Manesse Publishing House

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Manesse Publishing House
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founding   1944
Seat   Munich , Germany
publisher   Thomas Rathnow
Publisher number   7175
Publishing group   Random House
genus   classical literature
Website   www.randomhouse.de

The Manesse Verlag is a German publishing house for classical literature, 1944 in Zurich was founded and today the Random House publishing group based in Munich belongs. The publisher is best known for its library of world literature , but today also publishes first and new translations of classical works outside of this series. Manesse is headed by Horst Lauinger.

history

Walther Meier founded Manesse Verlag in Zurich in 1944. He had already approached the printing house Conzett & Huber two years earlier to discuss his idea of ​​a “world literary library” for classical literature . The name of the publisher was based on the Codex Manesse .

The most extensive library of world literature , in which almost 700 titles were presented by 2017, was launched by Manesse Verlag in 1944 with three books: Goethe in conversation (edited by Eduard Korrodi ), Moby Dick by Herman Melville (in translation by Fritz Güttinger ) and Fürst Serebriany by Alexej K. Tolstoy .

In the mid-1950s, the 100th volume of the Manesse Library of World Literature was published with the title Deutsche Lyrik des Mittelalters by Max Wehrli , and in 1963 the 200th volume of Dante Alighieri's Die divine Comedy (translated by Ida and Walther von Wartburg, commented by Walther von Wartburg, with 48 illustrations by Gustave Doré), in 1976 as the 300th volume Fables from Three Millennia (selection and afterword by Reinhard Dithmar, with 23 woodcuts, 16 of them colored), 1996 with German love poetry from eight centuries (edited and with an afterword by Friedhelm Kemp ) the 500th volume and in 2004 with Henry Fieldings Tom Jones the 600th volume. Many of the volumes in this series, which incidentally have no count, have been provided with illustrations. In 2017, the series was continued with the same format and noticeably changed equipment (see below), this year Tania Blixen's Beyond Africa was published as volume 700.

From 1984 to 1997 the historical series Manesse Library of World History was published (in a somewhat larger format, but small octave), from 1987 to 2008 the Manesse Library , in whose narrow cardboard volumes shorter texts were published (there were 58 editions in 1996; the following were not numbered on the envelope more).

After Walther Meier had handed over the management of the publishing house to Federico Hindermann in the early 1970s, Conzett & Huber parted completely with Manesse in 1983. The publishing house became an independent company and was taken over by the Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt .

After the turn of the millennium, Horst Lauinger succeeded Anne Marie Wells as head of the publishing house. In September 2005 it was announced that the Random House publishing group wanted to take over the book publishers of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , which included Manesse, DVA and Kösel-Verlag . According to media reports, the purchase price was in the lower double-digit million range. Observers classified the transaction as a "late consequence of the newspaper crisis", and publishers from competing companies warned against further concentration of the industry. In particular, it was feared that the diversity of the German book market would be endangered. The Random House publishing group took over all shares in Manesse Verlag GmbH and was thus the sole shareholder . Today Manesse is a programmatically and publically independent publisher of the company, the corresponding company was deleted from the commercial register.

Program and equipment

"A question of guilt" (2008)

Manesse Verlag is regarded as a classic publisher that mainly publishes new and first-time translations. The publisher has published works by authors such as Jane Austen , Herman Bang , Tania Blixen , Elizabeth Gaskell , Eduard von Keyserling , Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis , Nezāmi , Italo Svevo and Tanizaki Jun'ichirō .

Apart from the Manesse Library (designed from 1987 to 2008 as narrow cardboard volumes in an illustrated dust jacket) and the Library of World History , the primary series Library of World Literature published almost 700 volumes in small octave format from 1944 to 2017, many of which were reprinted.

The offer was balanced between German-language literature and world literature, which made many authors who were hardly noticed in this country well known. The novels were joined by anthologies by individual authors ( master novels , master narratives ) and, since 1976, anthologies on selected topics (fables, anecdotes, poems, Christmas, children, animals, islands, dreams, ships, angels, gardens, etc.). Basic texts such as the Edda , Legenda Aurea or Apocrypha were mostly published in excerpts; The compilation of the words of the Lord (1948) were reissued as Words of Jesus after the most recent Zurich edition in 2007 (2009).

Country-specific text collections such as German storytellers of the 20th century (1994, 2 vol., Edited by Marcel Reich-Ranicki ) were strongly represented .

The publisher achieved greater notoriety in 2001 with a bloody deed, a fraud and a bond for life by Mark Twain . The story was published in a translation by Frank Heibert and an afterword by Georg Klein at the same time as the American original. The publisher's better-known works also include Sofja Andrejewna Tolstajas A Question of Guilt and 101 Nights .

For the 40th, 50th and 60th anniversary of the publishing house, an almanac with selected texts and bibliography was published in the same format as the other volumes (see below); For the 70th anniversary of the publishing house, a chronological index of all books published 1944–2014 was compiled, which takes into account all series (2014, only as a file, see below).

Some more extensive texts by authors such as Hugo, Dostojewski, Nietzsche, Knigge, Sterne were allowed a larger format (or as a Corona series , which corresponded to the size of the library of world history ), which was still more manageable than usual book trade editions. For a long time, in addition to the linen ribbon, a leather-bound edition with a top gold cut was an integral part of the offer, which was maintained for years.

Until 2016 (partly still in 2017) all volumes of the Library of World Literature and the Library of World History (the latter only in the larger 'Corona' format) were produced on thin printing paper, thread-sewn, bound in linen and mostly provided with a bookmark . The name of the author and the book title were usually embossed in gold on the book spine . Each volume contains an afterword by a contemporary author, literary critic or literary scholar . The primary library of world literature series underwent a massive change in its visual appearance in 2017. The last volume in the usual dignified, high-quality equipment (fabric cover with two-tone cover and picture placed on the front) was Fürstinnen von Eduard von Keyserling (2017). That same year, Baudelaire's wine and hashish appeared in a different set; In this and the following volumes, the conservative uniformity of the series has been abandoned in favor of individual design. The leather editions offered at the same time ceased to exist a little earlier - since 2008 at the latest, not every volume has been offered in leather; In 2009, ISBNs for leather volumes are no longer listed in the printed programs.

literature

Publications of the publisher with bibliographies:

  • Manesse Almanac to the 40th year of publishing . Manesse, Zurich 1984, ISBN 3-7175-1680-9 , DNB .
  • Manesse Almanac to the 50th year of publishing . Manesse, Zurich 1994, ISBN 3-7175-1864-X , DNB .
  • The happiness of reading and being read . Manesse, Zurich 2004, ISBN 3-7175-2052-0 , DNB .
  • Manesse Almanac for the 70th year of publishing - Chronological index of all books published 1944-2014 . Manesse, Zurich 2014, ISBN 978-3-641-15165-2 , only published as pdf [1] .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Thomas Rathnow restructures the Penguin division. Wolfgang Ferchl in future "Publisher at large". In: Book Market. March 9, 2017. Retrieved June 18, 2018 .
  2. ↑ Address book for the German-speaking book trade. Marketing and publishing service for the book trade , accessed on January 18, 2016 .
  3. ^ History of the Manesse publishing house. Random House Publishing Group, accessed September 17, 2018 .
  4. ^ Rolf Hochhuth: History to read . In: The time . January 25, 1985 ( zeit.de [accessed June 16, 2014]).
  5. ↑ Manesse Verlag. Random House Publishing Group, accessed September 17, 2018 .
  6. ↑ a b Christoph Schröder: Suddenly the canon started to dance. In: Zeit Online. March 8, 2013, accessed June 16, 2014 .
  7. ↑ On the happiness of reading and being read . Manesse, Zurich 2004, ISBN 3-7175-2052-0 , p. 12 .
  8. ↑ On the happiness of reading and being read . Manesse, Zurich 2004, ISBN 3-7175-2052-0 , p. 255 .
  9. ↑ On the happiness of reading and being read . Manesse, Zurich 2004, ISBN 3-7175-2052-0 , p. 13 .
  10. ↑ On the happiness of reading and being read . Manesse, Zurich 2004, ISBN 3-7175-2052-0 , p. 256 .
  11. ↑ Manesse greets Fielding with his 600th volume. In: Börsenblatt. September 22, 2004, accessed July 31, 2014 .
  12. ↑ On the happiness of reading and being read . Manesse, Zurich 2004, ISBN 3-7175-2052-0 , p. 258 .
  13. ↑ Change at Manesse . In: Der Bund , October 6, 2000, p. 8
  14. ↑ Random House takes over DVA. In: Börsenblatt. September 13, 2005, accessed June 16, 2014 .
  15. ↑ Hans-Peter Siebenhaar: Random House buys book publishers from the FAZ . In: Handelsblatt Online . September 14, 2005.
  16. ↑ Joachim Güntner: An industry's growing pressures . In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung . September 23, 2005, p. 44 .
  17. ↑ DVA sales: Publishers warn against concentration . In: The world . September 15, 2005, p. 28 .
  18. ↑ Thomas Maier: Publishing mergers endanger diversity . In: Nürnberger Nachrichten . September 16, 2005.
  19. ↑ a b Central company index. In: Commercial Register of the Canton of Zurich. Retrieved September 17, 2018 (company number CHE-101.583.585).
  20. ↑ Our publishers. Random House Publishing Group, accessed September 17, 2018 .
  21. ↑ On the happiness of reading and being read . In: Manesse Library of World Literature . Manesse, Zurich 2004, ISBN 3-7175-2052-0 , p. 263 ff . (Chronological directory).
  22. ^ Catalog of the German National Library. Retrieved July 4, 2014 .
  23. ↑ On the happiness of reading and being read . Manesse, Zurich 2004, ISBN 3-7175-2052-0 , p. 260 .
  24. ↑ Karla Hielscher :: A life at Tolstoy's side. In: Deutschlandfunk. August 6, 2009, accessed July 30, 2014 .
  25. ↑ 101 night. In: Zeit Online. Retrieved July 21, 2014 .
  26. ^ Jochen Kürten: Comeback of linen and ribbon bookmarks. In: Deutsche Welle. November 22, 2013, accessed July 30, 2014 .
  27. ↑ In the printing and bindery. (No longer available online.) Random House Publishing Group, archived from the original on August 8, 2014 ; Retrieved July 30, 2014 . Info: The archive link was 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.randomhouse.de
  28. ↑ Books AZ. Random House Publishing Group, accessed September 17, 2018 .

Coordinates: 48 ° 7 ′ 55 ″  N , 11 ° 37 ′ 18 ″  E