Wilhelm Baur (publisher, 1905)

Wilhelm Baur (born as Wilhelm Mayr ; born April 17, 1905 in Munich , † April / May 1945 in Berlin ) was a German publisher and cultural functionary.

Life

Wilhelm Mayr was born on April 17, 1905 in Munich as the illegitimate son of Eleonore Mayr - his father is unknown. When she married the mechanical engineer Ludwig Baur in 1909, he was adopted by him and was henceforth called Wilhelm Baur. He first attended elementary school and then the Königliche Ludwigs-Kreisrealschule in Munich (today Erasmus-Grasser-Gymnasium ). In 1920 he became a member of the NSDAP and in 1922 a member of the SA . In the same year he started as a trainee at the Franz-Eher-Verlag at the party newspaper Völkischer Beobachter and became a close confidante of Max Amann .

In November 1923 he took part in the Hitler putsch . When the party was then banned, he worked in the publishing house of the substitute organization " Großdeutsche Volksgemeinschaft ". In 1927 he married Wilhelmine Häussler, with whom he had two sons. Within the party publishing house, Baur worked his way up and, after the Nazis came to power in 1933, he was the authorized signatory and political director of the central publishing house of the NSDAP, Franz Eher's successor. Baur was elected head of the Bavarian Booksellers Association in September. He moved to Berlin, where he became director of the publisher's Berlin branch. In the party hierarchy he was appointed head of the Reichsleiter for the press of the NSDAP in 1934. In the same year, Baur was appointed first head of the German Booksellers Association and thus received a decisive role in the German book trade.

The German library of the Börsenverein, which had been subordinate to the Reich Propaganda Ministry since June 1933 , was to serve Nazi policy and was to be transformed into a national library , was funded like never before and the institution's budget was steadily increased. As with other national libraries, a delivery regulation for the delivery of free copies of books was included in the statutes of the Baur-led Börsenverein and the newly founded “Federal German Booksellers” (BRB). The Börsenverein was de facto replaced by this newly founded BRB. The BRB was organized according to the leader principle and headed by Baur, deputy chairman was Martin Wülfing , and the management was with Albert Heß, for "non-Aryan questions" the RSK department head Karl Heinrich Bischoff was responsible.

In 1935, Baur became President of the Reich Chamber of Literature . In 1936, the "Gleichschaltung" was formally implemented, the Börsenverein dissolved as a private association and reorganized into a group of the Reich Chamber of Literature, so that booksellers were members of the RSK. Baur rigorously pursued the so-called “de-Judaization” or “Aryanization” of the book trade. Initially, the Jewish traders were asked to liquidate, although objections and complaints to the RSK were possible. In 1937, Baur tightened the course, ordered that all complaints would no longer be granted and announced that liquidation would have to take place by March 1937 and would otherwise be closed by the police. In 1938 Baur became vice president of the Reichsschrifttumskammer and a member of the SS . The following year, Baur summed up 1938 in the Börsenblatt : “One chapter was completely liquidated last year: that of Judaism. Last year I was able to determine that the Jewish influence in the book trade in the Altreich has been completely eliminated. "

At the meeting of the Executive Committee of the German Library in 1938 it was decided that it should be treated equally with the Prussian State Library . As Heinrich Uhlendahl , who was appointed General Director of the Deutsche Bücherei in the same year, stated that the "Deutsche Bücherei was also recognized as the central cataloging agency for German-language literature". In 1940 it finally became a public law institution.

When the price watchdogs of the Reichskommissariat (Reichskommissariat) approached the book trade in 1940 in order to ban the fixed retail prices in the German book trade, the branch owed it to Wilhelm Baur's skillful negotiation that the existing regulations were retained. Meanwhile, Baur set up its own action center in Leipzig . In addition to many publishers and publishing firms was Leipzig headquarters of major Commission houses the book trade, which maintained its distribution center here. In addition to the Börsenverein, the Deutsche Bücherei, the book trade group of the Reichsschrifttumskammer and, close to the city, the center of the SD for the surveillance of the literature and the authors resided there . In November 1943, Baur, who was already head of the Börsenverein and vice-president of the RSK, was promoted to head of press at the powerful Franz-Eher-Verlag as the successor to the disgraced Rolf Rienhardt . The heavy bombing raids on Leipzig on December 4, 1943 and February 20, 1944 destroyed more than 75% of the city's graphic quarter and almost brought the book trade to a standstill. The Reich Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda (RMVP) under Joseph Goebbels used this crisis to disempower Baur. Goebbels personally decided in January 1944 that Leipzig could not be preserved as a book center. The RMVP issued strict conditions for the continued existence of the Leipzig book wholesaler controlled by Baur and his deputy Wülfing, which brought about a change of power in the German book trade and undermined Baur's position of influence. He was unable to recover from his defeat against the Propaganda Ministry and lost his position of power within the party.

During the war, Baur received the War Merit Cross, 1st and 2nd class. He died in the battle for Berlin in the last days of the war .

Publications

• Our way and goal. In: The bookseller in the new realm. Issue 1, 1936.
• Article on the Nazi literature policy in Weimar papers. Festschrift for the Week of the German Book 1937. Published by the Reichsschrifttumskammer. Berlin 1937.
• The book of the Germans. in the magazine: The German writer. October 1938.
• with Rolf Rienhardt and Wilhelm Weiß : Max Amann - A life for leaders and people 1891–1941. Edited by the operating group Deutscher Verlag. Berlin 1941.

literature

• Monika Estermann et al. (Ed.): National bibliography and national library: the listing and collection of national book production, especially German, from the beginnings to the Second World War. (= Archive for the history of the book industry . Volume 35). de Gruyter, 1990, ISBN 3-7657-1587-5 .
• Günther Pflug , Severin Corsten u. a .: Lexicon of the entire book industry. Volume 2, Hiersemann, Stuttgart 1987, ISBN 3-7772-8911-6 .
• Volker Dahm: The Jewish Book in the Third Reich. 2nd Edition. CH Beck Verlag, Munich 1993, ISBN 3-406-37641-X .

Web links

• Newspaper article about Wilhelm Baur in the 20th century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Börsenblatt. No. 106, May 9, 1939, p. 382.
2. ↑ Florian Triebel: The Eugen Diederichs Verlag 1930-1949: A company between culture and calculation. Verlag CH Beck, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-406-52200-9 , p. 167.
3. ↑ Hans-Eugen Bühler, Edelgard Bühler (collaboration): The front book trade 1939–1945. Organizations, competencies, publishers, books. Booksellers Association , Frankfurt am Main 2002, ISBN 3-7657-2500-5 , pp. 68-70.