Johannes Baum Publishing House

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The John Tree Publishing was in the fields in the 1920s and 1930s occult and esoteric important book publisher. This was especially true of the writings of the Neugeist movement .

history

The publishing house was initially located in Berlin. Little is known about the first few years. Publications are documented from 1913, the most important author at that time was Achim von Winterfeld with several titles published by Baum. After the end of the First World War, the first titles on occult topics appeared, and from 1920 the first issues in the series The Occult World , which by 1930 had almost 200 titles. The most important publication, however, was the magazine The White Flag , the official organ of the Neugeist movement, which reached 450,000 copies in the 1930s.

This success story is linked to Victor Schweizer , publishing director and authorized signatory since 1918 , who relocated the publishing house to Pfullingen in 1920 . The writer Karl Otto Schmidt was already an important employee at the time , especially in his role as the main editor of the White Flag .

The Pfullinger Lebensreform - mail order company Prana House (of prana , the life force in Indian philosophy) was combined with the John Tree Publishing and began the series of Prana books to publish. The original range of the mail order business, founded in 1914, included health-promoting oils, vegetable juices and herbal tinctures, Indian incense , but also more unusual items such as a headband called a "concentrator", which was supposed to help people relax and concentrate better during auto- suggestion exercises . "Receiving plates" impregnated with an "electrolytic substance" were attached to this, "which have the purpose of putting certain parts of the brain and the solar plexus (plexus solaris) into a passive, harmonious state of equilibrium" and attracting "spiritual energies".

However, the success story came to an end when the National Socialists came to power, as the Nazis tried to suppress the Neugeist movement, and Schweizer's wife was a Jew and he himself was suspect through his international contacts. Victor Schweizer was arrested in 1935 and died shortly afterwards in a Gestapo cell. Karl Otto Schmidt continued to run the publishing house together with Otto Orlowsky until 1941, then they too were arrested and taken to the "protective custody camp" in Welzheim , the publishing house was dissolved and the stocks were confiscated and destroyed.

After the end of the war, Hans von Kothen, the successor to Orlowsky, who died in 1948, rebuilt the publishing house together with Karl Otto Schmidt, and the White Flag also appeared again from 1950. In 1970 Johannes Baum Verlag was taken over together with Prana-Haus by Hermann Bauer Verlag in Freiburg im Breisgau . The white flag went up in the magazine The Other World , which was continued as Esotera from 1971 . In 2002 the Hermann Bauer Verlag went bankrupt. The mail order business was taken over by the entrepreneur Ernst Schütz and since then has been continued as an online specialist mail order company for life reform and spiritual needs under the name PranaHaus in association with the eco mail order companies Waschbär Umweltversand and Vivanda . In 2013 PranaHaus published a seven-volume series of esoteric writings under license under the title 100 Years of Pranahaus .

Magazines and periodicals

  • The occult world. Berlin & Pfullingen 1920–1930, ZDB -ID 566884-0 , then incorporated into the white flag .
  • The castle. Association for the promotion of self-knowledge and knowledge of things, association for scientific examinations in the occult and border areas. Pfullingen 1919–1922, then merged into the white flag , ZDB ID 509158-5 .
  • The white flag. Magazine for new thinking and positive lifestyle; Organ of the Neugeist Association of INTA. Pfullingen 1923-1941 and 1950-1970 ZDB -ID 125263-x . From 1932 under the title Neugeist. The white flag. Time sheets for internalization and spiritualization. Monthly sheets for healing and life renewal. Guide to a successful lifestyle , ZDB -ID 509157-3 .

literature

  • Karl Baier : The magnetism of sinking. Mesmeristic thinking in meditation movements of the 19th and 20th centuries. In: Monika Neugebauer-Wölk , Renko D. Geffarth, Markus Meumann (eds.): Enlightenment and esotericism: ways into modernity. de Gruyter, Berlin a. a. 2013, ISBN 3-11-029778-7 , p. 429 f.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Bruno Jahn: The German-language press: A biographical-bibliographical manual. Vol. 2. Saur, Munich 2005, p. 946.
  2. ^ Address book of the German book trade . Hhgg. from the German Booksellers Association , 1920, p. 533.
  3. ↑ 100 years of the Prana House
  4. ↑ Philipp Müh: Coué in the back pocket! Through concentration (power thinking) and dynamic autosuggestion to life success. Practical instructions for overcoming internal and external inhibitions. Prana Books No. 6, Pfullingen o. J. (approx. 1927), pp. 35–37.
  5. ↑ Literature by and about Johannes Baum Verlag in the catalog of the German National Library