Polish Publishing House R. Wegner () was a Polish publishing house active from 1917 to 1950. It was founded as a joint-stock company by as Polish Publishing House (), headquartered in Lviv, and later in Poznań. In 1926, Wegner took over ownership and changed the name to Polish Publishing House R. Wegner. It was mainly focused on Polish and foreign literature. It had a number of publishing series, the most famous being the Nobel Laureates Library and Wonders of Poland. It was characterized by great attention to the technical, literary, and graphic quality of its books, especially luxury bibliophile editions. The production output reached 300 new titles annually. During World War II, it was relocated to Warsaw and sold its warehouse stocks. In 1941, the owner, Rudolf Wegner, died, and the company passed into the hands of his wife, Wanda, and daughter, . The assets of the publishing house were practically completely destroyed during the Warsaw Uprising. After the war, it resumed operations, but in 1950, it was nationalized and liquidated. Its activity was continued on a relatively small scale by the emigrant Tern (Rybitwa) Book Polish Publishing House in London until the 1970s.
History
From 1901 to 1914: origins Rudolf Wegner began his publishing activity by founding a partnership with Zygmunt Rychliński in 1901 and acquiring a bookstore on Piotrkowska Street in Łódź, which was a branch of the publishing house. The company conducted intensive publishing activities, offering scientific and popular science books, textbooks, sheet music, fiction, as well as magazines such as the humorous Łodzianka and the professional Czasopismo Lekarskie. In 1905, Wegner, probably due to political reasons (suspicions by the authorities of involvement in the Russian Revolution of 1905 and distribution of books outside censorship), had to immediately leave the territory of the Russian partition. He settled in Lviv and started working at the Altenberg and Ossolineum publishing houses.
From 1917 to 1928: Polish Publishing House In 1917, Wegner formed a joint-stock company, whose shareholders included Ignacy Mościcki, Antoni Jakubski, Marian Kukiel, Tadeusz Kutrzeba, Roman Odzierzyński, and Aleksander Litwinowicz. The capital obtained allowed the establishment of the Polish Publishing House in November 1917, with Wegner as its director. The headquarters of the new publishing house was established in Lviv at 15 Zyblikiewicza Street. In 1920, Wegner moved it to Poznań, initially to premises at 5 , lent by , and then to 48 . In the , the publishing house was registered at 6 Zwierzyniecka Street.
Poznań was a calm city, much less destroyed by the war than Lviv and Warsaw, with a well-developed printing and publishing industry. In these conditions, Wegner led the company to rapid development. Close cooperation was established with . From 1920, publishing series began to appear. In 1921, became the manager and literary advisor of the publishing house. The first volume of the largest series of the publishing house, the Library of Nobel Laureates, was published at that time. The publishing house intensified its activities, gradually reaching a level of about 300 titles per year. Its production was presented, among others, at the book exhibition in Poznań (1924) and the 2nd International Book Exhibition in Florence (1925). In 1926, Stanisław Wasylewski took over the editing of the Library of Nobel Laureates, and a year later, he became the editor of the publishing house.
From 1939 to 1945: World War II After the Germans occupied Poznań in 1939, Wegner's publishing house was closed by the occupation authorities, and the owner was expelled from Poznań. The books from the publishing house's warehouses in Poznań and Lviv were earmarked for destruction by the occupiers. Valuable private collections were burned by the Germans in the Wolności Square in Poznań.
Wegner settled in Warsaw and continued his activities under the name Polish Publishing House R. Wegner. First, he undertook efforts to save the publishing house's resources in Poznań. Initial attempts, including those by the bookseller and publisher Gustaw Tetzlaw, failed. Wegner then sought help from , who had previously successfully organized the transportation of collections from the Poznań to Warsaw by rail. All materials from the warehouse of Polish Publishing House were requisitioned by the Germans and haphazardly transferred to a railway warehouse. The entire stock was seized by the German Bank, which took over the pre-war credit of the publishing house. Wegner managed to quickly repay the entire debt, regaining the ability to dispose of the warehouse's resources, and Szpinger, with great difficulty, obtained approvals from the Propaganda Abteilung, Presse Amt, and Gestapo for the removal of books. A condition imposed by the Gestapo was Szpinger's personal commitment to organize the collections after transportation to Warsaw and to hand over to the German authorities the titles listed as banned books. The transport to Warsaw was carried out by the transportation company .
In addition to the warehouse resources, Wegner had substantial stocks of books ready for sale in the basement of his house on Słowacki Street, which, coincidentally, escaped the attention of the Germans. Szpinger organized a group of friendly booksellers from the Bookstore of St. Adalbert to pack the hidden books and then conducted a daring operation to transport them (also with the help of C. Hartwig) to the railway warehouse and mostly include them in the transport to Warsaw. Part of the stock was allocated for sale in Poznań, obtaining funds to cover the Poznań expenses related to the operation (Wegner's funds from Warsaw could not be used for this purpose, as the transport of cash from the General Government to the Reich territories was prohibited). In total, about 300 tons of books, loose printer's sheets, and supplies of clean paper were transported from Poznań, occupying 15 railway wagons. In this venture, Szpinger was assisted by Julian Stefański, Teodor Bielawski, and Stefan Szczypiński, as well as volunteer booksellers from the Bookstore of St. Adalbert. In Warsaw, the recovered materials were placed in a warehouse at 6/8 Okrąg Street. The books were distributed both in the official circulation and supplied to underground bookstores. The publishing house also printed small quantities of missing parts of Ossendowski's books on salvaged paper.
Stefan Szpinger earned recognition and friendship from Wegner with his selfless transport action, who appointed him as the manager of the publishing house and granted him full authority to conduct all affairs. On 13 July 1941, Rudolf Wegner died of a heart attack. The publishing house was taken over by his wife, Wanda, and daughter, , and was still managed by Stefan Szpinger, who, among other things, concluded negotiations with Maria Rodziewiczówna, obtaining exclusivity for Polish Publishing House to publish her works. The most valuable part of the preserved books was transferred to a new warehouse at New World Street. The publishing house's activities during the occupation were profitable due to the high demand for Polish books. Apart from patriotic motives, they were treated as a capital investment and fetched very high prices on the secondary market; for example, the price of Disslowa's cookbook reached up to 1,000 PLN per copy. Several tens of thousands of stockpiled volumes were excluded from sale, deemed by Szpinger and the company's owners as assets intended to restart the publishing house after the war.
The German authorities hindered Polish bookselling activities, further harassing Wegner's company with inspections in bookstores. They also established a company with the misleading name Polish Publishing House – Polnische Verlag, publishing, among other things, books of a pornographic nature, aiming to discredit the real Wegner publishing house. The Germans also enforced Szpinger's Poznań obligation to hand over the banned books of the publishing house to the authorities. However, only one incomplete "platform" of some titles by Bandrowski and Rodziewiczówna was likely handed over.
During the Warsaw Uprising, books from the Wegner publishing house's warehouse on Okrąg Street were distributed to the insurgents for reading. Soon, the remaining books were used to build barricades, where they were destroyed. The warehouse on Okrąg Street was hit by a bomb and burned down; likewise, the second warehouse on New World Street burned down with all the books. As a result, the publishing house lost all its resources.
Post-war period
From 1945 to 1948: Germany
In November 1945, Irena Rybotycka left Poland for the American occupation zone in Germany, where she reunited with her husband, Colonel , a liaison officer of the . Both of them then began efforts to resume the activities of Polish Publishing House R. Wegner to provide access to Polish books for Polish war refugees. Tomasz Rybotycki became the head of the Welfare and Printing Team established within the Polish Military Mission, and Irena Rybotycka, working with the Polish Red Cross, obtained an allocation of paper from the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration. The Rybotyckis obtained permission to print books on religious and educational topics; the proposed set included 12 titles. They also managed to recover the old printing plates from Nuremberg, where Rudolf Wegner printed children's books. The resumed Polish Publishing House R. Wegner began its operations in Nuremberg in 1945, and books started to be published at the beginning of 1946. After a few months, the Rybotycki couple had to suddenly leave Germany due to the takeover of Polish facilities by the communist government. However, Tomasz Rybotycki managed to complete the printing of the planned titles, which were published until 1948.
From 1947 to 1974: England After leaving Germany, the Rybotycki couple relocated to London. There, they received royalties for books published by Polish Publishing House R. Wegner during the war by the emigrant Ministry of Education. Together with Wanda Rybotycka, in 1947 they founded Tern (Rybitwa) Book Co. Ltd., primarily publishing old titles from Polish Publishing House R. Wegner, including selected books from the Library of Nobel Laureates and Wonders of Poland series. The reissue of cookbook Jak gotować achieved the greatest success, also published in English as Continental European Cooking. New titles included Zofia Kossak-Szczucka's Heritage and Sir Philip Gibbs' political novel No Price For Freedom to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the Warsaw Uprising. Rybitwa Publishing ceased its operations in 1974 after the death of T. Rybotycki.
From 1947 to 1950: Poland Since 1947, Polish Publishing House R. Wegner resumed its operations in Poland. In the absence of the owners, the company was managed by a representative, Anna Łempicka. The headquarters were located in Warsaw at 10 Cecylia Śniegocka Street. They resumed the publication of several volumes from the Library of Nobel Laureates series, novels by Rodziewiczówna, as well as books for children and youth. The new editions were illustrated by and Jan Marcin Szancer.
In 1950, the publishing house was liquidated by the decision of the Polish authorities at the time, and the publishing rights were taken over by the State Publishing Institute PIW.
Description of activity