Merlin publishing house

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Andreas Meyer Verlags GmbH & Co. KG

logo
legal form GmbH & Co. KG
founding 1957
Seat Gifkendorf
management Katharina Eleonore Meyer
Branch publishing company
Website www.merlin-verlag.de

The Merlin Publishing is an independent German publishing house whose program includes both published books and stage plays and graphics. It was founded in 1957 by Andreas J. Meyer and has been one of the most important small publishers in Germany ever since.

Andreas J. Meyer, founder of Merlin Verlag

In 1984 Merlin Verlag received the first "ZEIT Prize for Smaller Publishers" and in 2000 the Lower Saxony Publishing Prize. In 2019 Andreas J. Meyer was awarded the Kurt Wolff Prize .

The publishing house is located in Gifkendorf , a district of Vastorf , near Lüneburg .

The publisher Andreas J. Meyer

Andreas J. Meyer receives the Kurt Wolff Prize 2019

Andreas J. Meyer was born on December 18, 1927 in Hamburg. His father, the liberal Hamburg District Court President R. J. Meyer, was forced into retirement in 1933 and removed as chairman of the Hamburger Kunstverein . His mother Lilly was a pianist.

Meyer completed an apprenticeship as a publishing bookseller. He then traveled for a year and a half as supervisor of a book exhibition organized by the Brazilian Goethe Society and the Frankfurt Stock Exchange in Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina. He later decided to study art history, sociology and political science in Hamburg, which he financed through his work at Chronos Bühnenverlag . Because avant-garde playwrights were not accepted by Chronos, he began to work independently as a stage publisher. On November 30, 1957, he finally officially founded Merlin Verlag as a stage publisher in Hamburg.

history

Beginnings

One of the first authors was Jean Genet , whose plays The Maids , Under Supervision , The Balcony and The Walls quickly became a great success and were played in numerous German theaters. At the end of the 1950s, Jean Genet offered Merlin Verlag a novel for the first time: Notre-Dame-des-Fleurs . The publication of this book in 1960 triggered one of the most important literary trials in post-war Germany.

The Notre-Dame-des-Fleurs trial

In 1958 Jean Genet traveled to Hamburg for the first time to visit Merlin Verlag (the publisher's headquarters until the 1980s). Here Genet offered the novel Notre-Dames-des-Fleurs to the publisher Andreas J. Meyer . In 1958 the contract was signed with Gallimard in Paris, the book was published in 1960. Soon an investigation under Section 184 of the Criminal Code was initiated against the publisher for “disseminating lewd writings”. As early as 1956, Rowohlt Verlag had been confronted with similar proceedings because of the publication of Jean Genet's Querelle de Brest and had compared itself with the public prosecutor's office. However, Andreas J. Meyer went to court.

On July 31, 1962, the verdict was pronounced. The Bild newspaper wrote on August 1, 1962: “The dock remained empty because the accused was - a book! The Hamburg district court had to decide in a fundamental judgment that was important for the whole of Germany: Is the now world-famous novel 'Notre-Dame-des-Fleurs' lewd? The public prosecutor had applied for the destruction of all copies still on the market and the printing set ... The following experts were called in: The two literary experts Willy Haas from the 'Welt', Prof. Sieburg from the 'Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung' and Dr. Giese, director of the Sexology Institute at the University of Hamburg. The judgment of the experts was unanimous! The book is objectively teeming with profanity, but for an intelligent reader it would be saved by the very high artistic value of the novel. ”The process ended with an acquittal for the book, as it did not offend the taste of the literarily educated citizen.

Controversial books

After the controversy over the plays and novels by Jean Genet, the focus of the publishing house in the years that followed continued to be on the publication of controversial authors who wanted to be heard outside the mainstream. Without committing to certain political or aesthetic camps, Merlin Verlag designed a program that primarily spoke of the liberal mindset of its operators. Fundamental to this was the conviction that unpleasant spirits must also be noticed by the public.

The study edition of the books of the Marquis de Sade , published since 1962, was one of the first scientifically sound discussions with this author, who was so influential in modern times.

The Norwegian Jens Bjørneboe was the symbol of a rebellious spirit in his homeland. His novel Naked in a Shirt was banned as pornographic in Germany in 1971, as it had been in Norway before. In contrast, the novel trilogy History of Human Bestiality , consisting of The Moment of Freedom , Powder Tower and Stille (the latter was published by anyway Verlag ), established him as one of the most important Scandinavian authors of his generation.

Louis-Ferdinand Céline is one of the most controversial French authors of the 20th century. With The Church and Letters and First Writings from Africa , Merlin Verlag presented important preparatory work for Céline's main work The Journey to the End of the Night , in order to provide a more detailed insight into the literary work and personality of the author.

The book I ate the white Chinese by Duca di Centigloria dealt with the topic of cannibalism in the most unusual way : The novel was written from the perspective of two ogre and at the same time sketched a cultural history of this phenomenon. To this end, the publisher, in cooperation with the artist group Die Rixdorfer, organized an unusual advertising campaign: At the Frankfurt Book Fair, visitors to an elaborate publisher's reception were offered a human-shaped meat pie.

In 1967 Merlin Verlag published Georges Bataille's study on Gilles de Rais , the life and trial of a child murderer , which reconstructs the circumstances of these occult serial murders based on secular and ecclesiastical court records and develops a philosophy of crime from them.
Once again, the publisher's advertising campaign with the help of “Rixdorfer” caused a sensation: small busts of a child's head that had been cut off were enclosed with the review copies.

New German literature

At the end of the 1960s, the publisher tried to produce the latest German literature, partly in collaboration with the then literary editor of the Hessischer Rundfunk and influential critic Jürgen Manthey (who later became Rowohlt's chief editor and professor of literature at the University of Essen). For example, in 1969, edited by Manthey, Fred Viebahn's first novel , The Black Doves , which the Darmstadt jury voted for the “Book of the Month” in November 1969, was propagated as a “Beatroman” . Viebahn's second novel, Das Haus Che , was edited by the publisher Meyer himself, but was only published at the Frankfurt Book Fair in 1973 because of the publisher's financial difficulties in the cheapest paperback typescript, after Meyer wrote an open letter to Viebahn under the title Fred, ich kann Dein Buch had not published in the Börsenblatt; In this letter Meyer complained above all about the financial squeeze of smaller publishers. In 1975 the Merlin Theaterverlag produced Viebahn's play Blutsschwestern as a stage script; it was premiered in 1976 at the Torturmtheater Sommerhausen by Veit Relin and saw well over a hundred performances.

graphic

In the late 1960s, the publisher began to establish a permanent part of the program with graphics, often in connection with literary works.

The provocative group of “Rixdorfer” artists had been associated with the publishing house for a long time, had designed covers and designed advertising campaigns. Merlin later published bibliophile editions with numerous illustrations by the artists, for example Karol Kroepke's Bürgerliche Gedichte with 34 drawings by Arno Waldschmidt , Johannes Vennekamp's 13 color etchings for the 120 days of Sodom by the Marquis de Sade as well as a picture calendar and exhibition catalogs.

The illustrator and author Horst Janssen contributed to the profile of the publisher with the illustrated autobiography Hinkepott and illustrated fairy tales (for example Paul Wolf & The Seven Kids ).

The work of Johannes Grützke , who was later to paint the mural The procession of the people's representatives for the Paulskirche in Frankfurt, was published by Merlin from the end of the 1970s. These include the volume Kunzes Freunde, 14 drawings and 14 poems and a special edition on Tod am Wannsee by Henning Boëtius with 10 original lithographs .

On the 5th anniversary of Louis Armstrong's death in 1976, Merlin Verlag developed a very special homage to the "King of Jazz": a cassette with ten graphics by artists such as Horst Antes , Uwe Bremer , Dieter Rot and Peter Nagel , together with a ten-plate Set of the Deutsche Grammophon-Gesellschaft. Three years later, the successful concept was taken up again and a folder was put together for Udo Lindenberg with twelve original graphics and five LPs. Artists this time were among others Johannes Grützke and Wilfried Blecher . The folk song folder Wem Gott wants to show right art also followed this principle, with two LPs by Abbi Hübner and the Low Down Wizards as well as twelve graphics. Among the artists was Janosch for the first time , who until now had mainly appeared as a children's book author and illustrator.

The collaboration with Janosch

The publisher Andreas J. Meyer saw Janosch for the first time in 1976 in the ZDF telecast literary circus . The artist's provocative appearance, who answered every question stereotypically with “I am the Janosch!”, Made an impression on Meyer. When Merlin Verlag wanted to publish a folksong graphic edition shortly afterwards, Meyer also got in touch with Janosch. He was ready to take part, but saw a problem: he had never made an etching. Andreas J. Meyer arranged a contact to the printer Max Dunckes , whereupon not only the contribution to the folk song folder, but also a first Janosch edition ( lovers and wedding stories ) was created. A large number of etchings for adults followed later, as well as a novel ( Sandy Beach ) and two plays ( Back to Uskow and Mutterglück ), which, in addition to the children's books, make up an independent part of Janosch's work.

ZEIT Prize 1984

Rolf Michaels wrote about this on October 5, 1984 in the ZEIT: “[...] To be praised most highly at the big publisher of a 'small publishing house': Meyer, like not many, remained loyal to authors. He has published books for over a decade, not because he could sell them, but wanted to - and because he thought they were important [...]. "

Lower Saxony Publishing Prize 2000

From the speech at the award ceremony by Robin Detje, given on October 10, 2000 in Hanover: “And we know that Merlin-Meyer and Merlin Verlag raged in the country in a splendid manner and litigated and fought, all of this is legend. By the way, everyone who came close to him seems to have gotten a few scratches [...]. And praise the scrapes and scratches and the people who stand in our way so that we get some. "

50th anniversary of the publishing house

In 2007 Merlin Verlag experienced the fiftieth year of its existence. In the meantime a generation change had taken place. The founder of the publishing house, Andreas J. Meyer, passed the management on to his daughter Katharina Eleonore Meyer. The programmatic focus on the unconventional, often also the inconvenient, has been retained and will be continued with new and well-known authors.

Program focus

Jean Genet work edition

Around 40 years after the German book edition of Notre-Dame-des-Fleurs was first published , Merlin Verlag began to publish Jean Genet's novels, poems, dramas, essays and writings in a uniformly designed, multi-volume work edition. For the first time, the integral text versions were presented, which are based on the first editions from the 1940s. This also made the deletions of the texts, which Genet had made for the publications in the 1950s, accessible. The former lines of the author are discreetly marked in the versions of these new editions and are intended to give the reader the opportunity for a new literary examination of the work of the French poet and playwright. An editorial note by Friedrich Flemming and an afterword on the edition history of the respective individual work are attached to each volume. The intent illustrations were designed by the Hamburg artist Martin Bronsema .

Library de Sade

The library comprises a total of eleven individual titles by the Marquis de Sade in new translations. In addition to the main works by de Sades, Justine or the misfortune of virtue and philosophy in the boudoir , among other things, Crimes of Love , an anthology of his shorter writings and various special editions were published. With the “Bibliothek de Sade”, for the first time since the 1960s, an insight into the work of this controversial author was made possible on over 4,000 pages, going beyond the enthusiastic editions of the turn of the century.

The Rixdorfer

The Rixdorfer Drucke workshop was founded in 1963 in a backyard in Berlin under the patronage of the Berlin poet Günter Bruno Fuchs . It consists of Uwe Bremer , Albert Schindehütte , Johannes Vennekamp and Arno Waldschmidt . Over the years, new typographies and woodcuts were created in the printer's workshop, which dealt with the political and cultural life of Germany and represented an avant-garde function for subsequent press printers. Merlin has published numerous works by the artist group Werkstatt Rixdorfer Drucke, including the catalog raisonné, as well as individual works by the four Rixdorfer printers.

Merlin's magic series

The aim of this series, founded in the 1960s, is to convey scientifically founded knowledge about religions, magical practices and philosophies of life that are foreign or long-forgotten to us. The authors are equally recognized cultural scientists from the fields of folklore , history , archeology and ethnology . The most important publications include Sergius Golowin's The Magic of Forbidden Fairy Tales and Thomas Hauschild's Magic and Power in Italy .

Stage sales

In the first few years after the founding of the publishing house, stage sales represented the most important field of activity of the Merlin publishing house. The publishing house quickly succeeded in winning over the dramas by Jean Genet , whose performances by directors such as Peter Zadek and Peter Stein were accompanied by scandals more than once to establish itself in the German-speaking theater landscape. The Ibsen translations by Georg Schulte-Frohlinde were also very well received by theaters and audiences and were often performed.

In the following years, however, book publishing came to the fore until stage sales gradually regained importance in the mid-1990s thanks to well-respected authors such as John von Düffel and Janosch . Today, both German-speaking and international playwrights shape the profile of stage sales. These include Thilo Reffert , Carles Batlle , Marie NDiaye and Claire Dowie .

New authors

Numerous new authors have shaped the publishing program in recent years. The Algerian Boualem Sansal ( The Oath of the Barbarians ) describes the social reality in an Islamic country with baroque language rage and is confronted with multiple hostilities and threats due to its openness - and in 2011 the winner of the peace prize of the German book trade .

The publisher is continuing the “Merlin Debut” series with Olivier Py's novel Paradise of Sadness . In it, Py's hero goes in search of God in a dark room. Antje Babendererde stands in the tradition of German-language literature about the Indians of North America. In doing so, she questions the clichéd notions of the “good” or “bad” Indian by describing the current living conditions in the reservations (for example in the novel Wundes Land ).

Other projects: Little Tiger Verlag

Inspired by Janosch , the Little Tiger Verlag was founded in Hamburg in 1987 on the initiative of Andreas J. Meyer (Merlin Verlag) together with Thomas Huggle (Dressler publishing group). It summarizes the production and distribution of Janosch's non-book paper articles. The wooden tigerents and the series of Little Tiger books were later added to the postcards, calendars, posters, bookmarks, etc. Since the end of the 90s, Little Tiger Verlag has also been committed to young up-and-coming artists such as Gabriele Altevers and Vitali Konstantinov .

literature

  • Double anniversary - homage for the publisher Andreas J. Merlin-Meyer on the occasion of his 70th birthday and 40 years of Merlin Verlag . Merlin, Gifkendorf 1997, ISBN 3-926112-82-4 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Kurt Wolff Prize goes to Merlin publisher Andreas J. Meyer, sponsorship prize to edition.fotoTapeta , buchmarkt.de, published and accessed on December 13, 2018
  2. ^ Andreas J. Meyer (85) Book Market , December 18, 2012
  3. ↑ Publishers: Gifkendorfer Sorceress . In: FAZ.NET of July 4, 2005. Retrieved July 12, 2011.