Wilhelm Ambrosius Barth

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
WA Barth around 1830

Wilhelm Ambrosius Barth (born February 25, 1790 in Leipzig ; † December 1, 1851 there ) was a German bookseller and publisher.

Life

Wilhelm Ambrosius Barth was the son of the Leipzig bookseller and publisher Johann Ambrosius Barth (1760-1813) and his wife Catharina Wilhelmina, née Mann, widowed Haug.

Wilhelm Ambrosius Barth attended lectures at the University of Leipzig and received his training as a bookseller in his father's business. After the death of his father, at the age of 23, he took over the management of the publishing house , which kept his father's name. He steered the publishing house from the publication of theological works and entertaining literature more and more to a scientific orientation, with the focus initially on German studies and literature.

The works of Johann Gottfried Herder , Friedrich Heinrich von der Hagen and Jakob Böhme as well as François Rabelais ' Gargantua and Pantagruel should be mentioned here. In the field of natural sciences, there are the chemists Otto Linné Erdmann and Carl Friedrich Plattner , the geodesist and astronomer Wilhelm Gotthelf Lohrmann , the explorers Gebrüder Schlagintweit and the doctor and founder of homeopathy Samuel Hahnemann . In 1824, he put the publication of the successful journal of the Annalen der Physik publishing house into the hands of Johann Christian Poggendorff . In 1828, together with Otto Linné Erdmann, he launched Germany's oldest specialist chemical journal, the journal for technical and economic chemistry , later the journal for practical chemistry .

From 1831 to 1833 Barth held the office of director of the German Booksellers Association and set up a booksellers library. At his suggestion, the Börsenblatt for the German book trade was founded in 1834 . He also promoted the construction of the booksellers' market in Leipzig.

In 1837 he was one of the initiators of the Leipziger Kunstverein after an attempt to do so had failed in 1825. On the 30th anniversary of the victory over Napoleon in the Battle of the Nations near Leipzig , he ensured the revival of the club founded in 1814 to celebrate October 19th . He was a member of the Familiar Society .

In February 1825 he married Auguste Friederike Wilde (1804–1869), a pharmacist's daughter from Leipzig. He had eight children with her, of whom Adolph Ambrosius (1827–1869) continued the family business after his father's death. Wilhelm Ambrosius Barth died of suicide after taking over the generous and varied expansion of the publishing house.

From January 1, 1835 to June 30, 1837, Barth was the publisher of Robert Schumann's Neue Zeitschrift für Musik .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Stadtlexikon Leipzig from A to Z , p. 40
personal data
SURNAME Barth, Wilhelm Ambrosius
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German bookseller and publisher
DATE OF BIRTH February 25, 1790
PLACE OF BIRTH Leipzig
DATE OF DEATH December 1, 1851
Place of death Leipzig