Querido Verlag

In 1933, Fritz Landshoff founded the Querido Verlag, the German branch of the Querido Uitgeversmaatschappij N.V. in Amsterdam. Emanuel Querido had founded the Dutch publishing house in 1915 and published mainly socialist literature without being affiliated to any party.

In April 1933, Querido sent Nico Rost to Landshoff, who worked for Kiepenheuer in Berlin at that time. Rost offered Landshoff the establishment and management of a German branch. Their goal was to publish authors who were forbidden in Germany. There were a few prior conditions for Landshoff. Both parties (i.e. Querido and Landshoff) had to contribute 7500 Gulden. Landshoff did not have the money so Querido advanced him the money. Landshoff had to supply the publishing house with writers, which was an easy task for him, because he had good connections to many émigré authorsf rom his time at Kiepenheuer.

A big advantage for the Querido Verlag was that it could use the infrastructure of its parent company.

Between 1933 and 1940 Querido published 110 (124) titles written by approximately 50 authors. Average about 3000 copies were printed per title, but often not all the copies could be sold. They distributed the books in the Netherlands, Switzerland, Austria and the German-speaking areas of the Czechoslovakia.

To help authors survive in exile the Querido Verlag paid them a monthly stipend of 250 – 400 Gulden.

When the Germans attacked the Netherlands Landshoff was fortunayebecause he was in London to negotiate new contracts, wheras Emanuel Querido and his wife were arrested by the Gestapo and killed in a concentration camp.

The Nazis shut down the publishing house on May 10, 1940, but Landshoff was able to re-establish it in the Dutch East Indies as Querido Verlag N.V./Batavia (today Jakarta, Indonesia). That lasted only for a short time and they only published one title by Remarque until the island was threatened by a Japanese attack.

In 1946, the Querido Verlag N.V./Batavia started business again. Two years later, in September 1948, it was transformed into the Bermann-Fischer/Querido Verlag N.V./Amsterdam and in 1951 it finally changed over to S.Fischer Verlag N.V./Amsterdam.

Resources

Location: Amsterdam, Jakarta
Period: 1933-1940
Publisher(s): Emanuel Querido -- August 6, 1871 Amsterdam - July 23, 1943 Sobibor
Main Focus: books which could not be published in Germany
Author(s): Vicki Baum, Bernhard von Brentano, Alfred Doeblin, Lion Feuchtwanger, Bruno Frank, Leonhard Frank, Alexander Moritz Frey, Ernst Glaeser, Oskar Maria Graf, Martin Gumpert, Thomas Theodor Heine, Heinrich Eduard Jacob, Georg Kaiser, Heinrich Mann, Anna Seghers, Arnold Zweig, Ernst Toller, Klaus Mann, Albert Einstein, Alfred Kerr, Irmgard Keun, Emil Ludwig, Thomas Mann, Roger Neumann, Erich Maria Remarque, Joseph Roth, Carl Sternheim, Jakob Wassermann, Gustav Regler, Ernst Weiss, Emil Cohn, Martin Gumpert, Konrad Heiden, Fritz Heymann, L. de Jong, Marta Karlweis, Alfred Kerr, Kurt Kesten, Hermann Kesten, Valeriu Marcu, Ludwig Marcuse, Konrad Merz, Robert Neumann, Rudolf Olden, Alfred Polgar, Leopold Schwarzschild, Carl Sternheim,
Number of Titles Published: between 1933 and 1940: 110-124