Emanuel Querido

Emanuel Querido (August 6 1871, Amsterdam - July 23 1943, Sobibor) was a successful Dutch publisher as the founder and owner of N.V. Em. Querido Uitgeversmaatschappij, which published Dutch titles, and of Querido Verlag, which published titles of German writers in exile from Nazi Germany. Although he and his wife were killed by the Nazis in 1943, his company has gone on to publish several important authors.

Professional biography

In 1898 he decided to found a bookstore at the Binnen-Amstel in Amsterdam. The bookstore became a popular meeting-point for Dutch intellectuals. Querido had close connections with the diamond-polishing trade and supplied the library of the Dutch labour union for diamond workers. When the bookstore started to become profitable, he turned to publishing books, such as a translation of Schopenhauer's "Parerga and Paralipomena". The bookstore became a dispatching bookstore/publisher in Bloemendaal in 1911, but business did not go well and in 1913 the shop had to close.

After several other jobs Querido got the opportunity to start a publishing house in Amsterdam, under his own name, near the Keizersgracht, in 1915. Meanwhile, he also wrote a large, ten-part work titled "Het geslacht der Santeljano's" ("The lineage of the Santeljanos"), in which he criticized his brother, the writer Israël Querido, of whom Emanuel was very jealous.

In 1934, Querido started the "Salamander"-series, the first Dutch true paperback series, a year before the first Penguin was published. In 1933, after the rise of Hitler in Germany, a lot of German authors (predominantly Jewish) fled to the Netherlands. Because they could no longer publish in Germany, Querido offered to publish their works. He set up a separate publishing house for the exiles, Querido Verlag, directed by the German publisher Fritz Landshoff. From 1933 to 1940, he would publish 110 works in German, the so-called exile or migrant literature. Because of the German occupation he could no longer publish such books after 1940. Querido had to leave the publishing business and with his wife retired to the town of Laren where he had owned a house since 1929. The publishing company was put under the control of a national-socialist manager. In 1943, Emanuel Querido and his wife went into hiding in the nearby town of Blaricum. They were however betrayed; both fell into German hands and were killed by the Nazis in Sobibor on July 23, 1943.

After the war, the publishing company flourished. Querido became one of the most important literary publishers. Numerous writers have published and still publish their works with Querido. Among them are Willem Brakman, Willem Elsschot, Hella S. Haasse, A.F.Th. van der Heijden and Thomas Rosenboom. In 1971 director Tine van Buul founded a children's books section, publishing books by Annie M.G. Schmidt, Miep Diekmann, Guus Kuijer, Toon Tellegen and many others.

References

* A.L. Sötemann; "Querido van 1915 tot 1990. Een uitgeverij." Em. Querido's Uitgeverij B.V. Amsterdam 1990. ISBN 90 214 72368
* Fritz H. Landshoff; "Amsterdam, Keizersgracht 333. Querido Verlag. Erinnerungen eines Verlegers.", Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin und Weimar 1991. ISBN 3-351-00585-7