For the cover of the very first book by Blumenbar-Verlag, the author FX Karl drew a washing machine – and faxed the picture to the designer. That was in 2002. And this example alone shows: 20 years may be a short time on the one hand, but on the other hand the (book) world has changed somewhat in this span. Seen in this light, it seems less surprising that the Blumenbar publishing house is now officially historic – only 20 years after its founding and ten years after its demise.
The literary archive Monacensia has just acquired the archive of the former Munich independent publishing house in order to close gaps in the archive and memory in accordance with the reorientation pursued by director Anke Buettner: “We are simply moving into the present.” It is no longer just the work of writers that is to be considered and stored, but rather the “entire literary cosmos in its chronological order”, according to archive manager Thomas Schütte. In addition to stages, festivals or networks, this also includes a style-defining publisher and organizer such as the Blumenbar.
Even if its founder Wolfgang (now Wolf) Farkas pulls out a USB stick with 50 GB – the core of the collection are 25 boxes with 72 files, books, audio cassettes, film negatives and records. Which makes it easy to see that, as Farkas says, the noughties were a transitional period from analogue to digital. He pulls other memorabilia out of a suitcase: in addition to a first edition of Karl’s FX or a “cigarette novel”, a sleeveless T-shirt, a Wolf Wondratschek tie or a club tag. After all, the publishing house arose out of a scene that celebrated from 1997 on at Blumenstrasse 3, in a private apartment owned by Farkas and co-founder Lars Birken-Bertsch. There was no sign of a business plan: “We actually only had the apartment and ourselves,” Farkas recalls.
“We actually only had the apartment and ourselves,” says publisher Wolf Farkas (right) about the beginnings, pictured here with co-founder Lars Birken-Bertsch.
(Photo: Alescha Birkenholz for Blumenbar)
The idea of a “solitaire book” (Birken-Bertsch) developed from the salon evenings and increasingly large literary events. There were more and more books, in the end even 65, from Anne Zielke to Leonard Cohen. Not only a number of works, but also events caused a stir – for example, the new publishers had books spun in a washing machine at their first Frankfurt Book Fair. They were resourceful and, as Farkas says, “were able to make some marks.” For example, publishers today are increasingly trying to bind readers by forming communities in social media: “We were already doing that back then.”
But it’s difficult to let a small publishing house grow without any funding, as Birken-Bertsch explains: “We still had to get by without a publisher’s prize.” The costs rose, the turnover less, one misjudged oneself with an investor. Finally, the financial pressure became so strong that the publishers, some of whom had moved to Berlin in the meantime, sold the Blumenbar brand to the Aufbau publishing house, where it continued to exist with a different management and orientation. “It was a sad ending,” Farkas says, and needed processing; After a party at the Munich Kunstverein this summer, the handover of the archive means that “the end point of letting go” has now been reached. So research can begin soon, for example on the question: What does Wondratschek’s tie mean in the publisher’s suitcase? Because now it is finally clear: this rest is history.