Boekenvrienden Solidariteit (later Het Nederlandsche Boekengilde)
In Hilversum, Hein Kohn founded the Boekenvrienden Solidariteit in 1933 as a book club along with a publishing house. He was a social democrat, who published the love letters of the homosexual SA-Leader Ernst Roehm back in 1932. Since then, he had been persecuted in a special way. On May 05, 1933 he left Germany and immigrated to the Netherlands.
He changed the name to Het Nederlandsche Boekengilde in 1936. He published works from persecuted German authors, partially in cooperation with other publishing houses in the Netherlands (Querido, Meulenhoff).
Kohn stayed in Hilversum even during the time when the Netherlands were occupied but the Boekengilde was banned from publishing because of its antifascist attitude.
Yet, Kohn found himself another activity. In 1942, he started work for the illegal publisher De Bezige Bij (the busy bee).
After the war (1947), he established a new book club: the Genootschap voor Boekenvrienden.
Resources
- Fischer, Ernst: Verleger, Buchhaendler und Antiquare aus Deutschland und Oesterreich in der Emigration nach 1933: ein biographisches Handbuch / von Ernst Fischer. - Stuttgart : Verband Deutscher Antiquare, 2011
- Palmier, Jean-Michel: Weimar in Exile: the antifascist emigration in Europe and America / Jean-Michel Palmier. – London [u.a.]: Verso, 2006
- Schmidinger, Veit Johannes (2007): Transit Amsterdam. Deutsche Künster im Exil 1933-1945 http://books.google.de/books?id=eypy6H6VGJQC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Transit+Amsterdam:+deutsche+K%C3%BCnstler+im+Exil+1933-1945&hl=en&sa=X&ei=lIC8UIP2K4nOsga9zYHQAw&ved=0CDEQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false
