Book Fairs, Publishers and Institutions in Germany

The Büchergilde Gutenberg, a venerable union book club for good literature and fine books, has been going strong since 1924. And since 1998 edition Büchergilde, an affiliated privately-run publisher, has been drawing readers and customers from outside the membership circle.

The Büchergilde Gutenberg is an enterprise in the good old tradition of worker education, in which printers and bookbinders themselves had always been a driving force. This pioneering book club was founded in 1924 at a conference of the German Book Printers’ Educational Association, chaired by Bruno Dressler. Its object was to offer culturally edifying books at prices the proletariat could afford. It was, in a word, a working-class cultural institution featuring such illustrious authors as B. Traven, Oskar Maria Graf, Martin Andersen Nexö or Jack London. Interested unionist readers who joined the club had to buy at least one title from the publishers every trimester, and that’s how it still works to this day. By 1931 the club had 27 offices, including branches in Zurich, Vienna and Prague.

This success story for good books lasted till 1933, by which time 85,000 people had signed up. But as a sociopolitically effective institution with a lineup of progressive authors, the Büchergilde Gutenberg could not survive under the Nazi dictatorship. The book club was taken over by the government, though it continued to operate in Switzerland as a publisher-in-exile. After the war the club’s ambitious agenda was resumed in West Germany under the aegis of the DGB German Federation of Trade Unions. And in 1998 former employees of the Büchergilde Gutenberg set up an affiliated publishing house called edition Büchergilde.

Affordable quality

For the most part, the Büchergilde Gutenberg takes out licences for current titles from other publishers and makes them over into superbly crafted and aesthetically prepossessing books for its members, whilst edition Büchergilde also publishes titles of its own. High standards prevail in either case: viz. to produce “books of consummate workmanship, uncommon design and excellent content.” Wherever possible, moreover, each book is fitted out with a specially conceived cover and even a distinctive typography.

How does the club finance these exacting quality standards? Mario Früh, managing director of edition Büchergilde, explains: “That’s a question that comes up all the time. The only answer I can give is that our production department traditionally attaches importance to quality, and the service section also seems to take pains to deliver good quality. And what works for the book club we also try to do in publishing at edition Büchergilde. Imagination and quality don’t necessarily have to be expensive.”

Not out to swell the glut of books

Along those lines, on the 125th anniversary of the birth of the classic German humorist Joachim Ringelnatz, the publishers put out a worthy commemorative collection of his poems. But edition Büchergilde also takes new authors under its wing – which was indeed one of the reasons for setting up the publishing house in the first place. Says Mario Früh: “The purpose of edition Büchergilde resulted from the fact that, in the wake of Büchergilde Gutenberg’s restructuring after the management buy-out ten years ago, we were offered different manuscripts from those we’d been getting before. Naturally, these writers wanted their books to get reviewed and sold on the open market. And the only way to do that was to start up a publishing house, edition Büchergilde. We weren’t out to increase the glut of books, but to do just a few selected titles every six months.”

One exception, however, was the 30-volume Phantastische Bibliothek (i.e. “Fantastic Library”) of Jorge Luis Borges’ favourite works of literature, which proved quite a success for the publishers. Edition Büchergilde continues to carry its tried and tested series and media labels. Its catalogue includes handsome clothbound editions of the best novels of the day, non-fiction from Noam Chomsky to Sebastian Haffner, a series on current affairs, literature for children and young adults, a classics library and a small series of literary gems, an art club with contemporary graphics, small sculptures and photographs, plus a wide assortment of music.

What’s more, edition Büchergilde awards an essay prize for the best submission to its annual contest, as well as a designer prize. Its own products have won over 150 distinctions to date for best craftsmanship, and that is likely to continue. Edition Büchergilde’s latest project is a series called Weltlese. Lesereisen ins Unbekannte (“World Choice: Literary Journeys Into the Unknown”), edited by Ilja Trojanow, which will keep this assortment of strange and unknown literature from being relegated to the obscure realms of exoticism.