Publishing house Volk und Welt
The publishing house people and world Berlin was the most important fiction publisher for international literature of the GDR and its second largest of fiction publishing .
history
1947-1990
It was founded on March 14, 1947 by Michael Tschesno-Hell and Wilhelm Beier as a GmbH in the Soviet zone of occupation to publish translations of Soviet literature and anti-fascist German literature. For this he received the license from SMAD . Later the publishing house was opened for international contemporary literature. In 1951 the Rütten & Loening publishing house was attached, but it was separated again in 1964. Instead, the publisher was merged with Kultur und progress , a DSF publisher specializing in translations of Soviet books . In addition to the book publications by Volk & Welt - around 100 titles per year - there was also the quarterly magazine der bücherkarren with information about new publications.
As with all GDR publishers, the publishing program was subject to censorship. The popularity of the publishing program was not limited to the GDR. As is usual in the GDR, the books were inexpensive. In 1980 the publishing house was awarded the Patriotic Order of Merit in gold.
1990-2001
After 1989, the Treuhandanstalt had to reverse the sale of the publisher twice (1991 and 1992). After initial publishing successes - with Thomas Brussig's novel Helden wie wir , the publisher achieved a bestseller - Volk & Welt was merged with Luchterhand Literaturverlag in 2000, and the last books appeared in 2001. The naming rights are now held by the Random House publishing group . The publisher's archive is part of the archive of the Academy of Arts in Berlin.
Locations
From 1947 to 1996 the publishing house was located in Taubenstrasse 1–2 and Glinkastrasse 13–15 in Berlin-Mitte . In 1996 the publishing house moved to Oranienstrasse 164 in Berlin-Kreuzberg .
Publishing Director
- 1947: Wilhelm Beier
- 1947–1950: Michael Tschesno-Hell
- 1950–1954: Bruno Peterson
- 1954–1970: Walter Czollek
- 1970–1972: Walter Czollek and Jürgen Gruner
- 1972–1991: Jürgen Gruner
- 1991–1992: Ingo-Eric Schmidt-Braul
- 1992: Stephan Treuleben and Alexander Treuleben
- 1992-2001: Dietrich Simon
Important publishing focus
- Foreign literature
- Book series
- ad libitum - collection distraction
- Explorations
- ex libris
- Austrian Library (1985–1990)
- Seven Seas Publishers (1958-1980)
- White Series Lyric International
- spectrum
- Drama series
- People-and-world report
- Booklet rows
literature
- Heinz Dieter Tschörtner : 35 years of international literature 1947–1981. A bibliographical compilation, Verlag Volk und Welt, Berlin 1982, 360 pp.
- Roland Links, Anja Augustin; Simone Barck , Martina Langermann, Siegfried Lokatis (eds.): Window to the world. The history of the GDR publishing house “Volk und Welt”. 2nd edition, Links , Berlin 2005 (first edition 2003), ISBN 3-86153-300-6 (accompanying volume of the traveling exhibition of the Documentation Center Everyday Culture of the GDR eV, Eisenhüttenstadt : Europa im Kopf. Illuminates the publishing history in more detail, review by Altenhein in IASL Online 2004 ).
- Leonhard Kossuth : People & World. Autobiographical testimony from a legendary publisher. , NORA-Verlag, Berlin 2002, ISBN 9783935445641 .
Web links
- Fritz J. Raddatz: settled. The publishing house Volk und Welt is dead in Die Zeit .
- Anke Westphal: Traveling without a passport in the Berliner Zeitung about the exhibition Europa im Kopf.
- Siegfried Lokatis : A Secret Stalin Discourse in the GDR. The censorship of Soviet war novels at the publishing house “Volk und Welt” in: Zeitgeschichte-online, May 2005.
- Volk & Welt publishing archive in the archive of the Academy of Arts, Berlin
Individual evidence
- ↑ Berliner Zeitung , May 2, 1980, p. 4.