Karl Anders

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Karl Anders
Born
Kurt Wilhelm Naumann

(1907-01-24)24 January 1907
Publisher (crime fiction)
Political partyKPD
SPD
SpouseJohanna Marie Dörrer
ChildrenAnn Margaret Anders (1947-)
Parent(s)Johannes Naumann (1880-1940)
Emma Kutschenreiter/Naumann (1882-1960)

Karl Anders (real name Karl Kurt Wilhelm Anders-Naumann) (24 January 1907 – 27 February 1997) was a German political activist who was forced to emigrate during the Nazi period. After the war he became a print and broadcast journalist.[1]

During the 1950s he became a publisher. Between 1953 and 1957 Karl Anders worked as the director of the publishing business of the Frankfurter Rundschau newspaper group.[2] As a publisher he devoted much effort to promoting Anglo-American criminal fiction in Germany.[1]

In the 1960s he returned to politics, although by now the youthful Communist had become a member of the moderate left-wing SPD (party).[2]

Life

After leaving his Berlin middle school Karl Anders (as he later became known) worked as a

took power and lost little time in establishing a one-party state in Germany. Anders nevertheless continued with his (now illegal) support for the Communist Party, becoming a Central Committee Instructor for Pressure and Propaganda. In June 1933 he was a victim of the Köpenick Blood letting week, and was held in the SA Wendenschloß detention centre where he was badly maltreated.[4]

In March 1934 Anders fled to

Broadcaster of the European Revolution radio station which transmitted from London between 1940 and 1942, before being effectively subsumed into the more snappily named British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). Between 1943 and 1945 Anders worked as chief editor for German language workers' broadcasts by the BBC.[3] From 1943 he was also employed to give lectures to German prisoners of war held by the British.[3]

After the war ended, formally in May 1945, Karl Anders continued to be employed by the BBC till 1949. In addition to his BBC work he also wrote for some British newspapers. He reported (in German) for the BBC Overseas Service on the

Frankfurt am Main, became the focus of his career.[8] Although the Frankfurter Rundschau newspaper group took a 50% share in Neste-Verlag in 1955, Anders continued to run it single-handedly till 1960. By this time, however, in 1959 he had sold the residual 50% of it to the Frankfurter Rundschau.[8] There followed a period of growing mutual acrimony and Anders resigned from his publishing company in 1961,[8] returning the focus his evidently undimmed energies to politics.[2]

"Neste Verlag" had started out as a publisher of political books, but in 1948 the background for publishing in Germany changed with a reduction in demand for political books, a change in the rules governing paper rationing and the West German currency reforms. Anders' BBC career had left him with good contacts in the world of British books and authors, and these he now matched with an idea that proved timely. "Neste Verlag" became a specialist publisher of German language translations of English-language crime novels. Its better remembered (at least among English language readers) writers included

Dorothy Sayers.[8] The German translations of the anglophone crime novels appeared in a series called "Krähen Bücher", with print runs typically of 5,000 copies.[8] However, the appetite for them faded in the 1960s and the Frankfurter Rundschau in turn sold the business on, after which it faded from the scene.[8]

In 1961 Karl Anders accepted the invitation to join the national election team of the Social Democratic Party (SPD / Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands). He also served, between 1971 and 1974, as a member of the party's "Core Values Commission" ("Grundwerte-Kommission"). He was an adviser to the IG Bau-Steine-Erden trades union, which led to the publication in 1969 of his history of the trades union under the title "Stein für Stein" ("Stone for stone").[9] He continued to write, also remaining active as a contributor to the party newspaper, Vorwärts.[3]

Death

Karl Anders died in 1997 at

Frankfurt am Main, and to the north of Darmstadt
.

Honour

References

  1. ^ a b Alf Mayer. "Karl Anders "Krähen-Meister": Anarchist, Kommunist, Widerstandskaempfer, Sozialist..." Krimis Machen. Hans Peter Roentgen, Freiburg i.B. p. 2. Archived from the original on 11 May 2016. Retrieved 4 April 2015.
  2. ^
    Andreas Herbst (iA Handbuch der Deutschen Kommunisten; Karl Dietz Verlag Berlin. "Anders, Karl * 24.1.1907, † 27.2.1997"
    (in German). Bundesstiftung zur Aufarbeitung der SED-Diktatur: Biographische Datenbanken. Retrieved 4 April 2015.
  3. ^ a b c d e "Karl Anders". Bibliothek der Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung. Friedrich Ebert Foundation, Bonn. Retrieved 4 April 2015.
  4. ^ "Karl Anders". Bund der Antifaschisten Köpenick e.V. Retrieved 4 April 2015.
  5. ^
    ISBN 3-598-10087-6
    . Retrieved 4 April 2015.
  6. ^ "Im Nürnberger Irrgarten" = "In the Nuremberg Maze"
  7. ^ Karl Anders (1948). Im Nürnberger Irrgarten (in German). Nest-Verlag, Nürnberg, published under Military Government Information Control Licence US-E-149.
  8. ^ a b c d e f g Uwe Herm; Dieter Kästner. "Krähen Bücher". Classic Crimes: Bibliographie der Kriminalerzählungen 1948-2000. Dieter Kästner, Framkfurt a.M. Retrieved 4 April 2015.
  9. ^ Karl Anders (1969). Stein für Stein: Die Leute von Bau-Steine-Erden und ihre Gewerkschaften 1869 bis -1969. Verlag für Literatur und Zeitgeschehen, Hannover.
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