Klemm, Wilhelm

Poet, publisher

Born: 15.05.1881 in Leipzig

died: 23.01.1968 in Wiesbaden

Klemm studied medicine and took over his father's bookshop in Leipzig in 1909. In 1912 he married the daughter of the publisher Alfred Kröner. From 1914-18 he was a senior physician on the Western Front.

In 1914, he published poems in the magazine "Die Aktion", which were directed against nationalism and militarism and described the human condition in war. In 1915, they were collected and published in "Gloria! War poems from the field". A volume of Klemm's poetry followed almost every year until 1922. In 1920, he was prominently represented in the volume "Menschheitsdämmerung" (new edition 1959), an overview of expressionist German poetry. He then withdrew from literary life.

In 1920 Klemm took over the Carl Friedrich Fleischer commission bookshop, and in 1921 he became managing director of Kröner Verlag. In 1927, he acquired the Dieterichsche Verlagsbuchhandlung, where he founded the "Sammlung Dieterich" series and also published classical literary and philosophical works during the Nazi era. In 1937, he was expelled from the Reichsschrifttumskammer and had to leave Kröner Verlag.

In Leipzig in 1945, the Americans commissioned Klemm to rebuild Dieterich Verlag, a commission bookshop and a branch of the Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels from Wiesbaden. Klemm lived in the Pariser Hof in Steubenstraße. In 1955, he sold the "Dieterich Collection" to Carl Schünemann Verlag in Bremen.

He began publishing poetry again in Wiesbaden - he had never stopped writing. His 1917 volume "Aufforderung" was published in 1961, followed by a collection of contemporary poems "Geflammte Ränder" in Darmstadt in 1964. Klemm's estate, including unpublished poems from the Wiesbaden period, is held in the German Literature Archive in Marbach.

Klemm is buried in the Südfriedhof c emetery.