988.

In the 31 years of its existence, Malik-Verlag (together with Aurora) has added 102 authors to its program, published 262 titles and achieved a total volume of 359 print runs. This makes him one of the largest left-wing publishers that ever existed in Germany.

Publications (selection)

Magazines

  • New youth . Monthly, 1916 to 1917
  • Everyone their own football . Half-monthly publication, February 1919
  • The bankruptcy , bi-monthly publication, February 1919 to January 1920
  • The opponent , political monthly with a satirical section Die Pleite , 1919 to 1922
  • Neue deutsche Blätter , monthly for literature and criticism. September 1933 to August 1935

Publishing series

  • Small revolutionary library . Vol. 1-12. 1920 to 1923
  • Red novel series . Vol. 1-13. 1921 to 1924
  • Collection of revolutionary stage works . Vol. 1-12. 1921 to 1923
  • Below and above . Vol. 1.2. 1922 to 1923
  • The fairy tales of the poor . Vol. 1-4. 1923 to 1924
  • Science and society . Vol. 1-4. 1924
  • Malik library . Vol. 1-20. 1924 to 1926

Novels

  • dos Passos , John: Three soldiers . 1922
  • Sinclair , Upton: One hundred percent (100%). (Translated by Hermynia Zur Mühlen) 1923
  • Frank , Leonhard: The citizen . 1924
  • Ehrenburg , Ilja: The love of Jeanne Ney. (Translated from Waldemar Jollos) 1926
  • Ehrenburg, Ilja: Michail Lykow . (Translated by Hans Ruoff ) 1927
  • Gorky , Maxim: Three people . (Translated by August Scholz) 1926
  • Tolstoy , Leo: Anna Karenina . (Translated by Arthur Luther ) 1928
  • Tolstoy, Leo: War and Peace . (Translated from Erich Boehme) 1928
  • Plivier , Theodor: The emperor left, the generals stayed . 1932
  • Graf , Oskar Maria: The abyss . 1936

Editions of works were published by Upton Sinclair (novels: 1924 to 1925; individual editions 1925 to 1930), Maxim Gorki (1926 to 1930), Ilja Ehrenburg (1927 to 1933), Leo Tolstoy (poems 1928) and Bertolt Brecht (1928).

Historical

  • Müller, Richard : From the Empire to the Republic as No. 3 and 4 of the Science and Society series , 1924/1925.
    • Volume 1: A Contribution to the History of the Revolutionary Labor Movement during the World War .
    • Volume 2: The November Revolution . Malik-Verlag, Vienna 1924, cover design by John Heartfield .

Aurora publications (excerpt)

  • Döblin , Alfred: Winner and Vanquished. A true story . 1946
  • Viertel , Berthold: The curriculum vitae . Poems. 1946
  • Dawn. A reader. 1947

See also

literature

  • Wieland Herzfelde: How a publishing house came into being. In: Das Wort, literary monthly journal , vol. 1, 1936, issue 2, pp. 97-102.
  • Wieland Herzfelde: evergreen, strange experiences and experiences of a happy orphan boy. Aufbau-Verlag , Berlin 1947.
    • also in: Ders., Unterwegs, Blätter aus fifty years , construction, Berlin 1951
  • "Not just the word". The Malik publishing house 1916 to 1947, exhibition catalog of the German Academy of the Arts in Berlin (reprint), KG Saur, Munich 1985, ISBN 3-598-07214-7 [Berlin / Weimar 1967]
  • Ulrich Faure : At the hub of world traffic. Herzfelde, Heartfield, Grosz and Malik-Verlag 1916–1947. Structure, Berlin 1992, ISBN 3-351-02400-2 . (Main source of the article) Cf. Daniela Schmidtke, Jörg Staude: “Not just any book factory”. The journalist Ulrich Faure about the Malik publishing house and left zeitgeist today. In: Neues Deutschland , May 19, 2017, p. 15.
  • Jaames Fraser (Ed.): Malik Verlag - Berlin, Prague, New York. Exhibition catalog. Goethe House, New York 1984
  • Michal Hahnewald: On the cultural-political function of the Malik publishing house 1917–1938. A contribution to the cultural history of the German labor movement. Dissertation at the University of Leipzig in 1984.
  • Jo Hauberg u. a. (Ed.), Der Malik-Verlag, 1916–1947, Chronicle of the publisher. New Malik Verlag , Kiel 1986
  • Frank Hermann: Malik - On the history of a publishing house 1916–1947. Droste, Düsseldorf 1989. ISBN 3-7700-0785-9
  • Ders .: The Malik publishing house 1916–1947. A bibliography. Neuer Malik Verlag, Kiel 1989, ISBN 3-89029-026-4
  • Germaine Stucki-Volz: The Malik publishing house and the book market of the Weimar Republic. Lang, Bern a. a. 1993, ISBN 3-906751-49-X (also dissertation at the University of Zurich 1992).
  • George Wyland-Herzfelde: I was lucky. Memories. 1925-1949. Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-423-24329-5 .

exhibition

The exhibition Kabinett Malik was on view from April 3 to May 28, 2017 in the nd building (Franz-Mehring-Platz 1) in Berlin.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Michael Bienert: With Brecht through Berlin. ISBN 3-458-33869-1 , 1998, pp. 62-64.
  2. ↑ A third volume with the title The Civil War in Germany. Birth pangs of the republic appeared in 1925 in Berlin's Phöbus-Verlag. All three works have recently been reprinted in one volume: Richard Müller: A History of the November Revolution. Verlag Die Buchmacherei , Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-00-035400-7 .
  3. ↑ heartfiled-grosz.berlin