Victor Swiss

Victor Schweizer (born December 9, 1872 in Lomersheim ; † November 15, 1935 ) was a German publisher and new spirit. He was a supporter of the Neugeist movement , publisher and bookseller in Leipzig , Berlin and Pfullingen as well as a doctorate in philology .

Schweizer grew up as the son of a pastor. He studied philology and philosophy in Tübingen . In 1893 he went to Leipzig and studied German with Eduard Sievers and Ernst Elster . He worked as an assistant teacher and obtained his doctorate in 1895 on Ludolf Wienbarg . He then worked as an editor at the Bibliographisches Institut Leipzig and, among other things, oversaw the edition of classic editions and edited works by August Platen , ETA Hoffmann and Otto Ludwig .

From 1900 he ran the publishing house Hermann Seemann Nachsteiger together with the wealthy Friedrich Richard Pfau , which went bankrupt in 1905 after an unusually brisk publishing activity and was then continued as a GmbH until 1915 with a small program .

In 1919 he founded the "Biosophical Movement" and took over the editing of the series "The Occult World", in which subjects from the field of the occult, life reforms and the Far East were treated. As a publisher he took over the Johannes Baum Verlag in Berlin, which he registered in Pfullingen on November 1, 1920. This publishing house mainly distributed writings from the Neugeist movement, but also literature on life reform and mysticism, as well as on Far Eastern wisdom and occultism. The most important product of the publisher was "The White Flag", in which the writer Karl Otto Schmidt also participated. With this magazine, Schweizer decisively promoted the German Neugeist movement. In 1939 this magazine had a circulation of 450,000. Schweizer later also took over the Prana House in Pfullingen , which was founded in 1914 . This reform company produced tablets, oils, ointments and “elixirs of life” on a naturopathic basis.

Since esoteric views were not tolerated under the National Socialists , Baum Verlag was broken up in 1941. Schweizer was arrested by the Gestapo and died while in custody; the cause of death could not be clarified. There are both assumptions that Swiss committed suicide and those that suspect a murder by the National Socialists. According to the wording in his obituary notice, he died "suddenly and unexpectedly from a heart attack" .

Individual evidence

1. ^ Entry "Son of Karoline Wilhelmine geb. Lang and Emil Schweizer " ( Memento from July 6, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
2. ↑ ^{a b} Bernd Wedemeyer-Kolwe: Der neue Mensch , p. 166/167
3. ↑ ^{a b} Barbara Forro: Spiritually for a better life . In: Reutlinger General-Anzeiger from March 14, 2009

Works

• Ludolf Wienbarg as a young German aesthetician and art critic , Leipzig, Univ., Diss., 1896.

literature

• Mark Lehmstedt : Full steam ahead in bankruptcy. The publisher Hermann Seemann successor in Leipzig and Berlin (1900-1915) , in: From the Antiquariat , New Series 10 (2012), No. 5, pp. 199–220 ( publisher's advertisement ).