Rudolf Oldenbourg (publisher)

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Rudolf Oldenbourg (born December 15, 1811 in Leipzig , † October 10, 1903 in Munich ) was a German publisher and founder of R. Oldenbourg Verlag .

Life

Rudolf Oldenbourg, the son of a businessman from Leipzig, completed an apprenticeship in bookselling in Lübeck, was with Frommann in Jena and in a London bookstore, and from 1835 with Schmerber in Frankfurt am Main. From 1836 he headed the branch of the Cotta'schen Verlagsbuchhandlung in Munich . He was also involved in the German Book Trade Association and became a member of its board of directors in 1849. He made sure that the textbook monopoly in Bavaria gradually fell and from 1855 worked on a committee on the copyright law.

In 1855 he was approved as a publisher and bookseller by the city of Munich. His initial focus and founding goal of the publishing house were science and technology, although he initially only operated this part-time and was employed full-time at Cotta until 1869. There he was also behind the publication of the historical journal at Cotta (from 1859 in connection with the Bavarian Academy of Sciences). When Cotta sold all of its subsidiaries outside of Stuttgart in 1869, Oldenbourg bought twelve of them, including the historical magazine's publishing property. In 1870 his publishing house was initially on Wittelsbacherplatz and from 1871 in Maxvorstadt in its own building. In 1872 he built another printing house and in 1873 he took over the Munich printing works of the Regensburg publisher Pustet and in 1875 also his lease agreements and rights of the royal Bavarian Central School Book Publishing House. In 1880 he also opened a bookbindery.

However, the publisher's founding date is 1858, when Oldenbourg founded the journal for gas lighting while he was still at Cotta.

In 1843 in Dresden he married Emilie Blochmann, daughter of the Privy School Council and director of the Blochmann Institute Carl Justus Blochmann and Juliane Ottilie Schnorr von Carolsfeld, with whom he had four sons and four daughters.

In 1880 Rudolf Oldenbourg withdrew from the publishing house, in which three of his sons had already joined: Rudolf von Oldenbourg (1845–1912), Hans Oldenbourg (1849–1922) and Paul Oldenbourg (1858–1936). His grandson of the same name (the son of Hans Oldenbourg) Rudolf Oldenbourg (1887–1921) was a well-known art historian.

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personal data
SURNAME Oldenbourg, Rudolf
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German publisher
DATE OF BIRTH December 15, 1811
PLACE OF BIRTH Leipzig
DATE OF DEATH October 10, 1903
Place of death Munich