Walther Fiedler

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Ernst Ludwig Heinrich Walther Fiedler, ca.1899

Walther Fiedler (actually Ernst Ludwig Heinrich Walther Fiedler; * July 7, 1860 in Bromberg ; † July 29, 1926 in Leipzig ) was a German publisher and founder of the Walther Fiedler Leipzig publishing house, the literary association and the Minerva publishing house in Leipzig.

Life and work

Ernst Ludwig Heinrich Walther Fiedler's love for books was to determine his life. After graduating from high school and studying natural sciences at the University of Leipzig, the young Fiedler initially worked as a volunteer in a Leipzig bookshop. With the founding of a family through the first pregnancy of his wife Martha, he initially took a commercial path. He founded the bookstore “W. Fiedler's Antiquariat Buch- und Kunsthandlung ”(owner from 1887 to 1892), which the young entrepreneur quickly made successful.

In 1891 Walther Fiedler, who was just 31 years old at the time, gave up his bookstore after only 4 years and returned to Leipzig to found the publishing bookstore "Walther Fiedler (Leipzig)" (owner from 1891 to 1913).

Publishing bookstore "Walther Fiedler (Leipzig)"

Office of the Walther Fiedler Leipzig publishing house, ca.1900

Works as a publisher

The Leipzig "Damascus Ribbon Library"

The “ damask ribbon library ” was part of the Walther Fiedler Leipzig publishing house's range very early on. It is a collection of small, memorized books in the eponymous damask linen cover with classic favorite authors of the women's world at the time in German. They deserve special mention because the library was not only economically successful, but also received an award at the Chicago World's Fair in 1893 .

Exhibition stamps

As a forerunner of printed advertising, the Walther Fiedler Leipzig publishing house first published exhibition stamps and matching collector's books in 1898.

• Collection book for exhibition stamps , 1898.
• Illustrated collector's book for all official exhibition stamps , commemorative and festival stamps , 1898.
• International exhibition revue with supplement The exhibition stamp , 1898.

Further

• "New bookseller address book "
• "Bookseller order calendar"
• "Bookseller calendar"
• "Writer's Calendar" (5 years)

Minerva Literature Association and Minerva Literature Publishing House

In 1895, Walther Fiedler and A.Schumann took over the publishing house of the literary association " Minerva " from S. Gerstmann in Berlin and moved him to Leipzig. In Berlin, as early as 1894, “Illustrated People's Editions of Masterworks from the Literature Treasures of Nations” were published. Walther Fiedler renamed it to "Illustrated Classic Editions Minerva in the publishing house of the literary works 'Minerva'", Leipzig. Similar to S. Gerstmann * he founded the literary association "Minerva" in 1895. For Gerstmann it was the "Minerva Association of Literature Friends for the Dissemination of Popular Masterpieces of German Classics and Literary Treasures of All Nations". The aim was to publish cheap, illustrated classics in a time of upheaval. The publishing house financed itself as a kind of book club on an association basis. The club contribution was 2.50 marks in the quarter. For this purpose, the members received an illustrated, 32-page classic booklet every two weeks, as well as the “International Literature Reports” as an organ of the association. The association's statutes can be found as an advertisement in “Das litterarien Leipzig”, which Walther Fiedler published in 1897. The booklets appeared in the following period as two or four editions in a green or red cover with a portrait of the author on the front. 1898-99 the publisher had around 1000 members, mainly from the bourgeoisie. There were 15 classics in the Minerva editions and a total of 25 volumes. The publishing house of literary works under Walther Fiedler was next to the Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt the most important publishing house in the illustrative sector. The Minerva classic editions existed until the 1920s, but were no longer published by Walther Fiedler, who in 1902 had to file for bankruptcy for the publisher due to financial difficulties.

Death and obituary

Walther Fiedler died on July 29, 1926 in Leipzig. The following obituary was published in the Börsenblatt des Deutschen Buchhandels in 1926:

“On July 29, 1926, as a result of a stroke, Mr. Walther Fiedler, former owner of the publishing house of his name in Leipzig, died at the age of 66 recently.

Born on July 7th, 1860 as the son of a businessman in Bromberg, he received his training at the secondary school in Dessau, which he left with the school leaving certificate in order to devote himself to historical and scientific studies at the University of Leipzig. However, the desire for early independence and the establishment of a household prompted him to abandon the original plan and devote himself to the book trade. Without further ado, he joined Alfred Lorenz's bookstore in Leipzig as a trainee, which he left after a year to set up his own business in Zittau in 1889. Although he brought the business to a high boom in a short time, he sold it again after a few years because it did not satisfy his entrepreneurial spirit, which urged him to be creative as a publisher, and in 1891 founded a publishing bookstore under his name in Leipzig, after he had sold the Zittau store that still exists today. Although it was armed with not insignificant financial resources, it was not a happy ship to which he entrusted his future, even if the failure of the new company was probably more in its character traits: all too bold optimism and all too often deceived trust in the noble sentiments of his friends and Consultant lay in the often quite original ideas that he tried to help achieve. It is also possible that the book trade, with its many odds and ends and its penny arithmetic, was not at all the area in which its generously laid out nature, which so eagerly applied to all things on the scale of large-scale industrial conditions, could operate successfully. The “ Damascus Ribbon Library ”, a collection of classic favorite authors in the women's world, did find a big market in the range in the nineties, but “Minerva”, who sought to unite the best poets of all times and peoples in illustrated editions, already found it Despite the company's involvement in the travel book trade and the founding of its own association aimed at maintaining and promoting classic literature, the company did not get a share of the company's costs. The young publisher's most popular name, besides the “ Damascus Ribbon Library ”, was probably the publication of the “New Booksellers Address Book”, a continuation of the “Booksellers Order Calendar”, and the “Booksellers Calendar”, a page piece to the one by Fiedler published "Writer Calendar", of which 5 volumes are available, while the "New Booksellers Address Book" was transferred to CF Müller's Verlag in Leipzig after Fiedler went bankrupt . The large-scale five-volume work “Fürst Bismarck after his dismissal” attracted much public attention, but its financial success failed due to the contradiction of the former Chancellor, who, as he put it, did not want “publishers to do business with his things and present him cocked their cart ”.

Fiedler was unable to recover from his first business collapse, all the less since the compulsory settlement he had brought about contained the germ of new adversities that were exacerbated by copyright lawsuits. They are linked to the publication of so-called "secondary air editions" (Freytag, Busch, etc.) and have produced their own literature. In 1914 Fiedler took over a position at the art publisher Otto Gustav Zehrfeld in Leipzig, and it testifies to his tireless creativity that he devoted his services to the company in faithful fulfillment of duties until the end, which gave him power of attorney after it was converted into a stock corporation. All those who were close to the subtle man, who was always cheerful and contented despite severe strokes of fate, or who were even allowed to be his friends, will always keep a friendly memory of him. "

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Catalog of the German National Library. Retrieved January 5, 2018 . 
2. ↑ Dietmar Rößler: fallen out of time. In: saechsische.de. September 30, 2017, accessed April 13, 2020 . 
3. ↑ ^{a b c d e f} number 176 in the  Börsenblatt für den Deutschen Buchhandel  from July 31, 1926 on pages 962–963.
4. ↑ ^{a b c d} http://www.veikkos-archiv.com : Brand history. In: http://www.veikkos-archiv.com/index.php/Marken-Geschichte . Veikkos Archives, January 7, 2018, accessed January 7, 2018 . 
5. ↑ ^{a b c d} Heinz Schmidt-Bachem: A cultural and economic history of the paper processing industry in Germany hardcover edition . De Gruyter Saur (June 29, 2011), 2011, ISBN 978-3-11-023607-1 , pp. 535 .
6. ^ ^{A b c} Doris Fouquet-Plümacher: Kleist on the book market: classic editions for the bourgeoisie . 1st edition. Olms, 2014, ISBN 978-3-487-15139-7 , pp. 176 .
7. ^ ^{A b} Doris Fouquet-Plümacher: Catalog of the Kleist Collection in classic editions in the Kleist Museum, Frankfurt (Oder) editions from 1867 to approx. 1911, e.g. T. until after 1930. In: http://edocs.fu-berlin.de/docs/servlets/MCRSearchServlet?mode=results&id=1wvjx8l0q4id1jcj4czzs&numPerPage=10 . Freie Universität Berlin, 2014, accessed on January 16, 2018 (German). 
8. ^ ^{A b} Walther Fiedler (Ed.): The Litterarian Leipzig . 1st edition. Walther Fiedler, Leipzig 1897, p. 263 .
9. ↑ Volkswacht for Silesia, Posen and the neighboring areas, No. 277. In: http://library.fes.de/cgi-bin/populo/breslau.pl?t_monat1&f_MMM=vfs189411&mon=November&yea=1894 . Library of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, November 27, 1894, accessed on January 16, 2018 (German). 
10. ↑ Martina Reigl: Classic editions of the turn of the century: A comparison based on the Schiller editions of 1905 . Harrassowitz, O, 1990, ISBN 978-3-447-03073-1 , pp. 162, note 60 .
11. ↑ Leipziger Tageblatt No. 377, of July 27, 1901