Austria
Austria, , bar, Östareich officially the Republic of Austria, is a country in the southern part of Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine states, one of which is the capital, Vienna, the most populous ...
n
publishing company
Publishing is the activity of making information, literature, music, software and other content available to the public for sale or for free. Traditionally, the term refers to the creation and distribution of printed works, such as books, newsp ...
.
Overview
The company was created in 1923 by Paul Zsolnay.Hall, Murray G.: “Publishers and Institutions in Austria, 1918–45”, pp. 79–80. ''A History of Austrian Literature 1918–2000'' (Studies in German Literature, Linguistics, and Culture). Katrin Kohl (ed.), Ritchie Robertson (ed.), Camden House Inc., 2006 Online. /ref> It was the most successful publishing company during the interwar period, publishing authors such as
John Galsworthy
John Galsworthy (; 14 August 1867 – 31 January 1933) was an English novelist and playwright. Notable works include ''The Forsyte Saga'' (1906–1921) and its sequels, ''A Modern Comedy'' and ''End of the Chapter''. He won the Nobel Prize i ...
Pearl S. Buck
Pearl Sydenstricker Buck (June 26, 1892 – March 6, 1973) was an American writer and novelist. She is best known for ''The Good Earth'' a bestselling novel in the United States in 1931 and 1932 and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1932. In 1938, Buck ...
,
A. J. Cronin
Archibald Joseph Cronin (19 July 1896 – 6 January 1981), known as A. J. Cronin, was a Scottish physician and novelist. His best-known novel is ''The Citadel'' (1937), about a Scottish doctor who serves in a Welsh mining village before achievi ...
,
Franz Werfel
Franz Viktor Werfel (; 10 September 1890 – 26 August 1945) was an Austrian-Bohemian novelist, playwright, and Poetry, poet whose career spanned World War I, the Interwar period, and World War II. He is primarily known as the author of ''Th ...
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Felix Salten
Felix Salten (; 6 September 1869 – 8 October 1945) was an Austro-Hungarian author and literary critic in Vienna.
Life and death
Salten was born Siegmund Salzmann on 6 September 1869 in Pest, Austria-Hungary. His father was Fülöp Salzmann, ...
Roda Roda
Alexander Friedrich Ladislaus Roda Roda (13 April 1872 – 20 August 1945) was an Austrian writer and satirist.
Biography
Roda Roda was born as Šandor Friedrich Rosenfeld in Drnowitz, Moravia, Austria-Hungary (now Drnovice, Czech Republi ...
,
Hilde Spiel
Hilde Spiel (19 October 1911 – 30 November 1990) (pseudonyms: Grace Hanshaw and Jean Lenoir) was an Austrian writer and journalist who received numerous awards and honours.
Biography Youth in Vienna
Hilde Spiel was born in Vienna in October 19 ...
,
Ernst Lothar
Ernst Lothar (; 25 October 1890 – 30 October 1974) was a Moravian-Austrian writer, theatre director/manager and producer.
He was born Ernst Lothar Müller, and as Müller is a very common German surname, he dropped it. His brother, Hans M ...
Friedrich Torberg
Friedrich Torberg (16 September 1908, Vienna, Alsergrund – 10 November 1979, Vienna) is the pen-name of Friedrich Kantor, an Austrian writer.
Biography
He worked as a critic and journalist in Vienna and Prague until 1938, when his Jewish he ...
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Leo Perutz
Leopold Perutz (2 November 1882, Prague – 25 August 1957, Bad Ischl) was an Austrian novelist and mathematician. He was born in Prague (now capital of the Czech Republic) and was thus a citizen of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He lived in Vienn ...
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Heinrich Mann
Luiz Heinrich Mann (; 27 March 1871 – 11 March 1950), best known as simply Heinrich Mann, was a German author known for his Social criticism, socio-political novels. From 1930 until 1933, he was president of the fine poetry division of the ...
,
Kasimir Edschmid
Kasimir Edschmid, born Eduard Hermann Wilhelm Schmid, (5 October 1890 in Darmstadt – 31 August 1966 in Vulpera (Switzerland)) was a German expressionist writer. His work was part of the literature event in the art competition at the 1928 ...
,
Carl Sternheim
Carl Sternheim (born William Adolph Carl Francke; 1 April 1878 – 3 November 1942) was a German playwright and short story writer. One of the major exponents of German Expressionism, he especially satirized the moral sensibilities of the emergi ...
,
Emil Ludwig
Emil Ludwig (25 January 1881 – 17 September 1948) was a German-Swiss author, known for his biographies and study of historical "greats."
Biography
Emil Ludwig (originally named Emil Cohn) was born in Breslau, now part of Poland, on 25 Ja ...
,
Walter von Molo
Walter Ritter/Reichsritter von Molo (14 June 1880, Šternberk, Moravia, Austria-Hungary – 27 October 1958, Hechendorf (now Murnau am Staffelsee, Bavaria, West Germany), was an Austrian writer in the German language.
Life
Walter von Molo w ...
, and
Frank Thiess
Frank Thiess (13 March 1890 – 22 December 1977) was a German writer.
Biography
Born in Eluisenstein (now Ogre Municipality), Kreis Riga, Governorate of Livonia, Russian Empire (now Latvia), Thiess grew up in Berlin. He worked as a journalist fo ...
.
Nazi era
After Austria's
Anschluss
The (, or , ), also known as the (, en, Annexation of Austria), was the annexation of the Federal State of Austria into the German Reich on 13 March 1938.
The idea of an (a united Austria and Germany that would form a " Greater Germany ...
with
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...
in 1938, the publishing house's owner, Paul Zsolnay, was subject to Nazi anti-Jewish restrictions. After initial attempts to "trick" the Nazis by utilizing an “Aryan” titular head to his firm, he fled to London. The
Gestapo
The (), abbreviated Gestapo (; ), was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and in German-occupied Europe.
The force was created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by combining the various political police agencies of Prussia into one organi ...
closed the publishing house in April 1939, until the non-Jewish bookseller Karl H. Bischoff took over.
In London, Zsolnay worked for the British publisher Heinemann, helping to set up the imprint Heinemann & Zsolnay. Paul Zsolnay lived in
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...
from 1938 to 1946.
Postwar
When Zsolnay returned to Vienna in 1946, he recovered the business and renamed it the Heinemann & Zsolnay Verlag,