Roland Schmid (publisher)

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Roland Schmid (born May 15, 1930 in Radebeul , † January 4, 1990 in Bamberg ) was a German publisher , editor and playwright . He was the youngest son of Euchar Albrecht Schmid and after his death in 1951 one of the four, later three shareholders of the Karl-May-Verlag .

Live and act

Childhood and youth

Roland Schmid was the fourth and youngest son of the Euchar A. Schmid and Katharina, geb. Barthel. Roland grew up with his brothers Joachim (born 1922), Wolfgang (born 1924) and Lothar (born 1928) in the Radebeul villa , which Gustav Röder had built and which E. A. Schmid had used for family and publishing since 1915.

In a letter to Fritz Prüfer in January 1944, E. A. Schmid wrote:

“At Christmas we were lucky enough to finally see all of our four boys here together again. At that time Joachim was ordered from Königsberg to Dresden with the help of Lieutenant Colonel Ruckdeschel , where he is now ... doing office work and will presumably remain permanently. - Wolfgang had to go back to Jaroslau / Cracow at the beginning of January for further training as an officer candidate. - The 15½ year old Lothar has to arrive today for the home flak service. He continued to develop into a chess artist and recently won all 15 games at KdF , so that he became the local chess master. - The 13½ year old Roland still populates our house with magic tricks and even more piano and opera rehearsals. "

- Euchar Albrecht Schmid, January 14, 1944

And a year later in a circular to the friends of the Karl-May-Verlag (KMV):

“While we have not received any news from Wolfgang since the beginning of January, Joachim, who is to become my successor, was given a few weeks' leave and arrived one day after Ms. May's funeral (January 6th) to relax . [...] Lothar, who will be 17 years old in May, has been working hard for the whole of last year in a nearby flak and has to do his high school duties on the side. [...] By the way, this boy became Saxon Gauschachmeister at the age of 15½. [...] Roland , who will be 15 years old in May, fortunately still populates our house with music and magic tricks and has even performed several times in hospitals . [...] Our almost 21 year old Wolfgang has been on the Eastern Front for two years . "

The publisher interrupted the writing of his circular and finally continued it on February 5th with a shocking message:

“As far as I had announced my report about 10 days ago, we received a telegram on January 10th in the evening, according to which our son Wolfgang had died in a hospital in Sangerhausen / Thuringia. [...] My wife - accompanied by Joachim and Lothar - went to see him immediately [...]. The burial took place on February 2nd at the Heldenfriedhof in Sangerhausen, because it is not possible to transfer it here for the time being "

- Euchar Albrecht Schmid, end of January / 5. February 1945

Relocation to the West

The unfortunate situation in the Soviet zone of occupation ( SBZ ) reinforced the decision of the Schmid family to only do the actual publishing work in western Germany. After the branch in Bamberg, which had already existed since July 1, 1947, and the Joachim Schmid Verlag based on it, the USTAD Verlag Gebrüder Schmid was founded in Bamberg on January 1, 1952 by the three remaining sons E. A. Schmids, Joachim, Lothar and Roland. The name Ustad (a Persian word for master) was chosen to echo the figure of the same name from In the kingdom of the silver lion . The unexpected death of his father in 1951 and the challenge of rebuilding the publishing house in Bamberg meant that the then German studies student Roland had to drop out of his studies and bring his artistic skills and knowledge of German to the family business.

With a contract dated August 1, 1959, the business separation of the Karl May Foundation from the Karl May Verlag in Radebeul was completed. This contract made it possible for the KMV to move to Bamberg in the west. The merger with the Joachim Schmid company was completed on June 1, 1960. Shortly thereafter, Katharina Schmid left the publishing house as a partner. On January 20, 1962, Joachim, Lothar and Roland Schmid signed the main contract for the award of film rights in Munich: "the third most important date in the history of Karl May Verlag" after it was founded in 1913 and re-founded in 1960. Shortly before his death he experienced Roland Schmid still opening the Berlin Wall . He was denied the opportunity to get back into publishing from Radebeul.

Activities in the Karl May publishing house

Roland Schmid managed the areas of literature , production and Karl May research at Karl May Verlag . He acted as a playwright and editor of Karl May works as well as a back-processor of problematic work adaptations and as an explanation of the work history in the publisher's extensive reprint program.

Playwright

Roland Schmid was involved as an author when Ludwig Körner reworked his play “ Winnetou ” from 1928 in 1950 for open-air theaters (especially in Bad Segeberg ). In 1958 a second edition of this textbook variant appeared under the title: " Winnetou, the red gentleman ".

Schmid also wrote four other textbooks for open-air performances of Karl May works:

“Up to and including 1973, the Karl May Verlag alone had the right to publish textbooks for the Karl May Festival . So it was only allowed to perform what also appeared in the 'Green Collected Works'. The Schmid brothers from Karl May Verlag in Bamberg paid close attention to the authenticity of the pieces listed. Only then did the privilege topple and the pieces became increasingly free. For some a welcome relaxation, for others a dubious departure from the novel by the Saxon author. Fortunately, the 1974 production stuck to the original book of the same name. "

editor

From 1958 to 1960, the edited new edition of Karl May's last Kolportage novel Der Weg zum Glück ( GW 66-68 ), the redesign of a medieval fragment of the novel Knights and Rebels ( GW 69 ) and May's adaptation by Gabriel Ferrys were published under Roland Schmid's editorship Novel The Ranger ( GW 70 ).

Backprocessor

Since the first public statements by Arno Schmidt in the mid to late 1950s and then, after an interruption due to the film wave , since the founding of the Karl May Society in 1969, there have been repeated disputes about the subject of "adaptations". Was May wrongly changed or just continued his line, was he falsified or purged? Under the aegis of Roland Schmid, the Karl-May-Verlag reacted to this criticism by reworking volumes 28–33 of the collected works , which were primarily suggested and carried out by Hans Wollschläger . Roland's brother Lothar Schmid wrote about it:

“Karl May's works have always been discussed and even argued. Elegant, matter-of-fact, but unfortunately often uncontrolled or even unnecessarily aggressive. May himself in his contradicting thoughts was and is of course the main goal. The experts after him and the less initiated have always known what to say - wise or less wise.

The crowd of editors or copywriters is currently once again the target of know-it-alls who like to set up stages and strut around on them. A sentence that May once had written is at the top of the script:

'And if someone dares to change even one line of my manuscript or even to make so-called improvements, he will not get a single letter from me.' (In a letter forwarded by Richard Plöhn to the Frankfurter Zeitung of August 20, 1899)

A knocked line that May didn't mean as seriously as some would like it to sound like. As ... explained, he wanted to change a lot, but unfortunately couldn't get around to it. The publisher had to step in.

Insiders know what to say about long-term critics and complainers: unfortunately often 'bad upbringing', 'negative attitude towards life' and 'willing to act wrong'.

The call for “citable” May texts for research was loud from circles of the Karl May Society.

Which are they? The texts by Münchmeyer , Deutscher Hausschatz , which May referred to as falsified , and the volumes that Fehsenfeld has no longer checked by him , which must therefore not be called final editions, certainly not.

'Only the manuscripts offer definitive certainty' , Roland Schmid used to say quite correctly. "

- Lothar Schmid, 2003

Explanatory

Karl May Verlag met the Karl May Society's request for a critical Karl May edition, initially with an extensive reprint program in the 1970s (including the 33 Freiburg first editions by Fehsenfeld ), most of them with it interesting appendices from the pen of Roland Schmid on the edition history and editing issues.

That until the beginning of the 1970s, an increased effort to reprint editions began, settled on the one hand with the growing interest from the literature since the founding of the Karl May company justified and amounted to more improved Procreative possibilities that a significantly facilitated cheaper printing by photomechanical means.

With its reprints, the Karl-May-Verlag pursued the goal of complying with the legitimate demand of literary scholars and critics to make the first editions of Maysch's works generally available again for research due to the complicated text situation.

The book reprints were provided with explanations of the history of the work by Roland Schmid. With its reprint program initiated in 1973, Karl May Verlag also provided a significant literary counterpart to the collected works , which broke all records with their popularity, but could not and did not want to meet the strict guidelines of a scientific edition as a reading edition therefore only find use in research where it is a question of the history of reception.

With the reprint editions of Karl May's works, especially the 33 Fehsenfeld volumes and their extensive contributions, some of which he wrote himself, Roland Schmid has made a great contribution to Karl May's work.

Incidentally, in 1987 Roland Schmid considered the publishing company of Nördlinger colleague Franz Greno and his two editors Hermann Wiedenroth and Hans Wollschläger to publish a "historical-critical edition" (HKA) of Karl May's works under the series title Karl May's Works Nonsense". He pointed out that “apart from a few texts, May's entire work is already available in reprints of the early versions, most of it published by Georg Olms , the Karl May Society, the Karl May Verlag”. The HKA only became a joint project of the Karl May Foundation , Karl May Verlag and Karl May Society in 2007 .

Early death

On January 4, 1990, the 59-year-old Roland Schmid died completely surprising of a heart attack. With him, the Karl May publishing house lost its literary center and a first-rate Karl May expert.

As a result, his heirs and his 70-year-old brother Joachim Schmid intended to sell the entire publishing house into third-party hands. The only one who absolutely wanted to continue the family tradition, which then succeeded, was Lothar Schmid .

Works

  • Roland Schmid, Ludwig Körner : Winnetou, the red gentleman. Play from the life of the Indians based on Karl May's travel story, arranged for open-air performances , Bad Kissingen: Distribution and publishing house of German stage writers and stage composers 1952; Bamberg: Ustad 2nd edition 1959.
  • Roland Schmid (arrangement): Karl May: The treasure in the silver lake. Adventures in the Wild West for open-air theaters , Bamberg: Ustad-Verlag 1954, 2nd edition 1955.
  • Roland Schmid, Wulf Leisner : Hadschi Halef Omar. Adventures in North Africa based on Karl May's travel stories "Through the desert" - "Merhameh" - "Allah il Allah" edited for open-air stages , Bamberg: Karl-May-Verlag, 1955, 3rd edition 1964.
  • Roland Schmid, Wulf Leisner: In the gorges of the Balkans. Text book , 1956/1960.
  • Roland Schmid, Toni Graschberger: The legacy of the Inca. Textbook , 1974.
  • Roland Schmid (Ed.): 75 years of publishing work for Karl May and his work 1913–1988 [Festschrift] , Bamberg: Karl-May-Verlag 1988.

literature

  • Bernhard Schmid, Jürgen Seul (ed.): 100 years of publishing work for Karl May and his work 1913–2013 , Bamberg / Radebeul: Karl-May-Verlag 2013, therein a. a .:
    • Bernhard Schmid: 100 years of Karl-May-Verlag = 100 years of family history , pp. 5–9.
    • Jürgen Seul: 100 Years of Karl May Verlag , p. 10 ff.
    • Michael Petzel: The third most important date in the history of Karl May Verlag , p. 109 f.
  • Lothar and Bernhard Schmid (eds.): The cut diamond. The collected works of Karl May , Bamberg / Radebeul: Karl-May-Verlag 2013, therein a. a .:
    • Lothar Schmid: 90 years of publishing work for Karl May , pp. 5–88.
    • Christoph F. Lorenz: The editors as obstetricians , pp. 105-134.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Bernhard Schmid, Jürgen Seul (eds.): 100 years of publishing work for Karl May and his work 1913–2013 , Bamberg / Radebeul: Karl-May-Verlag 2013, p. 72 f.
  2. ^ Bernhard Schmid, Jürgen Seul (eds.): 100 years of publishing work for Karl May and his work 1913–2013 , Bamberg / Radebeul: Karl-May-Verlag 2013, p. 76.
  3. ↑ Michael Petzel: The third most important date in the history of Karl-May-Verlag , in: 100 years Karl-May-Verlag ... , 2013, p. 109 f.
  4. ↑ http://www.karl-may-wiki.de/index.php/Beitäge_zur_Karl-May-Forschung
  5. ↑ http://www.karl-may-wiki.de/index.php/Barbeitung
  6. ↑ a b text book cannot be found at the moment; Reference to this at Marheinecke u. a .: Karl May am Kalkberg ... , 1999, p. 44.
  7. ↑ a b text book cannot be found at the moment; Reference to this at Marheinecke u. a .: Karl May am Kalkberg ... , 1999, p. 158.
  8. ↑ The year 1973 is doubtful at this point. The copyright period for Karl May works ended on January 1, 1963, see entry in Karl May Wiki.
  9. ↑ Marheinecke u. a .: Karl May am Kalkberg ... , 1999, p. 158.
  10. ↑ http://www.karl-may-wiki.de/index.php/Barbeitung
  11. ↑ Christoph F. Lorenz: The editors as obstetricians , in: Der schliffene Diamant ... , 2003, pp. 105-134.
  12. ↑ Lothar Schmid: 90 years of publishing work for Karl May , in: Der schliffene Diamant ... , 2003, pp. 5–88, esp. Pp. 62 f.
  13. ↑ https://www.karl-may.de/pages/buchprogramm.php?sub=reprints
  14. ↑ Jürgen Seul: 100 Years of Karl May Verlag , 2013, p. 141.
  15. ↑ Bernhard Schmid: 100 years KMV ... , 2013, p. 7.
  16. ↑ http://d-nb.info/881390216
  17. ↑ http://d-nb.info/881448494
  18. ↑ https://www.vvb.de/werke/showWerk?wid=914
personal data
SURNAME Schmid, Roland
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German publisher, editor and playwright
DATE OF BIRTH May 15, 1930
PLACE OF BIRTH Radebeul
DATE OF DEATH 4th January 1990
Place of death Bamberg