Peter Gente

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Hans-Peter Gente (born April 1936 in Halberstadt ; † February 8, 2014 in Chiang Mai , Thailand ) was a German publicist , best known as the co-founder and long-time managing director of Merve Verlag in Berlin-Schöneberg .

life and work

Ghent's father, Kurt Gente, was a lawyer and served as a lieutenant colonel in the Wehrmacht , until 1951 he was in Soviet captivity. He was a former National Socialist who worked as a judge in Berlin before and after the Second World War . a. in the trial of Fritz Teufel and Rudi Dutschke .

Peter Gente and his family came to West Berlin in the early 1950s. At his father's request, he began to study law in 1957. He earned his studies as a laborer in the Siemens works in Spandau. After a few semesters he switched to philosophy, sociology and German studies. In 1960 he married Merve Lowien . The marriage resulted in a son in 1962. In 1965 he became assistant to Jacob Taubes .

Gente began his journalistic activities in the mid-1960s as an editor, first of writings by Josef Stalin , later of two volumes on Freudo-Marxist discussion. He understood the latter quite politically and programmatically: "Today it would be time to expose the theoretical approaches immanent to the Sexpol inaugurated by Reich [...] in confrontation with a changed social situation." However, he continued this program after he started a publishing house (with -) did not put into practice.

In 1970 Peter Gente was one of the founders of Merve Verlag (named after the first name of his wife at the time), which he later ran for many years with Heidi Paris (1950–2002). After a Marxist-oriented initial phase, mainly contemporary French philosophers, in particular Michel Foucault , but also Gilles Deleuze and numerous other authors were published. In addition, there were later works of systems theory ( Niklas Luhmann , Oswald Wiener , Heinz von Foerster ), by John Cage and by authors from the Berlin scene ( Martin Kippenberger , Wolfgang Müller , Rainald Goetz and others). The publisher's most successful book is Rhizom by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari ; it has been sold over 15,000 times. In total, Gente has published around 300 titles. In 2001, due to its committed and intellectually demanding program, Merve Verlag was the first to receive the Kurt Wolff Foundation Prize for the promotion of a diverse publishing and literary scene.

After eighteen years, Peter Gente separated from his wife and entered into a new relationship with Heidi Paris; together they ran Merve Verlag until the suicide in Paris in 2002. In 2007 he retired from active publishing and has lived in Thailand ever since, where he died in 2014. The urn was buried in the cemetery in Schöneberg in March 2014.

Editing (selection)

  • Josef W. Stalin: Marxism and questions of linguistics. Edited by Hans-Peter Gente. Rogner & Bernhard, Munich 1968.
  • Josef W. Stalin: On the questions of Leninism. Edited and introduced by Hans-Peter Gente. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1970.
  • Marxism, psychoanalysis, sex pole. Volume 1: [Primary Texts 1926-1936]. Edited with a preliminary remark by Hans-Peter Gente. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1970.
  • Marxism, psychoanalysis, sex pole. Volume 2: [Current Discussion]. Edited with a preliminary remark by Hans-Peter Gente. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1972, ISBN 3-436-01387-0 .
  • Foucault and the arts. Edited by Peter Gente. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2004, ISBN 3-518-29267-6 .
  • Deleuze and the arts. Edited by Peter Gente and Peter Weibel. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-518-29380-5 .
  • Paul Virilio and the Arts. Edited by Peter Gente. Merve, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-88396-240-5 .

literature

Web links

supporting documents

  1. ^ Sabine Vogel: Peter Gente died . In: Berliner Zeitung dated (and accessed on) February 9, 2014.
  2. ^ Kerstin Kohlenberg: Thinker and Punk in Die Zeit from February 15, 2007 (also online ).
  3. ↑ Marxism, Psychoanalysis, Sexpol. Volume 1: Documentation [primary texts 1926–1936]. Edited with a preliminary remark by Hans-Peter Gente. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1970, p. 9.
  4. ↑ a b Homepage Heidi Paris
  5. ↑ Hans-Martin Schönherr-Mann: "The long summer of theory": History of the intellectual revolution of the 68ers , Deutschlandfunk , October 21, 2015
personal data
SURNAME Gente, Peter
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Gente, Hans-Peter (until about 1972)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German publisher
DATE OF BIRTH April 1936
PLACE OF BIRTH Halberstadt
DATE OF DEATH February 8, 2014
Place of death Chiang Mai , Thailand