Velhagen & Klasing

Velhagen & Klasing was a major German publishing company in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

History

Long nineteenth century

Velhagen & Klasing's first major success was the popular cookbook of Henriette Davidis from 1844–1875.[1][2] The company earned 2,762 Thaler in the cookbook's peak sales year in 1858,[2] or the equivalent of over US$40,000 in 2009.[3] Davidis argued fiercely with the company over her compensation, and her royalty payment increased from 50 to 1000 Thaler over its publication history.[1]

In the 1870s and 1880s, Velhagen & Klasing sold two-thirds of its Lutheran and patriotic works through Colporteur salesmen, at the time a new method of marketing through door-to-door salesmen.[4][lower-alpha 1]

Another area that Velhagen & Klasing emphasized was geography textbooks. In this area, Ferdinand Hirt, who published Ernst von Seydlitz's works, was their major competitor.[5] In the mid-to-late 1800s, Hirt & Sohn[lower-alpha 2] and Velhagen & Klasing together had an oligopoly in the German textbook market.[6][7]

Velhagen & Klasing was also dominant in popular children's literature.[8] Their popular novels for girls in this era conveyed largely the same values as their schoolbooks, namely virtue, piety, self-sacrifice, and docility.[8]

In the late nineteenth century, Velhagen & Klasing published a number of very popular adventure novels by S. Wörishöffer.[9][10] She was hired by Velhagen & Klasing to rewrite an unsuccessful novel by a previously unpublished writer, Max Bischoff, which resulted in Robert des Schiffsjungen (1877).[9][11] The publisher intentionally hid the identity of Wörishöffer, who was not the world traveling male that the novels implied, in order to preserve their credibility.[10]

In 1886, they began publishing the illustrated family monthly, Velhagen & Klasing's Monatshefte, which included reviews by Carl Hermann Busse.[12]

In 1901, they bought the publishing company of Georg Wilhelm Ferdinand Müller (1806–1875) from his heirs. Müller's work consisted primarily of textbooks.[13]

The publisher had significant involvement in the Leipzig Geographical Society, known as Geographischer Abend.[14]

After World War I

When World War I caused a redrawing of national boundaries, some publishers, such as Columbus Verlag of Berlin, began developing geographical maps which ignored territorial boundaries. Velhagen & Klasing rejected this shift and focused on territorial boundaries.[15] Velhagen & Klasing published the second most popular school atlas in Germany in the 1920s, after the one made by Carl Diercke.[16] Their atlases in this era were examples of cartographic propaganda intentionally designed to promote German nationalism,[17] as had their other textbooks since the nineteenth century.[18] The trend to expand the borders of Germany and German cultural influence in Velhagen & Klasing's maps began in the late 1920s, and by 1933 their maps contained large-scale falsifications.[19]

Velhagen & Klasing was one of many who profited from the closure of Jewish and left-wing publishing companies during the Nazi Party's rise to power in the 1930s.[20]

Notes
  1. Occupational breakdown of Velhagen & Klasing's consumers is available in Fullerton (2015, p. 246)
  2. Founded by Arnold Hirt

Citations
  1. Goozé 2007, p. 268.
  2. Fullerton 2015, p. 167.
  3. According to the Destatis Federal Statistical Office, 2,762 Thaler in 1882 is worth US$38,265 in 2009. It seems reasonable to assume there was some inflation between 1858–1882.
  4. Fullerton 2015, p. 245.
  5. Tatlock 2010, p. 187.
  6. Tatlock 2010, p. 162.
  7. Askey 2013, p. 5.
  8. Askey 2013, p. 104.
  9. Ramos, Cortez & Mourão 2017, p. 124f.
  10. Grewling 2014, p. 111.
  11. Grewling 2014, p. 122.
  12. Kafka 2016, p. 407.
  13. Graham & Sarkowski 2008, p. 389, Ch 1. n. 1.
  14. von Maltzahn 1905, p. 33-34.
  15. Nekola 2015, pp. 143-144.
  16. Herb 2002, p. 97.
  17. Herb 2002, p. 111.
  18. Askey 2013, p. 10.
  19. Liebenberg, Demhardt & Vervust 2016, p. 218.
  20. Barbian & Sturge 2013, p. 315.

References
  • Tatlock, L. (2010). Publishing Culture and the "reading Nation": German Book History in the Long Nineteenth Century. Studies in German Literature. Camden House. ISBN 978-1-57113-402-8.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  • Herb, Guntram Henrik (2002). Under the Map of Germany: Nationalism and Propaganda 1918–1945. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 978-1-134-79790-5.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link) ProQuest Revised from National self-determination, maps, and propaganda in germany, 1918-1945 (PhD). University of Wisconsin-Madison. 1993. ProQuest 304053437.
  • Fullerton, R.A. (2015). The Foundations of Marketing Practice: A history of book marketing in Germany. Routledge Studies in the History of Marketing. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 978-1-317-53612-3.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  • Liebenberg, E.; Demhardt, I.J.; Vervust, S. (2016). History of Military Cartography: 5th International Symposium of the ICA Commission on the History of Cartography, 2014. Lecture Notes in Geoinformation and Cartography. Springer International Publishing. ISBN 978-3-319-25244-5.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  • Barbian, J.P.; Sturge, K. (2013). The Politics of Literature in Nazi Germany: Books in the Media Dictatorship. Bloomsbury Publishing. ISBN 978-1-4411-6814-6.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  • Goozé, M.E. (2007). Challenging Separate Spheres: Female Bildung in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-century Germany. North American studies in nineteenth-century German literature (in German). Peter Lang. ISBN 978-3-03911-018-6.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  • von Maltzahn, H. (1905). Friedrich Ratzel: ein Gedenkwort (in German). CUP Archive.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  • Graham, G.; Sarkowski, H. (2008). Springer-Verlag: History of a Scientific Publishing House: Part 1: 1842—1945 Foundation Maturation Adversity. Springer Berlin Heidelberg. ISBN 978-3-540-92887-4.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  • Grewling, Nicole (2014). "Inventing America: German racism and colonial dreams in Sophie Wörishöffer's Im Goldlande Kalifornien (1891)". In McFarland, R.B.; James, M.S. (eds.). Sophie Discovers Amerika: German-Speaking Women Write the New World. Camden House. Camden House. p. 111ff. ISBN 978-1-57113-586-5.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  • Nekola, Peter (2015). The concept of the geographical, 1919-1939 (PhD). New School University. ProQuest 1705563207.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  • Ramos, A.M.; Cortez, M.T.; Mourão, S. (2017). Fractures and Disruptions in Children's Literature. Cambridge Scholars Publishing. ISBN 978-1-5275-0426-4.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  • Askey, J.D. (2013). Good Girls, Good Germans: Girls' Education and Emotional Nationalism in Wilhelminian Germany. Studies in German Literature. Camden House. ISBN 978-1-57113-562-9.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  • Kafka, F. (2016). Letters to Friends, Family, and Editors. Kafka library. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0-8052-0949-5.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)

Further reading
  • Frey, Axel (1997). "Aus der Leipziger Buchhandels- und Verlagsgeschichte. Velhagen & Klasing, Bielefeld und Leipzig" [History of the book trade and publishing in Leipzig: Velhagen & Klasing, Bielefeld and Leipzig]. Sächsische Heimatblätter. Jahrgang. 43 (1): 34–39.
  • Lewy, G. (2016). Harmful and Undesirable: Book Censorship in Nazi Germany. Oxford University Press. p. 156. ISBN 978-0-19-027529-7.
  • Maurer, Kathrin (2013). Visualizing the Past: The Power of the Image in German Historicism. Interdisciplinary German Cultural Studies. De Gruyter. ISBN 978-3-11-028293-1. ProQuest
  • Meyer, Horst (1985). Velhagen & Klasing: Einhundertfünfzig Jahre, 1835-1985 [Velhagen & Klasing: One hundred and fifty years, 1835-1985] (in German). Berlin: Cornelsen-Velhagen & Klasing. ISBN 3-464-00002-8. OCLC 28293392.
  • Pfau, Karl Friedrich (1910), "Velhagen und Klasing", Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB) (in German), 55, Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, pp. 638–641CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  • Tabaczek, Martin (2003). Kulturelle Kommerzialisierung: Studien zur Geschichte des Verlages Velhagen & Klasing 1835-1870 [Cultural commercialization: Studies in the history of the publisher Velhagen & Klasing, 1835-1870] (in German). Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. ISBN 3-631-51093-4. OCLC 54695707. Adapted from Tabaczek's 2001 dissertation at Universität-Gesamthochschule Essen.
  • Tabaczek, Martin (2010). "Religiöse Literatur und ihre Kommerzialisierung zwischen Vormärz und Reichsgründung. Das Beispiel des Verlages Velhagen& Klasing" [Religious literature and its commercialization between Vormärz and Reichsgründung: The example of the publisher Velhagen & Klasing]. Archiv für Geschichte des Buchwesens. 65: 213–227.
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