St. Benno Publishing House

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St. Benno book and magazines publishing company mbH
legal form GmbH
founding 1951
Seat Leipzig
management Michael Birkner, Christiane Völkel (Management)
Branch publishing company
Website www.st-benno.de
Status: August 2016

The St. Benno book and magazine publishing mbH is a Catholic book and magazine publisher and a confessional mail order company based in Leipzig . Shareholders are the dioceses of Dresden-Meißen , Erfurt , Görlitz and Magdeburg . Its predecessor, liquidated in 1991, was the only Catholic publisher in the German Democratic Republic under the name St. Benno-Verlag .

history

The St. Bennoblatt of the Diocese of Meissen appeared in Saxony from 1927 to 1941 as a Catholic supplement to the Sächsische Volkszeitung . Under the editorship of a Dresden pastor, it was revived for a short time after the end of the Second World War in June 1945, but had to be reinstated that same summer under the newly established Soviet military administration. Following on from this, the first efforts were made in Leipzig from 1947 to found a St. Benno publishing house as a GmbH . On April 25, 1951, the Catholic Church in the GDR was officially given permission to publish confessional literature by the head of the Information Office. The license holder was Johann Hoetzel, cathedral capitular in Bautzen , for the diocese of Meißen. Two weeks later, permission to publish a Catholic Sunday paper followed, which initially appeared biweekly on eight pages in A4 format as the Lord's Day . In addition, the publisher brought out the church gazette and in Berlin the St. Hedwigsblatt . The youth magazine Christopherus , which was largely designed by Erfurt youth chaplain Karl Schollmeier and Heinrich Theissing , who later became the bishop and apostolic administrator of Schwerin, was banned in 1953 after only 10 issues.

The founders of the publishing house, i.e. the dioceses of Meißen, Görlitz, Magdeburg, Schwerin and Erfurt, were also joined on May 3, 1951 by the Diocese of Berlin and the Episcopal Commissariat of Meiningen, so that in the end all Catholic jurisdictions of the GDR were represented. The publishing house FW Cordier , founded in 1819, was affiliated to the St. Benno publishing house by state decision on December 8, 1951. On April 1, 1974, the publishing house based in Heiligenstadt was formally incorporated and until 1991 only existed as a branch of the St. Benno-Verlag.

The development of an extensive publishing program began with the help of Western paper donations and by the end of the 1980s had reached around 100 new publications per year. Three quarters of these were licensed editions of works from the Federal Republic.

After the fall of the Wall, the GDR publishing house was initially liquidated, but then re-established with part of the workforce under its current name. In 1998 the company achieved a turnover of six million DM , mainly through mail order .

As a franchise partner of Weltbild plus , the publisher operated the chain's bookstores in Gotha , Jena ( Burgaupark shopping center ), Riesa (Elbgalerie shopping center), Nordhausen (Südharzgalerie shopping center), Sondershausen (Galerie am Schloßberg shopping center), Weißenfels and Wernigerode for several years . In autumn 2014, the financial company Droege International Group acquired a stake in the Weltbild Group , which had previously been fully owned by the church, and retrospectively sold around half of the branch business to the bookstore Lesensart Rüdiger Wenk in Ahaus as of February 1, 2015 . At the same time, St. Benno-Verlag also reduced its branch business to the four locations of Jena, Riesa, Nordhausen and Wernigerode. In mid-August 2016, after the future of the last branches remaining at St. Benno was in question for a few weeks and the possibility of a takeover by St. Benno had been negotiated at least in Riesa, the franchise agreement with Weltbild was terminated.

Publishing offer

The publishing house still publishes the Catholic weekly newspaper Tag des Herr for the (arch) dioceses of Berlin , Dresden-Meißen , Erfurt , Görlitz and Magdeburg with a circulation of around 26,000 copies. The book publisher currently publishes around 200 new publications per year (including subsequent editions).

Under the Vivat brand ! The publisher also operates a denominational mail order business, through which the publisher sells its own books and gift items as well as selected books and non-book items from other publishers and suppliers. For this area, the publisher has its own call center for order acceptance and customer service as well as its own delivery facility with a high-bay warehouse in Leipzig-Wahren.

In addition, the St. Benno Verlag produces confessional radio broadcasts for private broadcasting in Thuringia and Saxony-Anhalt on behalf of the dioceses of Erfurt and Magdeburg .

The book series Edition Radio Vatikan , which is a joint project with Radio Vatikan , has been published by St. Benno Verlag since 2005 . The first book in this series was published on the XX. World Youth Day presented in Cologne. In addition, the publisher operates the online information system kathweb.de .

literature

  • Elisabeth Preuß: The pulpit in the GDR: The unusual story of the St. Benno publishing house. St. Benno 2006, ISBN 978-3-7462-1888-5 .
  • Christoph Links: The fate of the GDR publishers: privatization and its consequences. Ch. Links Verlag 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-595-9 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Internet site of the publisher , accessed on May 31, 2018
  2. ↑ Birgit Mitzscherlich: Dictatorship and Diaspora. The diocese of Meissen 1932-1951 . Speech on the occasion of the awarding of the Horst Springer Prize 2004, p. 11 f.
    Online (PDF; 160 kB) In: Digital Library of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung , accessed on August 24, 2016
  3. ^ Rainer Bendel : Displaced Catholics - Impulses for upheavals in Church and society? , LIT Verlag Münster, 2005, ISBN 978-3-8258-5959-6 , p. 120 f.
    ( limited preview in Google Book search)
  4. ^ Frank Thomas Grub: Wende and unity in the mirror of German-language literature: A manual. Walter de Gruyter 2003, ISBN 978-3-11-020163-5 , p. 39
    ( limited preview in the Google book search)
  5. ↑ The corporate divisions ( Memento from March 12, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
  6. ↑ Rüdiger Wenk wins: 67 Weltbild branches sold . In: boersenblatt.net , March 3, 2015, accessed on August 17, 2016
  7. ↑ The corporate divisions ( Memento from March 20, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
  8. ↑ Weltbild in Riesa should open again . In: Sächsische Zeitung , August 13, 2016, accessed on August 17, 2016
  9. ↑ About us at: Vivat.de , accessed on May 31, 2018
  10. ↑ See the book series by Radio Vatikan goes online. Vatican Radio article of February 10, 2006, accessed July 4, 2012.
  11. ↑ See book presentation book recommendations on the homepage of Radio Vatican, accessed on July 4, 2012. ( Memento from February 15, 2013 in the Internet Archive )

Web links