Lilienfeld Verlag

The new general trade publisher “Lilienfeld Verlag” is no typical entrepreneurial publishing project, nor is it a progressive collective or a precarious survival pool. Here a publishing couple is giving free rein to its taste in literature.

The idea is a good one: to unearth, preserve, revive and discover. This is the stuff that the dreams of many a literature student are made of – in view of the numerous forgotten authors and books they find languishing on the bookshelves in the course of their studies. There are countless gems that have faded into unmerited oblivion, and some publishers or editors with work contracts try their luck with these forgotten authors. Apart from sponsored scholarly editions in specialist publishing houses, however, this is rarely lucrative. Hence it is a bold venture indeed if a new general trade publisher dedicates itself from the very beginning to this idea.

Viola Eckelt and Axel von Ernst founded the Lilienfeld Verlag in autumn 2007 in Düsseldorf. Is its establishment based on a calculated business plan or is it a case of tapping the creative potential of brilliant dilettantes? Viola Eckelt explains: “It’s a mixture of both, unfortunately, however, without the brilliant bit. There was a business plan, and calculations etc., but of course nothing can be planned exactly, so we had to deal with many imponderables – and still do. There were many things where studying the books on “How Do I Set Up a Publishing Company” didn’t really help – we had to admit to our dilettantism and ask many, many questions. Fortunately the publishing world is very friendly and we always got help.”

The eternal balancing act

10 books have been published at Lilienfeld’s since its foundation in autumn 2007. They are optically attractive, handy books, with an appealing print, well edited and translated. These books should actually be able to make an outstanding impression in the displays of the bookshops – that is if they ever reach them.

This is always the greatest problem of the small publishing houses – even though the books can be ordered from all book wholesalers and are thus obtainable in any bookshop in German-speaking regions. Up to now Lilienfeld has had two representatives – from spring 2009 there will be three – who travel throughout Germany, and one representative in Austria. The books are stored in Leipzig and are despatched by the publishers’ distributor LKG.

But the lynchpin of survival is the objective saleability: “The journalists are very frank, the colleagues at other publishers’ are very co-operative and there are incredibly dedicated booksellers. On this we depend. And the book trade, in particular, is the crunch-point: we always have to try and find titles that are interesting and comply with our standards, but that are also classified as saleable by the bookseller. Hence the survival strategy, as with all the publishers who are our role models, is the eternal balancing act. Many of them succeed, and we’ll keep on trying with each programme.”

Fishing in the sludge of cultural assets

With its handy format and coloured half-linen cover the Lilienfeldiana series is definitely an eye-catcher. But what exactly is the leitmotif of the programme? On the one hand there is the idea of reviving and reprinting forgotten books, on the other hand young contemporary authors are also published. A glance at the titles presented so far may cast light on the overall theme of this programme – it focuses on the aggregate conditions of the bourgeois subject. From the aristocratic, elitist dandy and world traveller Otto E. Ehlers, the cultural pessimist Oswald Spengler to the Dane Knud Hjortoe with his psychological insights from the early 20th century or the “psychic impressionist” Herbert Schlüter. Then the programme takes a decadent turn to the contemporary punk artist Peter Hein or to Felicia Zeller whose laconic and witty writer-protagonist comes to grief in one of Berlin’s seedier districts.

It cannot be denied that each of these individual titles is a high-quality product in itself, but isn’t the idea of republishing forgotten books actually rather nebulous? After all, the publishing “long tail”, the heterogeneous tail of submerged cultural assets is infinitely long, and the big publishers and new media themselves are already mining this rediscovered seam for all its worth. How and what does one look for there? Viola Eckelt: “In the sludge of cultural assets one looks for the good, the fascinating, the wild, the surprising. And there is something that is eternal: the eternal resistance to philistinism, to stagnation, aggression, inhumanity etc. Many a good battle was fought, and these weapons can always be used. But there’s also the eternal stillness, evasion, prudence, ironical distance, that is actually fighting the same fight – only by means of non-participation. And, anyway, there’s something nebulous about every culture, that’s its wealth, and we fish around in it.”