75 years ago, on August 16, 1945, Aufbau Verlag was founded in Berlin - with the first license after the end of the Second World War and initially as a German publisher in the Soviet occupation zone. The paths and conflicts of the publishing house and its north and east German authors also reflect the upheavals in German history - from life and work in occupied zones to divided Germany and the reunification of a country that is not united afterwards. A book by Konstantin Ulmer now tells the eventful history of the publishing house.
In the beginning there was rubble. In the summer of 1945, Berlin lay in rubble and ashes... In the posh district of Dahlem, the devastation wasn't quite as massive. There, in the southwest of the city, Klaus Gysi, Kurt Wilhelm, Heinz Willmann and Otto Schiele met on August 16, 1945 in the latter's apartment. The four gentlemen came together to found a limited liability company (GmbH) in the presence of a notary, whose name could be read as a program, as a call and hope:construction. [...] The fact that the founding document remained unsealed is a footnote in history:the old seal, an imperial eagle with a swastika, had had its day. A new one did not yet exist. Konstantin Ulmer:"You have to put your heart into something that will reward you. The history of the Aufbau Verlag 1945-2020"
The Aufbau Verlag moves into its first headquarters in the Französische Strasse in Berlin.This is how the Germanist and literary critic Konstantin Ulmer describes the beginning of the eventful history of the Aufbau Verlag. "One should set one's heart in something that rewards it," is the title. The quote comes from Hans Fallada, who has been one of the most important authors of the publishing house from the beginning.
When Aufbau Verlag was founded on August 16, 1945 with the first publishing license after the end of the war in Germany, its four founding fathers gave it a name that sounds like the future in the midst of complete destruction:Aufbau. Departure and new beginnings in difficult times, a spiritual and moral build-up in a country that is divided into four zones of occupation and in which everything is lacking.
Structure:German publisher in the Soviet zone until 1949
Konstantin Ulmer tells the history of the publishing house in nine chapters, closely linked to German-German history. The Aufbau publishing house is founded as an institution of the Kulturbund and soon grows to become the largest literary publishing house in the GDR - which, however, does not yet exist in the year of the founding of the construction. Until the founding of the GDR in 1949, Aufbau was a German publishing house in a Soviet-occupied zone.
Works by Nazi emigrants form the first focus
The focus of the program in the early years is the literature of writers who had to emigrate after the National Socialists came to power. But German classics are also published. The first titles are Heinrich Heine's "Germany. A Winter's Tale", Theodor Plievier's "Stalingrad" and "The Seventh Cross" by Anna Seghers.
The number one in Aufbau, the first publication in the history of the publishing house, was a brochure that went into typesetting two weeks after the publishing house was founded:The Manifesto of the Cultural Association for the Democratic Renewal of Germany. In addition to the founding appeal, the forty-page volume collected the speeches from the founding rally on July 4, 1945 in the Berlin Radio Hall. The number of copies underscored the cultural-political importance of the manifesto:fifty thousand copies read about Germany's war guilt, about the "struggle for the German soul", about the light that the Kulturbund wanted to bring into "the terrible darkness" "that Hitler left behind". Ulmer:"You have to put your heart into something that will reward you. The history of the Aufbau Verlag 1945-2020"
Strong influence of the SED on the construction program
Konstantin Ulmer's look at the history of the publishing house is also valuable because it collects more than 100 illustrations and historical documents that document the history of the publishing house. In the decades after the founding of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany in 1946 and the GDR, the orientation of Aufbau also and above all depended on the demands of the SED - even if the employees fought for more rights in the selection of titles and the orientation of the content.
Hans Fallada becomes an important author at the Aufbau Verlag
Born in Greifswald, Hans Fallada alias Rudolf Ditzen is one of the great faces of the Aufbau Verlag.Hans Fallada alias Rudolf Ditzen (1893-1947), the writer of the "poor people", as his wife Anna Ditzen called him at the time, has been one of the most important authors of the publishing house since the founding days and still is today, more than 73 years after his death. The poet, who in 1932 with "Little man, what now?" landed a global success and erected a monument to his wife Anna with the figure of the "little lamb", fulfilled a dream with the proceeds and bought a property in Carwitz, Mecklenburg. He lived there from 1933 to 1944. In 1945, the year the war ended and the Aufbau Verlag was founded, Fallada was mayor of neighboring Feldberg for a short time. His last novel, "Everyone dies for themselves" was published in 1947 in an abridged, censored edition by Aufbau Verlag. In 2011, the novel experienced a renaissance with the publication of the unabridged new edition by Aufbau and sold more than 300,000 copies.
West opening:"Epicenter of a political earthquake"
In 1950, Walter Janka took over the deputy management of the publishing house. A "confident partisan", as Ulmer writes, who had joined the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War in 1936. As late as 1945, Janka had spoken out in favor of state influence and supervision. In 1953 he became the head of the publishing house, promoted opening up to West German and international authors, and promoted literary exchange with the West. But in 1956, with the reform attempts in Poland and Hungary, the camel overflowed:Janka was arrested in December 1956 and sentenced to five years in prison in 1957 for counter-revolutionary conspiracy and boycott incitement. According to Konstantin Ulmer, the publishing house becomes the "epicenter of a political earthquake" that burns itself into the "publisher's DNA". Walter Janka is rehabilitated after the fall of the Wall. His memoirs appear in 1993 in Aufbau.
Klaus Gysi takes over - Gabriele and Gregor Gysi look back
After Janka, Klaus Gysi takes over the management of the publishing house. The volume published in the anniversary series also tells about this:"Our Father. A Conversation". Questioned by the journalist Hans-Dieter Schütt, who had already worked on Gregor Gysi's autobiography, the Gysi siblings talk about their father:Gabriele Gysi, actress and with Frank Castorf in the GDR at the Anklam Theater, and Gregor Gysi, left-wing politician and "the best speaker in the Federal Republic", as he was once called. They tell of a privileged childhood with meter-high bookshelves and visitors from the USA, South Africa, Great Britain, Belgium and France as well as about her relationship with her father:the publishing director, GDR Minister of Culture, Ambassador to Italy, State Secretary for Church Affairs. A life that reflects the extremes of the 20th century.
Verlag reflects upheavals in German history
Ulmer's book also tells about the import of Western literature into the GDR and why, for example, "Assumptions about Jakob" by Uwe Johnson, born in Cammin in Pomerania in 1934 and raised in Güstrow, is not allowed to be published in the GDR, not by the Aufbau Verlag. Johnson's "conjectures" are about democratic reforms, East and West, the Stasi and suicide. In 1959 the "writer of the division of Germany", as Johnson is also known, moved to West Berlin. That's what he calls his departure from the GDR. Johnson "returns" citizenship to the GDR, but is said to never be able to leave Mecklenburg until his early death in 1984 in British Sheerness on Sea.
Christa Wolf and protests against Biermann's expatriation
After a concert in Cologne in 1976, Wolf Biermann was expatriated from the GDR.Christa Wolf, who was born in Landsberg and grew up in Mecklenburg, is also one of the authors who publish in the Aufbau Verlag. After Johnson left East Germany, she kept in touch with Johnson, who sometimes unexpectedly visited the Wolfs in Kleinmachnow. She is also one of the authors who signed the petition against Wolf Biermann's expatriation in 1976. In 2010 she was awarded the Uwe Johnson Prize in Neubrandenburg by the Mecklenburg Literature Society.
The fall of the wall and banned novels
The history of the publishing house will be published on August 18th.Ulmer's book spans 75 years of German history. He tells of novels like Werner Bräunig's "Fairground", which is also not allowed to be published in the GDR. And looks at the publishing history in times of the fall of the Berlin Wall and reunification. It provides insights into the realignment after the fall of the Wall and describes the illusions that followed German unity. Existential crises are also part of the publishing history, such as financial dizziness, the road to bankruptcy - and out again. Just like the arrival of the publishing house at the new location at Berlin's Moritzplatz.
Aufbau is a publishing company with a history all its own, which seems to have found its place thirty years after reunification. Who is certain of his origins and who has managed to learn from wrong paths and to face new challenges. At the beginning of the construction publishing house, in August 1945, there was rubble. After 75 years, what remains are books and the certainty that many more will follow.Konstantin Ulmer:"You have to put your heart into something that will reward you. The history of the Aufbau Verlag 1945-2020"
75th anniversary program
The Aufbau Verlag is celebrating its 75th anniversary with a number of new publications and readings, including a small volume by one of the most important publishing house authors, Hans Fallada:"My dear young friends" - Fallada's letters to his three children.