Peter Kaatzer

Peter Kaatzer

Peter Kaatzer (born September 23, 1808 in Aachen ; † November 14, 1870 there ) was a German bookseller and publisher .

Live and act

Peter Kaatzer comes from an old bookbinder and bookseller family from Zwittau in Moravia . His grandfather Josef (1751–1794) came to Aachen as a 22-year-old bookbinder and married the bookseller's daughter Maria Dulje (* 1752) and with her founded a small publishing house with a lending library at 8 Kleinmarschierstrasse in Aachen. His son and father of Peter Kaatzer, the bookbinder Sebastian Kaatzer (1781–1820), was married to Agnes, nee Recker (1783–1872), and expanded his parents' small business to include a “range and second-hand bookstore”, but died in that year 1820 at the age of only 38. As a result, his son Peter was forced to drop out of high school and support his mother in the business. In the following years Peter Kaatzer succeeded in establishing the company on the market, and he expanded it in 1826 with what he called the “Kaatzer's Reading Institute”. This institute contained purely literary and scientific works, and Kaatzer added a "journal circle" to this, in which in the next few years more than 120 magazines from all areas and areas were offered.

Kaatzer began to become more active as a publisher and founded his first own magazines in the 1830s. These included the “Blätter des Kaatzerschen Leseinstitut”, the “Aachener Chronik” and the “Kaatzers Album für Kunst und Wissen” edited by Wilhelm Smets . However, Kaatzer achieved the actual breakthrough in 1849 with the publication of the Catholic-influenced magazine “Echo der Gegenwart”, which became the oldest Aachen and first Catholic newspaper in the Rhineland and also gained national importance. This newspaper, initially called the “Aachener Anzeiger” with the subtitle “Echo of the Present” and the addition “Official Announcements, Community, Intelligence and Traffic”, was sponsored by the members of the Catholic citizen and electoral association “Constantia”, provided with articles and appeared initially once, later twice a week and from 1851 daily. This newspaper, which had initially been in the service of economic life, now increasingly advocated the independence of the Catholic Church and the Greater German solution to the German question, and later developed into the mouthpiece of the conservative Catholic Center Party founded in 1870 . In later years the “Echo der Gegenwart” was first published by Kaatzer's heirs and finally also as a Reich edition by the newspaper publisher Johannes Volk, but had to be discontinued in 1935 due to a ban imposed by the now ruling National Socialists

In addition to this day-to-day business, Kaatzer was an active member of "Constantia" and was also involved in the "Society for Useful Research and Trade", which he co-founded, and in particular in the maintenance of customs in Aachen. He was a long-time member of the "Aachener Florresei" carnival association and headed it from 1844 to 1846 and again as its president from 1858, but then switched to the Aachen carnival association, which was separated from the Florresei in 1859 .

Peter Kaatzer was married to Anna Margaretha Spelthahn (1809–1890) with whom he had 10 children, three of whom died early. His daughter Katharina (1836–1886) married the bookseller Rodrigo Weyers (1842–1926), with whom they continued the father's company from 1865 under the company name Weyers-Kaatzer , which in 2015 was a supplier of office and school supplies as well as gift items and stationery old parent company is celebrating its 150th anniversary.

Peter Kaatzer found his final resting place in the family crypt in Aachen's Ostfriedhof .

literature

• Heinrich Schiffers: 85 years of Weyers-Kaatzer , Aachen 1950 ( digitized version )
• Heinrich Schiffers: Peter Kaatzer and the spiritual Aachen of his time (1808–1870). A contribution to the history of the press, the book trade and political parties , Kaatzer, Aachen 1924
• Ingeborg Schild , Elisabeth Janssen: The Aachener Ostfriedhof , Mayersche Buchhandlung, Aachen 1991, ISBN 3-87519-116-1 , pp. 358–359
• Christina Frohn: Carnival in Cologne, Düsseldorf and Aachen 1823–1914 , dissertation, University of Bonn 1999 ( PDF )

Web links

• Echo of the present. digitized editions from 1851–1935. In: Digital Collections. University and State Library Bonn , accessed on May 4, 2016 . 

Individual evidence

1. ^ Anniversary edition for the 60th anniversary in 1909
2. ↑ The registry office of the world press ( Memento of the original from September 4, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
3. ↑ last edition of Echos der Gegenwart, No. 306, vol. 64, from December 31, 1935
4. ↑ 150 years of Weyers-Kaatzer