Trikont publishing house

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The Trikont-Verlag was one of the most famous publication houses of the protest and alternative movement in the 1960s and 1970s. It was founded in 1967 by two members of the SDS , Herbert Röttgen - who later took his author's pseudonym Victor Trimondi as his name - and Gisela Erler , in Cologne and shortly afterwards relocated to Munich. Achim Bergmann joined in 1969 .

Publishing history

The publisher's name referred to Trikont , a replacement term for the terms Third World and Developing Countries , which were judged to be discriminatory , for the three continents Africa , Asia and Latin America , which were viewed by the radical left at the time as the starting point of a worldwide revolutionary liberation movement. Accordingly, the publisher initially published primarily writings by radical movements from the Third World (South America, Cuba, Africa, Vietnam) and the American protest movement ( Black Panther Party ), including a German translation of Che Guevara's famous Bolivian diary . Other authors from this publication phase were Fidel Castro , Ho Chi Minh , Régis Debray , Rudi Dutschke . In addition to its own publishing company, Trikont distributed books, magazines, posters and records from the People's Republic of China , including the words of Chairman Mao Tsetung (“Mao Bible”).

In the 1970s, Trikont was the publishing house that published the relevant writings of the so-called Sponti movement, the radical, libertarian, alternative and extra-parliamentary youth opposition of the 1970s, to which Joschka Fischer and Daniel Cohn-Bendit , both Trikont authors at the time , counted. From 1973 the publisher published the theory journal of the Spontis: Autonomie - materials against factory society . The Trikont record label Our Voice was created back in 1972 - with the release of the album We liberate ourselves from the Munich-based Sponti group Arbeitersache, to which the members of the Trikont publishing collective belonged. Following the example of Lotta Continua , an organization of the Italian operaism , they sang self-composed battle songs.

Since 1974 the publisher has published the series Frauenoffensive , which was published by women from the Munich women's movement. This series included texts from German, American, English, Italian and French feminism. A little later, the editors of this series founded the first autonomous feminist publishing house in Germany under the same name, Frauenoffensive .

At the end of the 1970s, Trikont-Verlag changed its program and published topics that were later classified under the term New Age . To indicate the new direction, the publishing house was renamed Dianus-Trikont-Verlag in 1980 and separated from the record label, which became an independent company as Trikont - Our Voice , with Achim Bergmann as the sole shareholder.

Gisela Erler left the book publisher, Herbert Röttgen stayed and continued it together with the French writer Christiane Singer (Thurn-Valsassina) until 1986. Trikont - Our Voice has now released around 500 albums in a wide variety of music styles: from songwriters and rock music to punk rock, swamp music, klezmer and other folklore adaptations to children's music.

In July 1986 the publisher filed for bankruptcy. The former editor Christine Dombrowsky founded the so-called "Archive 451" in 1991 from the bankruptcy estate. The name is a reference to the Truffaut film> Fahrenheit 451 <. According to the company's own statements, all 254 titles of the publisher are now available again in the archive through systematic purchases. There is also a pool of posters, magazines and gray material from other social and anti-authoritarian movements in Munich. Dembrowsky wants to see the publisher "... Trikont not initially as an esoteric publisher ... but rather as part of the left-wing Munich tradition of Erich Mühsam and Ernst Toller " political, snappy, thoughtful, intelligent and uncompromising "".

Christine Dombrowsky died on July 20, 2010 at the age of only 59. Shortly before her death, she handed the archive over to the " Archive of the Munich Labor Movement ".

The Bommi Baumann case

Like many of the small, left-wing publishers of the time, Trikont-Verlag published books that reflected the "armed resistance" against fascism and colonialism as well as "revolutionary violence" as a means of radical social change. The issue of violence was differentiated from the start and discussed controversially in the publishing team, later in particular in the magazine “Autonomie”. As with many of their publishing colleagues and companions, the increasing escalation of the RAF terror led Herbert Röttgen and Gisela Erler to recognize that they should reject “revolutionary violence” as a political tool. They demonstrated their change of heart by bringing out, among other things, the autobiography of Bommi Baumann's How everything began . Baumann, a former member of the left-wing terror group Movement June 2nd , pleaded with convincing experience reports for an exit from the armed scene ("Comrades, throw away the gun!"). Many intellectuals, including Heinrich Böll in a prominent position , saw the book as the most authentic contribution to stopping the spiral of violence.

Even before the publication of How everything began , Röttgen's publisher received several death threats from the RAF milieu. He decided to publish anyway. Paradoxically, the Bavarian public prosecutor's office banned the book. The publishers Röttgen and Erler were charged because the text allegedly incited violence, although it did exactly the opposite. House searches were carried out on the premises of the Trikont publishing house, in numerous bookshops and private apartments in order to confiscate the book. The widely acclaimed lawsuit against the two publishers spanned three years and all instances. It ended in 1978 with a comprehensive acquittal.

Meanwhile, one of the most spectacular campaigns for a banned book since 1945 has taken place. Herbert Röttgen had organized a reprint edition of How everything started , which was not published by Trikont-Verlag but by more than 400 well-known people, publishers, bookshops, printers and institutions, including Jean-Paul Sartre , Peter Handke , Wolfgang Abendroth , Bernt Engelmann , Inge Feltrinelli , Helmut Gollwitzer , Jakob Moneta , Luise Rinser , Alice Schwarzer , Peter Weiss and Gerhard Zwerenz . During the court ban on the Trikont edition between 1975 and 1978, the reprint was available in bookshops and became a bestseller.

The post-esoteric phase of the publishing house begins with the Baumann memoirs. Since then, the Duisburg-based TRIKONT publisher Bernd Kalus has been producing pop-theoretical, social-historical and theater literature.

Further publications

With the Trikont-Verlag the publishers Herbert Röttgen, Gisela Erler and the publishing team created a trendsetter in protest and alternative literature: it published the earliest German-language books and translations on feminism , the Gray Panther movement, and homosexuals. and men's movement, to various alternative forms of life, to oppressed peoples, to the new Indian movement, to regionalism. Well-known authors and titles (“revolutionary classics” from this time) were: Rudi Dutschke : Der Lange Marsch (1968); Daniel Cohn-Bendit : The great bazaar (1975); Rainer Langhans and Fritz Teufel : Klau mich (1977); Jerry Rubin : Do it (1976); Volker Elis Pilgrim : Manifesto for the Free Man (1977). "Trikont has made a special reputation for itself with profound and dazzling compilations of downright obscure genres and little-noticed genres", wrote Michael Scheiner in "Der neue Tag" on September 27, 2007.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Christof Meueler, Franz Dobler: The Trikont Story. Munich 2017, p. 29, p. 38.
  2. ↑ The Süddeutsche Zeitung wrote about this in 1999 under the title The sweet poison of feminism . About the women's offensive at Trikont Verlag
  3. ^ Christof Meueler, Franz Dobler: The Trikont Story. Munich 2017, p. 136.
  4. ↑ Thirst for myths - From Mao to the Dalai Lama, from Che Guevara to the Mother of God - the former Links-Verlag Trikont is on the spiritual trip Verlage, October 4th 1982
  5. ↑ https://trikont.de/category/themen/die-trikont-story/
  6. ↑ Der Spiegel issue No. 30/1986 - accessed online on December 15, 2018 | 15:43 - available online
  7. ^ Homepage Protest Munich: 1967 - The Trikont Verlag and the archive 451, accessed online on December 15, 2018 | 3:56 p.m. - available online
  8. ↑ taz blogs from July 28, 2010: The soul of archive 451 has died, accessed online on December 15, 2018 - available online
  9. ^ " Urban guerrilla as a witness of the Stasi " . In: Der Spiegel , December 2, 2008
  10. ↑ compare index, Trikont-Verlag ( Memento of the original from March 5, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.trikont-duisburg.de