Association of Catholic Publishers and Booksellers

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The Association of Catholic Publishers and Booksellers (VKB) was a business association based in Bonn , in which Catholic book publishers and bookstores had come together. In 2000 it merged with the Arbeitsgemeinschaft Katholische Presse (AKP) to form the Catholic Media Association (KM.)

history

The VKB was founded in the Catholic milieu as an amalgamation of ecclesiastical and private publishers who were guided by the Christian model. “Members can be companies and persons who want to support the production or distribution of the Catholic book and the corresponding audiovisual media”. In the bookselling trade, the Börsenverein was founded towards the end of the 19th century in the wake of the Kröner (price) reforms in the German book trade (1887/88). Membership there later formed a prerequisite for (regular) membership in the VKB.

As early as the end of the 16th century, the Regensberg bookstore in Münster (1591) and two years later, Kösel in Munich, were the first Catholic bookstores to be established. However, it was not until the beginning of the 20th century before the first confessional professional organization was launched. The decisive moment for this were the disputes with the Bonn Borromeo Association , which had existed since 1844 , which had initiated the provision of selected literature for the “creation of house libraries in families” and its members - especially religious - works at low prices as part of its association activity could offer. Thereby books z. Sometimes two-thirds of the retail price was sold, which led to complaints from bookstores about “business impairment”. Based on these disputes, a group of Catholic booksellers tried since 1904 in dialogue with the first head of the stock exchange association Albert Brockhaus to come to a solution regarding book prices. This took place in 1906 and resulted in the establishment of an “Association of Representatives of the Catholic Book Trade”, which was announced on August 9th of that year in the Börsenblatt (No. 183). The association name was later simplified to “Association of the Catholic Book Trade”. At the beginning of 1907 [the VKB] already had 186 members. The first board of directors included Hermann Herder (Freiburg i. Br.), Friedrich Pustet (Regensburg), Heinrich Schöningh (Münster), Julius Meyerhoff (Graz), Paul Huber (Kempten) and Adolf Bader (Rottenburg)

The suppression of the association's activities under the Nazi dictatorship becomes clear in the renaming of the association to “Arbeitsgemeinschaft Catholic booksellers” (1935) and finally led to the forced dissolution of the same in 1938.

After the end of the Second World War , the assorters (“Arbeitsgemeinschaft Catholicischer Sortimenter”) and the publishers (“Arbeitsgemeinschaft Catholicischer Verleger”) were each founded in spring 1948. The two working groups finally merged in May 1951 in Cologne. The entry in the register of associations of the Frankfurt am Main district court took place on November 12 of the same year. Since then, the VKB has been trying on the one hand to cooperate with the Association of Protestant Book Trade (VEB), but on the other hand it has also sought contact with specialist colleagues in Austria and Switzerland . The so-called three-country meetings of the Catholic book trade have taken place every two years since 1951. The initiative for this came on the occasion of a publishers' congress held in Rome by Richard Schmitz (Herold-Verlag, Vienna), the first chairman of the interest group for the Catholic book trade in Austria, founded in 1947. Since 1959, the three-country meetings have taken place following the VKB general assembly.

The relocation of the VKB office to Cologne between 1935 and 1938 also resulted in the association's archive being relocated, which was later destroyed in the Bachem fire. The legal seat of the association initially remained in Frankfurt before the headquarters were relocated to Stuttgart in 1974. As part of the new version of the statutes, the name of the association was also changed from “Association of Catholic Booksellers” to “Association of Catholic Publishers and Booksellers”. In January 1998 the Stuttgart office was finally closed. The background was the change in the management from Barbara Evers-Greder to Peter Kerp, the former managing director of the Lempertz bookstore in Bonn. Until an office was set up in Bonn jointly with the Catholic Press Working Group, the VKB office was located at Brothersgasse 1 in Bonn.

Chairperson

Managing Director (since the association was founded in 1951)

  • 1951 to 1955: Franz J. Löffler, Regensburg
  • 1955 to 1960: Erika Wendler, Würzburg
  • 1960 to 1993: Wolfgang Großmann, Stuttgart
  • 1993 to 1996: Barbara Evers-Greder, Stuttgart
  • 1996 to 1999: Peter Kerp, Bonn

literature

  • 40 years of the three-country work of the Catholic Book Trade Associations in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, ed. from the secretariat of the three-country committee VKB, Einsiedeln 1991.
  • Wilhelm Spael: The history of the association of the Catholic book trade, in: Association of the Catholic book trade (ed.): The Catholic book trade of Germany. Its history up to 1967, Frankfurt a. M. 1967, pp. 91-171.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Statutes of the Association of Catholic Publishers and Booksellers e. V. resolved and accepted at the Extraordinary General Meeting on October 12, 1974 in Frankfurt / M., § 4 Acquisition of Membership, p. 2
  2. ↑ Spael, history of the Association of Catholic booksellers, p 103
  3. ↑ Spael, history of the Association of Catholic booksellers, p 103
  4. ↑ Spael, history of the Association of Catholic booksellers, pp 140-145.
  5. ↑ Spael, history of the Association of Catholic booksellers, S. 146f