Universe library for everyone
The Universum Bücherei für alle GmbH was a company founded in October 1926 and registered in the Berlin commercial register in January 1927 , dedicated to the trade in and production of books and magazines. She chose the spelling “Universum Bücherei für Alle” as well as the signet “UB” and belonged to the companies of Willi Munzenberg's International Workers Aid (IAH). After relocating to Switzerland in 1933, its activities ended in 1939.
The Neue Deutsche Verlag (NDV) already belonged to the IAH , where conventional sales methods were no longer considered up-to-date and wanted to be represented in the left segment of the flourishing book clubs next to the Bücherkreis ( SPD ) and the trade union book guild Gutenberg with an emphatically communist book club. At the beginning, Gerhart Pohl, as the person in charge, made sure that there was no class struggle appearance, much to the annoyance of the KPD leadership.
The NDV arrived book block that with a new facing and front page in all-cloth binding with typical straight back came to delivery. The members' magazine Blätter für Alle later met high standards as a magazine for everyone in rotogravure , and with a circulation of 132,000 copies was also added to the subscription copies of the Munzenberg daily newspaper Welt am Abend . The foreign book block system with U. B. binding was also used for purchases from Rowohlt or Kiepenheuer , and K. Wolff Verlag was used for the Zola volumes . The way to the books led through membership, which cost an entrance fee of 30 pfennigs and a monthly fee of 1.10 Reichsmarks . The U. B. advertisement suggested smoking one cigarette less every working day and thus saving 4 pfennigs.
- "Then you get:
- 1. An interesting, comprehensive, modern magazine every month: “Blätter für Alle” with lots of pictures and exciting stories worth at least 30 Pfg.
- 2. Quarterly a large work of world literature (currently, for example, Maxim Gorky : "The Work of Artamonos"), all in linen, printed on wood-free paper, worth at least 6 Mk. "
The main focus was on fiction , i.e. novels and adventure books ; the 1931 annual program also announced the establishment of a Marxist- theoretical department. This was preceded by a change in Comintern policy, with a stronger orientation towards Stalin's pace. Gerhart Pohl had to leave his post, Otto Katz came, and with him a reorganization with improved public relations.
The U.-B. wanted to be “not just a book discount organization, but a cultural organization”. The greatest success in this sense was that of the U.-B. organized "Festival of 20,000" in the Berlin Sports Palace , which also gave an impetus to recruit new members. Their number rose from 5,000 in 1927 to around 25–30,000 in 1932/33 - almost the value at which a book club became profitable. In addition to the members and the employees of the publishing house, there was a twenty-person literary advisory board with Albert Einstein , George Grosz , Käthe Kollwitz and other well-known personalities who particularly addressed a special group of people: the politically independent “ fellow travelers ”. It was important for the paying agent to talk to them, gain influence and, if possible, convince them of the KPD. But despite all the busyness and politicization, it was possible to overlook the growing threat posed by National Socialism .
After 117 editions, the Reichstag fire put the U.-B. in Germany. Willi Munzenberg fled to Paris , with his partner Babette Gross , who was the director of the NDV. It was up to her to ensure the continuation of the existence of the Universum-Bücherei cooperative in September 1933, overcoming personal quarrels . It dissolved after internal problems in May 1936, the legacy passed to the loyal public library in the ČSR and the Swiss Universum book club , Willi Münzenberg committed, who no longer followed the Stalinist course of the Comintern. In the same year, the Swiss Federal Council decided on “measures against communist activities”, which, along with the internal lack of professionalism, promoted the final cessation of work by 1939.
Evidence and literature
- Heinz Lorenz: The Universum Library. History and bibliography of a proletarian book club. 1926–1939 , Verlag Elvira Tasbach, Berlin 1996, ISBN 3-9804849-0-4
- Rolf Surmann: The Munzenberg Legend. On the journalism of the revolutionary German labor movement 1921–1933 , Prometh Verlag, Cologne 1982, pp. 93–98, ISBN 3-922009-53-0
- Urban van Melis: The book communities in the Weimar Republic: with a case study on the social democratic workers' book community "Der Bücherkreis" , A. Hiersemann, Stuttgart 2002, ISBN 978-3-7772-0237-2
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Lorenz 1996: 10
- ↑ Surmann 1982: 93
- ↑ Lorenz 1996: 11
- ↑ Lorenz 1996: 41
- ↑ Surmann 1982: 99
- ↑ Lorenz 1996: 175
- ↑ Surmann 1982: 98
- ↑ Lorenz 1996: 51
- ↑ Lorenz 1996: 45
- ^ Babette Gross: Willi Munzenberg. A Political Biography , Deutsche Verlagsanstalt, Stuttgart 1967, p. 320
- ↑ Lorenz 1996: 25 u. 185
- ↑ Lorenz 1996: 27 u. 55
- ↑ Lorenz 1996: 50
- ↑ Surmann 1982: 254
- ↑ Lorenz 1996: 36
- ↑ Lorenz 1996: 56
- ↑ Lorenz 1996: 64
- ↑ Lorenz 1996: 67
- ↑ Lorenz 1996: 178