Rowohlt, Ernst

(1887-1960)

   publisher; perfected paperback "pocket editions" (Taschenbucher). Born in Bremen to a stockbroker, he was a banking apprentice before switching single-mindedly to the book trade. Beginning as a typesetter, he worked at Leipzig's prestigious Insel Verlag as printer, book-binder, and engraver before selling books in Munich and Paris. He once ex-claimed, "I deal in books, I don't read them and I don't carry them around with me"; in fact, he was well read. Back in Leipzig by 1908, he progressed to business manager of the Zeitschrift fur Bucherfreunde (Magazine for biblio-philes); then, with Kurt Wolff* as silent partner, he opened his own firm in July 1908, the Ernst Rowohlt Verlag. The firm had four successful years before friction led Rowohlt and Wolff to dissolve their partnership. In February 1913 he was empowered to represent the Samuel Fischer* publishing house. Later that year he purchased the Hyperion-Verlag of Berlin.*

   Rowohlt's breakthrough came in the 1920s. After four years of military serv-ice (1914-1918) he settled in Berlin and founded a second Ernst Rowohlt Ver-lag. From 1920 he published the democratic weekly Das Tage-Buch.* By frequenting well-known establishments—the Romanische Cafe, the Bierhaus Pschorr, and the bar at the Hotel Adlon—he nurtured literary contacts and transformed his enterprise into a leading firm. Assisted by a gifted editor, Paul Mayer, he focused on inexpensive "pocket editions"; it was a brilliant move. Among the almost two hundred names he counted as authors (several of whom he enticed from Fischer) were Arnolt Bronnen,* Hans Fallada,* Walter Hasen-clever,* Walter Mehring,* Robert Musil,* Kurt Pinthus* (his chief reader), Ernst von Salomon,* and Kurt Tucholsky.* His biggest success, appearing in 1932, was Fallada's Kleiner Mann - was nun? (Little man—what now?).

   As Rowohlt's authors generally embodied Weimar's left-wing spirit, the press drastically reduced its offerings after 1933. In 1938, after publishing a biography of the Jew* Bruno Adler under the name Urban Roedl, he fled Germany for two years, going first to London and then to Brazil (his wife was Brazilian). Although the firm was closed in 1943, it reopened in December 1945 under British license in Hamburg. With its solid literary paperbacks, it remains a major enterprise.

   REFERENCES:Becher, Im Liliputanercafe; Benz and Graml, Biographisches Lexikon; Ermarth, Kurt Wolff; Kiaulehn, Mein Freund der Verleger.