Kurt Desch publishing house

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The Kurt Desch publishing house, founded in Munich in 1946, quickly became "one of the most important" German publishers for domestic and foreign fiction literature due to its prominent authors, but fell into disrepute in the course of the 1960s due to numerous legal disputes, including the embezzlement of author royalties went. Founder Kurt Desch sold the publishing house in 1973. In 2016 only the theater publishing house Desch, operated by the Felix Bloch Erben publishing house, still exists .

To the publishing history

Kurt Desch (1903–1984), son of a master shoemaker from Pößneck in Thuringia , had gained experience as a journalist and advertising specialist in various publishing houses, including the Frankfurter Zeitung . In 1933, after a temporary arrest, he was expelled from the Reichsschrifttumskammer so that he had to keep his head above water as a factory worker. Desch became a member of the NSDAP for a time . In the summer of 1945 he was called in by the American military government to rebuild the publishing and book trade in Bavaria. Due to the first publishing license issued in Bavaria, he took over the Münchner Zinnen Verlag , where he had been temporarily active during the World War. In 1946 he converted this company to the Kurt Desch publishing house . "Because he cleverly portrayed himself as a politically persecuted person, albeit not quite accurately," he said he enjoyed all organizational support and, above all, generous paper allocations, according to Reinhard Wittmann . In 1953 the publishing director of the publishing house was Hans Josef Mundt , Gunter Groll was editor-in-chief.

Since Desch was also able to retain well-known authors, he soon achieved a leading position with his company. By 1973 he had published 4,300 titles with a circulation of 41 million copies. His authors included (selection):

In 1974 the Kurt Desch Verlag published the book Hess. The deputy of the Führer. Flight to England and British captivity. Nuremberg and Spandau; about Adolf Hitler's deputy Rudolf Hess from Eugene Bird . As an officer, Bird had the task of guarding Rudolf Hess in the Spandau war crimes prison. From 1964 to 1972 he was the director of the prison. He made friends with Hess there. The book became a world bestseller, translated into twelve languages ​​and published in over 35 countries.

Desch, praised by Kasimir Edschmid as a “great publisher” in 1953, achieved his success not without unfair methods, as it became clear in the course of the 1960s and 1970s. (So ​​the Desch-Verlag published the book Surgeons in 1767. The report of Dr. YZ , a colportage anonymously written by the doctor Alfons Bäker , who worked in Hamburg and later in Mar de Plata , which was viewed as a scandal because the publisher's "Truth" did not stand up to any objective examination.). There were allegations, scandals and lawsuits. The situation was extremely confusing. At the center of the dispute were embezzled authors' fees, often considerable, which Desch at least partially repaid on the basis of court judgments. In 1973 Desch sold his publishing house, which of course meant that the legal disputes had not yet been settled.

Because of the many open questions, the publisher was never able to recover, despite a few company changes. However, Bernhard Cremer, who acquired the publishing house in 1974 and managed it as managing director until 2014, ran the Munich theater publishing house Desch . In June 2014 the Theater-Verlag Desch GmbH was taken over by the Berlin-based publisher Felix Bloch Erben and the publishing house relocated from Munich to Berlin.

Kurt Desch's estate, especially his correspondence, is in the Munich City Library .

literature

  • Ten years of Kurt Desch publishing house. Reports. 1945–1955 , Vienna / Munich / Basel, 1955.
  • An almanac of the authors of the Kurt Desch publishing house , Munich 1963.
  • Heidi Dürr: Double Desch - At the age of 78, the publisher wants to start all over again . The time March 6, 1981.
  • Bernd R. Gruschka: The controlled book market: The American communication policy in Bavaria and the rise of the Kurt Desch publishing house 1945 to 1950 , Frankfurt am Main (booksellers association) 1995.
  • Klaus Körner: From Gauverlag to Willy Brandt. Kurt Desch and his publishing house . In: From the second-hand bookshop . NF 17, no. 4 , 2019, ISSN  0343-186X , p. 142-157 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ira F. Sebeko, Daniela Wolf, Friederike Leetz in their publisher's overview: Bibliography of the titles published from 1945 to 1949 - sorted by occupation zones ( Memento from March 31, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) at the University of Potsdam (PDF 47 kB), accessed on March 31, 2016 March 2016.
  2. ↑ Bernd R. Gruschka: The steered book market , 1995:
  3. ↑ Kurt Desch in the Munzinger Archive , accessed on February 23, 2012 ( beginning of article freely accessible)
  4. ↑ History of the German Book Trade , Munich 1991, p. 366
  5. ↑ mentioned in "And nobody cries after me", in Spiegel December 16, 1953, article about a novel by Siggi Sommer
  6. ↑ Page about Gunter Groll in the Bavarian literature portal
  7. ^ Die Zeit, March 6, 1981 , accessed March 31, 2016.
  8. ↑ Surgeons. The report of Dr. Y Z. Kurt Desch publishing house, Munich 1967.
  9. ↑ The dirty laundry of Dr. Y Z. In: Deutsches Ärzteblatt. Medical notifications. Volume 64, Issue 44, November 4th 1967, p. 2319 f.
  10. ↑ All information in this paragraph from: Die Zeit, March 6, 1981 , accessed on March 31, 2016
  11. ^ Online communication from the Bloch Erben publishing house from June 13, 2014 , accessed on March 31, 2016.
  12. ↑ Literaturportal Bayern about Kurt Desch , accessed on March 31, 2016