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Logo of the Jewish Museum Berlin and link to the museum's homepage
23 March to 15 July 2012 Jewish Migrants from Eastern Europe in the 1920s

Slowo publishing house

Black-and-white photo of an illuminated corner building.
The Ullstein House at Kochstrasse 23–24 in the district of Kreuzberg (photo from 1930) © BPK

The Jewish Museum Berlin is located directly across from the start of Markgrafenstrasse, which was home to the Russian-language Slowo publishing house in the 1920s.

There were around ninety Russian publishers in Berlin in the 1920s. Slowo (»The Word«) was the largest with around 150 documented publications.

The company was founded in 1920 by Joseph Gessen, an entrepreneur and journalist. In the course of its existence, it moved from Markgrafenstrasse 87 to the Ullstein House at Kochstrasse 23/24, where the newspaper Rul (»The Rudder«) was also published.

Due to inflation, Berlin offered favorable conditions for immigrant publishers who had foreign currency. When these advantages ceased to exist, many writers and book designers from Eastern Europe left the city. Slowo published few books after 1924 and was finally dissolved in 1935.

Construction site sign over a garbage can; buildings are visible in the background
Corner of Margrafenstrasse and Lindenstrasse © Jüdisches Museum Berlin, Foto: Gelia Eisert
Men in front of tables with typecases
Case room for the Russian émigré magazine Rul at the Ullstein publishing house. Interior from 1924 © ullstein bild - John Graudenz

The Ullstein publishing house was responsible for the business end of both Slowo and the émigré magazine Rul. It hoped to leverage both ventures to enter the Soviet market.

Slowo’s catalogue included works by Alexander Pushkin, Leo Tolstoy and Anton Chekhov. The company also published the first Russian-language edition of Albert Einstein’s Theory of Relativity.

Vladimir Nabokov had a special standing among its authors. Slowo printed his first prose works in the mid-1920s and became one of his most important supporters. He later became world famous.

Immigrant publishers in Berlin

In the early 1920s there were many Russian-language publishers in Berlin. Jewish immigrants had interests in around ninety of them. While more than fifty publishers specialized in Yiddish publications, only a few – including Klal – published books in Hebrew. All the publishers exported their products abroad, primarily to countries in eastern Europe.

Favorable economic conditions caused a publishing boom in the 1920s. Due to inflation, investors with foreign currency could produce high-quality books at a low cost.

When the period of inflation ended in the mid-1920s, Berlin lost its advantage as a publishing center. Most of the immigrant publishers were forced to discontinue book production in the space of a few years or to move their offices to other countries.

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