Olaf Paeschke

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Olaf Paeschke (born March 13, 1937 , † May 2, 2004 in Naples , Florida ) was a publisher and manager of the Bertelsmann publishing group .

Life

Olaf Paeschke was the son of the publisher Gustav Paeschke, who took over the Axel Juncker Verlag, Stuttgart / Berlin, in 1937, the year his son was born, and continued it successfully as a foreign language publisher. When Gustav Paeschke died in 1963, Olaf Paeschke took over the management of the company.

In the early 1970s, Paeschke moved from Stuttgart-Sillenbuch to Munich-Solln to work as a managing director for Bertelsmann-Verlag. In 1972, he and a group of younger German writers founded the Bertelsmann offshoot AutorEdition as a model experiment for publishing with practiced author participation - an idea of ​​the writer Uwe Friesel and Bertelsmann publishing director Andreas Hopf . This branch publishing house remained in deficit, however, and Paeschke, as managing director, had to add some 100,000 DM every year . There was also trouble from 1974 with the authors Bernt Engelmann and Peter O. Chotjewitz : When Engelmann published the factual novel Großes Bundesverdienstkreuz in 1974 in the author's edition, in which he attributed Franz Josef Strauss , Hans Martin Schleyer and others to a “legal cartel” burdened with a National Socialist past , Bertelsmann declined legal responsibility for the book and withdrew her name from the copyright notice. The conflict over the new novel by Chotjewitz, however, could no longer be defused. The dispute over the publication of his novel The Lords of Dawn , in which Chotjewitz processed experiences from the terrorist trials against the Red Army Faction , finally led to the termination of the contract with the authors' edition in 1978. Overall, the ambitious program concept of the AutorEdition was not accepted by the readership.

In 1976 there was a dispute in the publishing house management between the publishing director Andreas Hopf, who had won authors such as Heinar Kipphardt , Max von der Grün and Franz Josef Degenhardt for Bertelsmann, and the managing director Olaf Paeschke about future, more commercially oriented program development. Due to irreconcilable differences of opinion, Hopf left the publishing house, although Paeschke continued to maintain the literary profile at Bertelsmann and promised not to impose any economic constraints on the authors' edition. Nonetheless, given some expensive prestige titles, the Bertelsmann youth book program, according to Paeschke, tended to have to be more economically oriented.

Through the agency of the actor Hardy Krüger , the then Federal Chancellor Helmut Schmidt contacted Olaf Paeschke on July 4, 1982 to discuss a book by Schmidt. Paeschke immediately signaled great interest in a volume of memoirs by the highly prominent politician. Manfred Lahnstein later took over negotiations with Schmidt. But only after the social-liberal coalition had lost power in October 1982 and Schmidt was voted out of office, preparations began for this book project, which Siedler Verlag , which has been part of the Bertelsmann Group since 1983, published in 1986 under the title A Strategy for the West . This was followed in 1987 by Schmidt's next book Menschen und Mächte in the same publishing house.

On the fiftieth anniversary of the seizure of power by Adolf Hitler , a series about the supposed Hitler diaries was to start in the magazine Stern . Bertelsmann boss Gerd Schulte-Hillen and Olaf Paeschke as managing director of the Munich publishing group Bertelsmann met on June 4, 1983 in order to optimally market this secret project, in order to market Hitler as a bestselling author at home and abroad at the Bertelsmann subsidiary Bantam Books in the USA. Since only months later the Hitler diaries were exposed as a forgery by Konrad Kujau , no book was published.

Gert Frederking , the head of Goldmann-Taschenbuch-Verlag , was ultimately confronted in 1984 by the publishing managers Ulrich Wechsler and Olaf Paeschke, the most successful strategists in the Bertelsmann company in recent years, with the plan to expand the management concept at Goldmann with Jürgen Kreuzhage , who has been with the group since 1981, to appoint a second managing director. As a result, Frederking resigned in 1984 and Kreuzhage was the sole managing director of Goldmann Verlag from then on.

In his role as Chairman , Olaf Paeschke directed the fortunes of Bertelsmann's publishing houses in the USA until he left. He died after a long illness on May 2, 2004 in Naples, Florida.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Olaf Paeschke (1937-2004). Olaf Paeschke Biography. In: ancientfaces.com. Retrieved January 18, 2020 .
  2. ↑ Obituary in: Börsenblatt. Weekly magazine for the German book trade. Issue 20/2004 of May 13, 2004, p. 102.
  3. ↑ a b c Olaf Paeschke (67). In: buchmarkt.de . May 4, 2004, accessed January 18, 2020 .
  4. ^ Axel Juncker Jacobi KG Verlag . In: Curt Vinz, Günter Olzog (Hrsg.): Documentation of German-language publishers . 8th edition edition. Günter Olzog Verlag, Munich / Vienna 1983, ISBN 3-7892-9855-7 , 8352.
  5. ↑ a b c Wanted a scandal? Bertelsmann's most famous piece, the “Authors Edition”, has been exposed - in the conflict about a novel that is also about friendship with a terrorist . In: Der Spiegel . No. 32/1978 , August 7, 1978, publishers, p. 135–137 ( spiegel.de [PDF; 309 kB ; accessed on January 18, 2020]).
  6. ↑ a b Publishers: Trend reversal at Bertelsmann . In: Der Spiegel . No. 23/1976 , May 31, 1976, scene, p. 190 .
  7. ↑ Sebastian Hammelehle: On the death of Peter O. Chotjewitz. It all started in a lesbian bar. In: spiegel.de. December 15, 2010, accessed January 18, 2020 .
  8. ^ Thomas Lehning: The media house. Past and present of the Bertelsmann group . Wilhelm Fink Verlag, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-7705-4035-2 , Chapter 6.3.2 Concept of the Bertelsmann Publishing Group, p. 90–94 , here p. 91 .
  9. ^ Thomas Karlauf : Helmut Schmidt. The late years . 1st edition. Siedler Verlag, Munich 2016, ISBN 978-3-8275-0076-2 , Part I. Years of Restraint (1982–1990), Chapter 6: No Memoirs ?, p. 183–304 , here p. 183 f .
  10. ^ Siedler Verlag . In: Curt Vinz, Günter Olzog (Hrsg.): Documentation of German-language publishers . 8th edition edition. Günter Olzog Verlag, Munich / Vienna 1983, ISBN 3-7892-9855-7 , 8628.
  11. ↑ Michael Seufert: The scandal about the Hitler diaries . “Clarify the matter regardless of the person. You have a free hand. "(=  Fischer . No. 17682 ). Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt a. M. 2011, ISBN 978-3-596-17682-3 , The Flight of Peace of Rudolf Hess, p. 162–170 , here p. 166 .
  12. ^ Wilhelm Goldmann Verlag GmbH. In: Curt Vinz, Günter Olzog (Hrsg.): Documentation of German-language publishers . 8th edition edition. Günter Olzog Verlag, Munich / Vienna 1983, ISBN 3-7892-9855-7 , 8069.
  13. ↑ Erika Martens: Manager and Markets. In: zeit.de . January 27, 1984, p. 2 , accessed January 18, 2020 .
personal data
SURNAME Paeschke, Olaf
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German publisher and publishing manager
DATE OF BIRTH March 13, 1937
DATE OF DEATH May 2, 2004
Place of death Naples (Florida)