Military publisher of the German Democratic Republic

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Signet of the military publisher of the GDR from 1972 to 1990

The military publishing house of the German Democratic Republic in Berlin (East) was a state publisher in the GDR , in which mainly military science , military history and military technical books and magazines were published, but also fiction and memoirs.

history

The publishing house emerged from the publications department of the Ministry of the Interior of the GDR, which, after being merged with the publishing house for specialist police literature, worked as a publishing house for the barracked people's police from December 1955 . This was renamed on May 25, 1956 by order of the Ministry for National Defense (MfNV) in Verlag der Ministry for National Defense based in Berlin , from August 16, 1960 it was called Deutscher Militärverlag (DMV). The name was changed to the Military Publishing House of the German Democratic Republic (VEB) on June 1, 1973. The publishing house was officially an NVA company with the legal status of a state- owned company , which was subordinate to the political main administration of the Ministry of National Defense. The civilian employees were civilian employees of the National People's Army . In 1989 the publishing house had 430 employees, around 100 of whom were NVA officers.

Even before the German reunification , the publishing house was divided into two GmbHs on June 29, 1990 . While the former military photo service was continued by the Fotag company as a spin-off of former employees, the book publisher was given the new name Brandenburgisches Verlagshaus and entered into a sales cooperation with the publishing house Mittler & Sohn, which specializes in militaria . The sale to the Maximilian media group in Herford, to which Mittler & Sohn belongs, which had already been agreed and was planned for October 1991, surprisingly failed on September 11, 1991 when the Treuhandanstalt sold the publishing house to a Nuremberg company to all parties involved. The remnants of the subsequently strongly shrunk publishing house came under the umbrella of the Dornier publishing group in 1993 as Brandenburgische Verlagshaus GmbH . The publishing history ended there in 1998 after the program was discontinued and the last two employees were dismissed. In the Siegler Verlag, to which the naming rights had gone, books occasionally still appeared under the imprint of Brandenburgisches Verlagshaus. After the Siegler Verlag was merged with Edition Lempertz in 2003, the name Brandenburgisches Verlagshaus was retained. Under this, primarily military historical writings are still published and distributed.

The military publishing house was acquired in November 2009 in equal parts by the publishers Matthias Oehme ( Das Neue Berlin ) and Frank Schumann ( edition ost ) with all rights. Under the umbrella of the Eulenspiegel publishing group , books will appear from autumn 2010 under the label “Militärverlag”. The publishing activities are concentrated on four fields: new editions of works from the publishing house production 1956–1990, reflection on the history of the NVA and Warsaw Pact , regional military history and the journalistic discussion of the military policy of the Federal Republic of Germany and NATO.

The "return of the publishing house to its former location" was welcomed by former leading GDR military officials, including former Defense Minister Theodor Hoffmann , in a statement on March 1, 2010.

Publishing program

The program included military and military technical literature, newspapers and magazines.

Periodicals

The following magazines and newspapers were published by the publisher:

Books

In addition, books on military-historical topics and memoirs of leading military figures were published. Likewise, fiction on military topics and literature that can be used for propaganda to strengthen the “socialist combat and defense consciousness” were an integral part of the publishing house's program. The military publisher also published science fiction , which was called utopian literature in the GDR . Technical non-fiction literature without direct military reference was published on topics of applied electronics , in particular microelectronics and microcomputer technology , and space travel . The publisher's book and booklet series included:

Military fonts
  • Army and technology
  • Military science essays
  • Popular science library
  • Service regulation
  • Introduction to ballistics
  • Memories from the Second World War and the anti-fascist resistance struggle
  • Military education and training
  • The young radio operator
  • Guns in workers' hands
  • Fighting Art
  • Series of publications on air protection
  • Little military story
  • Military policy
  • Illustrated series for the type collector
  • Wars after 1945
Fiction
  • Narrator series (began in 1958 with the first booklet Das Assentat by Wolfgang Schreyer)
  • Small series of narrators (began in 1960 with issue 30 as a continuation of the series of brochures by Verlag Sport und Technik )
  • The paperback (from 1969)
  • Facts (from 1961)

swell

  1. ^ Börsenblatt for the German book trade, January 7, 1956.
  2. ↑ Klaus Feder, Jürgen Wagner, Ralf Swoboda: Military badges of the German Democratic Republic. Military Publishing House of the GDR, Berlin 1988, ISBN 3-327-00523-0 , p. 68.
  3. ↑ Neues Deutschland from March 1, 2010, "Military Publishing Back"
  4. ↑ Cf. Bibliography 10 Years of German Military Publishers 1956–1966, compiled and edited by R.-Dieter Burgdorff, Berlin 1966, pp. 163–164.
  5. ↑ Cf. Bibliography 10 Years of the German Military Publishing House 1956–1966, compiled and edited by R.-Dieter Burgdorff, Berlin 1966, pp. 127–159.

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