Samuel Schmitt

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Samuel Abraham Wilhelm (Sammy) Schmitt (born September 20, 1920 in Viernheim , Bergstrasse district ; † June 3, 2002 in Zurich ) was a German-Swiss writer and publisher .

Life

As the son of a mission merchant ( Basel Mission ) and a mother from a Pietist family, he attended elementary school in Viernheim and the secondary school in Weinheim . For religious reasons he refused entry into the Hitler Youth and the Hitler salute and emigrated to Switzerland in 1935 , where he attended the cantonal commercial school in Basel until 1938. Since he was not allowed to take up an apprenticeship there, he fled to Belgium ( Antwerp and Genk , Limburg province ).

In 1940, after the German invasion, he was interned and deported to the part of France ruled by the Vichy regime . He was sent to various refugee camps, including Gurs ( Département Pyrénées-Atlantiques ), most recently to the interim camp Les Milles (now the city of Aix-en-Provence ). Warned that he was considered a Jew because of his first name and was on a list for removal, he fled to Switzerland via Marseille .

In October 1942 he was sent to a labor camp in Switzerland. There he was a member of the editorial board of the refugee newspaper “Über die Grenzen”. Various publications and membership in the PEN center for German-speaking authors abroad followed . After receiving his work permit in 1949 as a stateless person , he took over the representation of the Swiss art publisher "Kunstkreis" in Germany.

In 1956 Schmitt founded the "Viernheim-Verlag-Viernheim" with the publication of art reproductions and bibliophile books in hand typesetting.

In 1959 Schmitt was naturalized in Switzerland ( Canton Zurich ). In 1967/1968 he gave up the publishing house in Germany and continued to run it on a small scale in Switzerland. 1968–1985 he was an auditor at the Swiss Commercial Association .

Schmitt was a member of the board of the Christian-Jewish working group in the canton of Zurich. As a contemporary witness, he worked on the French-German documentary from 1988 Les camps de silence - Bernard Mangiante's camp of silence about the prison camps in southern France during the Vichy regime. He published on the camps in France and on Christian-Jewish topics.

Schmitt died on June 3, 2002 in Zurich. His grave is in Viernheim. His estate (partial estate) is kept in the German Exile Archive 1933–1945 of the German National Library in Frankfurt am Main. kept.

Fonts

  • X, my partner. Wanderer Verlag, Zurich 1945.
  • Lucky to be a fool. Narrative. Mondial Verlag, Winterthur 1946.
  • Noted in the margin. Notes on Christian-Jewish coexistence. Viernheim-Verlag-Viernheim, Zurich 1983, ISBN 3-921022-45-2 .
  • Lucifer's beauty pageant. Linocuts by Helmut Zimmermann, bibliophile print. Viernheim-Verlag-Viernheim, Zurich 1956.
  • The beggar of God, with eleven linocuts by Alfred E. Walser. Bibliophile print. Viernheim-Verlag-Viernheim, Zurich 1959.
  • with Edwin M. Landau (Ed.): Camp in France. Survivors and their friends. Evidence of emigration, internment and deportation. Verlag von Brandt, Mannheim 1991, ISBN 3-926260-15-7 .

literature

to the camps in France

  • Les Camps en Provence. Exile, Internement, Déportation 1933–1944. Editions Alinéa et LLCG, Aix-en Provence 1984, ISBN 2-904631-06-6 , p. 126 f.

to Samuel Schmitt.

  • Ferdinand Puhe: Samuel Schmitt - From the persecuted to the publisher. In: Pirckheimer Gesellschaft (Ed.): Marginalien. Journal for Book Art and Bibliophilia, Issue 230 (year 2018/3), quartus Verlag, Jena 2018, pp. 86–91.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Schmitt's autobiography with photos in: Camp in France see under writings
  2. ↑ Between 1956 and 1972 the publisher produced hand-typed and hand-bound bibliophile books . Works by living authors and illustrators who developed their works together were published. The volumes had small editions with a maximum of 333 copies and were hand-signed by the authors. The authors include names such as Jean-Louis Barrault , Karl Wilczynski , Kurt Kersten , Gottlieb Heinrich Heer, CFW Behl, Max Brod and Max Frisch .
  3. ^ Camp of Silence at filmportal.deTemplate: Filmportal.de Title / Maintenance / ID is missing in Wikidata
  4. ↑ Samuel Schmitt's exile collection in the German Exile Archive of the German National Library
personal data
SURNAME Schmitt, Samuel
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Schmitt, Samuel Abraham Wilhelm (full name); Schmitt, Sammy (nickname)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-Swiss writer and publisher
DATE OF BIRTH 20th September 1920
PLACE OF BIRTH Viernheim ( Bergstrasse district )
DATE OF DEATH June 3, 2002
Place of death Zurich