Pahl-Rugenstein Publishing House

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The Pahl-Rugenstein Verlag (abbreviation: prv ) was a publisher based in Cologne. After the GDR no longer financed the company , it went bankrupt and later on the re-establishment of the Pahl-Rugenstein Nachf. Publishing house in Bonn, which has now been dissolved.

Pahl-Rugenstein Publishing House

The publishing house was founded in 1957 by the Berlin publisher Manfred Pahl-Rugenstein in Cologne from the context of the political journal Blätter für German and international politics , which had appeared for the first time the year before. Paul Neuhöffer was the managing director and publishing director for many years .

Publishing program

The focus of the publishing program was in the field of political non-fiction (modern German history and politics including political theory), especially publications on current social issues in the Bonn Republic . In particular, topics were taken up on which social movements had emerged in the Federal Republic , such as rearmament after the Second World War and the integration of the Federal Republic into NATO, as well as the emergency laws against which the extra-parliamentary opposition had formed, trade union issues, and later peace - and environmental movement and also the women's movement and the German student movement of the 1960s . Paul Neuhöffer stated that the publisher saw itself as a “journalistic forum for all progressive forces”. "The Pahl-Rugenstein Verlag takes sides with all those who stand up for peace and democracy, regardless of whether they feel connected to the labor movement or the bourgeois camp." It was an essential goal to serve relaxation and international understanding.

Close relationships were maintained with publishers in the GDR, such as the Akademie Verlag , and their non-fiction books and scientific literature - including those by Soviet writers - were sold in licensed editions on the West German market. In return, books from the Pahl-Rugenstein range were available in East German bookshops. Works by system critics were not in the program. The publisher also had books produced in GDR printing houses.

Authors of the publishing house were Wolfgang Abendroth , Eberhard Czichon ( Who helped Hitler to power?, 2nd edition 1971), Wolfgang Däubler , Frank Deppe , Georg Fülberth , Florence Hervé ( History of the German women's movement , 3rd edition 1987) Jörg Huffschmid , Gerhard Kade , Jürgen Kuczynski ( history of the everyday life of the German people , five volumes, several editions) Reinhard Kühnl ( German fascism in sources and documents , 6th edition 1987), Reinhard Opitz , Helmut Ridder , Winfried Schwamborn ( manual for conscientious objectors , since 1972). 1970 came with Pahl-Rugenstein Czichon's book The Banker and Power. Hermann Josef Abs in German politics that brought the publishing house to the brink of ruin. In 1970, Hermann Josef Abs obtained an injunction against the book because of numerous false factual allegations about his behavior during the National Socialist era and sued the author and publisher. The Stuttgart Regional Court sentenced Czichon and Pahl-Rugenstein to DM 20,000 in damages. However, Abs waived the enforcement of this sum because his lawyer Josef Augstein reached an out-of-court agreement with SED lawyer Friedrich Karl Kaul that further journalistic attacks on Deutsche Bank would not take place, and specifically the OMGUS reports, which contained incriminating material about Abs, should not be published. The SED leadership wanted not to endanger the publishing house. In the files of the Ministry for State Security it is said that Pahl-Rugenstein is "the only large publisher in West Germany that outwardly has a liberal character and is not branded as a communist publisher and 'we have on the line'". It was extremely difficult to set up, so it would be "extremely harmful if the publisher were to enter into claims for damages as a result of the claims made by Abs."

The women's calendar Wir Frauen has been published by Pahl-Rugenstein since 1979, and since 1983 the alternative economic reports ("memoranda") of the Bremen Working Group on Alternative Economic Policy , which had previously been published by the trade union Bund-Verlag , were published here.

The series StadtPlan - Planen Bauen Kommunalepolitik with seven volumes, edited by Klaus Brake, Joachim Brech, Eberhard Dähne , Klaus Diekhoff, Barbara Dietrich, Jörg Forßmann, Hans Harms, Jörn Janssen and Jürgen Rosemann was important for the area of urban and spatial planning .

In addition to the "Blätter" , the specialist journals Democracy and Law , Democratic Education , Democratic Healthcare , The Third World Magazine Anti-imperialist Information Bulletin , New Voice and the Journal for Social and Contemporary History of Sports have been published , and in recent years also the Deutsche Volkszeitung / the deed , which was published by Röderberg-Verlag , which in 1987 had been taken over by Pahl-Rugenstein as well as Weltkreis Verlag, this in the course of setting up a fiction program.

DKP proximity, financing by the GDR, causes of insolvency

This business expansion did not alleviate the difficulties and had already led to financial difficulties in 1988 when the investments did not pay off.

The publishing house was largely financed by the GDR and was therefore nicknamed the “Pahl Ruble Note” after this fact became known. Further subsidies from the publisher were to be made at this point in the form of advertising orders amounting to DM 1.5 million  , and for magazines also through subscriptions; In both cases, contracts from GDR companies were prematurely terminated in the course of the fall of the Wall . At that time the SED ended the financing of western companies in the vicinity of the DKP .

After the publisher had denied its proximity to the DKP by then , the publisher's management admitted in November 1989 that the insolvency and the threatened bankruptcy were due to the lack of payments from the GDR. “'The Pahl-Rugenstein Verlag was not a DKP or GDR publisher', it was said after the bankruptcy of former employees, authors and readers,” wrote Werner Rügemer in a review of the events in the journal Konkret . The bankruptcy was filed on December 15, 1989. Rügemer continued: “Hundreds of thousands of people have bought the books of the PRV and hopefully enjoyed and benefited from them. If they now find out that their political education was co-financed by Ulbricht and Honecker, it shouldn't make them feel guilty. However, it is precisely this point that should not be left out of political education. "

At the end of 1989 the publishing house still had 57 employees.

In retrospect it became known that two employees of the publishing house had temporarily been employed as lecturers whose task it was to influence the West German peace movement through the Committee for Peace, Disarmament and Cooperation (KOFAZ) on behalf of East German authorities.

The archive of the Pahl-Rugenstein Verlag was affected by the collapse of the Cologne city archive in March 2009.

Successor publishers and projects since 1990

From the bankruptcy estate, Arnold Bruns acquired the name of Pahl-Rugenstein Verlag and most of the warehouse. The books were then offered for sale.

The former editor of the Pahl-Rugenstein Verlag Jürgen Harrer founded PapyRossa Verlag in 1990 together with Christa Herterich and Peter Bergmann, based in Cologne. The implicit reference to the Pahl-Rugenstein Verlag is still expressed in the initials of the new publisher's name.

Both publishers have taken over and further developed essential parts of the Pahl-Rugenstein Verlag publishing concept. Some authors have changed to the name successor, others to Papyrossa.

Most of the Pahl-Rugenstein Verlag journals were discontinued when the company was liquidated or a few years later. The legal journal Democracy and Law was continued until 1993 in the Democracy and Law magazine publishing house . The papers for German and international politics were the only magazine that could break away from the publisher and stand on its own feet with a support association. It still exists today.

The Deutsche Volkszeitung / the act merged with the East German newspaper Sonntag in 1990 . This resulted in the weekly newspaper Friday .

References and comments

  1. ↑ Commercial register information via handelsregister.de, accessed December 23, 2018.
  2. ↑ a b c Georg Rathgen: Books for peace in millions. 30th anniversary for Pahl-Rugenstein Verlag in Cologne . Interview with the managing director and head of the publishing house Paul Neuhöffer. In: Börsenblatt for the German book trade (Leipzig) . tape 154 , February 3, 1987, pp. 77-80 .
  3. ↑ Paul Neuhöffer: Introduction . In: Mathias Jung (ed.): For a better republic. A reading book by Pahl-Rugenstein Verlag 1957–1987 . Pahl-Rugenstein Verlag, Cologne 1987, ISBN 3-7609-1169-2 , p. XXVII – XXXIV (XXX) (Small Library, No. 480).
  4. ↑ Lothar Berthold: In science the most important. Long-term relationships with Pahl-Rugenstein, Verlag Chemie, Gustav Fischer, Vieweg u. a. In: Börsenblatt for the German book trade (Frankfurt am Main) . April 3, 1980, p. 863–865 (series “Buchwesen in der DDR” (19): Der Akademie-Verlag).
  5. ↑ a b Udo Baron : Cold War and Hot Peace: The Influence of the SED and its West German Allies on the Party “The Greens” . Lit, Münster / Hamburg / London 2003, ISBN 3-8258-6108-2 , p. 56, (also: Chemnitz, Techn. Univ., Diss., 2002)
  6. ↑ Sebastian Brünger: History and Profit. How German corporations deal with their Nazi past . Wallstein, Göttingen 2017, pp. 164–195, the quotation p. 185.
  7. ↑ The editors included u. a. the later SPD federal ministers Frank-Walter Steinmeier and Brigitte Zypries : Günter Platzdasch: What does not belong together . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . August 25, 2008 ( faz.net [accessed August 4, 2011]).
  8. ↑ On this restructuring and the effects on the “leaves” cf. Klaus Naumann: Retrofitting and self-approval. State issues in the political-intellectual milieu of the 'Blätter für German und Internationale Politik' . In: Dominik Geppert, Jens Hacke (ed.): Dispute about the state. Intellectual Debates in the Federal Republic of 1960-1980 . Göttingen 2008, pp. 269-289, 285 m. Footnote 45: “In the mid-1980s, apparently for financial reasons, processes of concentration began in the association of the 'befriended' publishers. Weltkreis- and Röderberg-Verlag were merged with prv; later it was considered to include the publishing house under the umbrella of the party-owned Plambeck publishing house. See Neuhöffer's speech to the extended workforce, January 1987 (private archive), as well as the declaration on the establishment of the 'Blätter-Gesellschaft', in: Blätter 10/1989, pp. 1181 f. "
  9. ↑ a b c d Roland Kirbach: Left by the comrades. The SED stops providing financial aid to West German offshoots . In: The time . No. 52 , 1989 ( zeit.de [accessed on August 3, 2011] The Cologne publisher Pahl-Rugenstein was hit even harder. It had run into financial difficulties around a year ago. In 1987, he had the Weltkreis Verlag and Röderberg Verlag and a lot of money was invested in advertising the new general goods program. The hoped-for success, however, did not materialize. After the GDR company Interwerbung has now canceled advertising orders from Eastern European state-owned companies amounting to 1.5 million marks at the end of the year (the contracts actually ran until 1991 ), Pahl-Rugenstein filed for bankruptcy last Monday.).
  10. ↑ Jochen Staadt : The SED and the "Generals for Peace" . In Maruhn / Wilke, 2001, p. 274
  11. ↑ Eternal Truths . In: Der Spiegel . No. 23 , 1989, pp. 42-46 ( online ). Quote: "In the past, in such a case, says one connoisseur, 'the man with the suitcase' - content: money from East Berlin."
  12. ^ The last waltz . In: Der Spiegel . No. 49 , 1989, pp. 89-90 ( online ). Quote: "With the drying up of the strongest financial sources of the DKP, from which an estimated 50 to 70 million marks flowed annually on conspiratorial routes from east to west, the zero-point-two percent party is threatened with extinction."
  13. ↑ A repellent ice age boulder . In: Der Spiegel . No. 37 , 1987, pp. 138-139, 138 ( online ).
  14. ↑ a b Werner Rügemer: Package from over there . In: Concrete . No. 7 , 1990, pp. 56–57 (There also an advertisement from Pahl-Rugenstein Verlag Nachf., In which books from the bankruptcy estate are offered for sale).
  15. ↑ Roger Engelmann: Limits of Influence. Relationship between the SED and the West German peace movement. In Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, March 4, 2004 online review of Udo Baron: Cold War and Hot Peace. The influence of the SED and its West German allies on the party “The Greens”. LIT Verlag, Münster 2003.
  16. ^ Andreas Rossmann : The price of the subway . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . March 5, 2009 ( faz.net [accessed August 5, 2011]).
  17. ↑ a b Consistency has a future . ( Memento from December 22, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 359 kB). In: Junge Welt , 25./26. February 2012; Interview with Jürgen Harrer. Supplement “Laziness and work”. Pp. 1f., 2; Retrieved June 20, 2012.