Friedrich Vieweg
Johann Friedrich Vieweg (* March 11, 1761 in Halle ( Saale), † December 25, 1835 in Braunschweig) was a German publisher and founder of Vieweg Verlag.
Youth and apprenticeship
Friedrich Vieweg was the son of a master tailor Johann Valentin Vieweg († 1785 ), who later owned a starch factory, and his wife Johanne Sophie, born Bechbach († 1785 ), who was born in Halle an der Saale. There he attended the Latin school of the orphanage foundation and then the high school. Against the wishes of his parents, he felt no inclination to study theology.
After he had canceled a trade apprenticeship in Magdeburg, prompted the acquaintance with Friedrich Nicolai him to a bookseller in the Halle orphanage bookstore. Subsequently, he joined as an assistant in the bookshop Bohn in Hamburg, where he met among others the philanthropists Joachim Heinrich Campe and his daughter Charlotte, his future wife.
Publisher founding in Berlin
After Friedrich Vieweg had 1784 illness represented in the Berlin bookseller Mylius and handle the bookstore after his death, he founded his own publishing business here in 1786, which developed very favorably. His most famous work was Goethe's lyrical epic Verlag Hermann and Dorothea. Also Campe " Robinson the Younger " soon appeared in Vieweg Verlag and was still 100 years later a popular item.
Activity in Braunschweig
On October 17, 1795 Vieweg Campe's only daughter Charlotte married (the " Lotte" in Robinson). Campe lived now in Braunschweig, wanted to make the Duke Karl Wilhelm Ferdinand by establishing a bookseller fair and publicly to the center of the German book trade. Since Vieweg helped some suggestions, he moved at the request of the Duke in the spring of 1799 all over to Brunswick. The Duke supported him in it, among other things, by giving him the land of dilapidated theater for today's Vieweghaus on Castle Square.
Vieweg also bought Campes school bookstore, which he had founded in 1786 by purchasing the orphanage bookstore, and at Pentecost 1799, the printing of Ernst Wilhelm Gottlieb Kircher who warped to Goslar. After the expulsion of the Duke suffered in the Napoleonic era and the publishing business as the " favorite " suspected Vieweg, and he focused on the expansion of printing a font foundry and a playing card factory. He also laid emphasis on a high typographical quality and sat down with it from the competition.
Already under the Westphalian sovereignty Friedrich Vieweg took advantage of the new political freedoms and engaged in the city administration. Despite some suspicions and allegations that he was also later municipal works, including as a city councilor, and his publishing business also developed favorably. In 1824 he planned a patriotic Wochenschrift ( " Brunswick House Chronicle " ), the then but did not materialize, and from January 1826 to 1828 he gave out "Midnight sheet for educated subjects" under Adolf Mullner, but which passed because of disagreements in Niedmann 's Verlag in Wolfenbüttel.
Death and succession
Friedrich Vieweg died on December 25, 1835, 74 years, his wife Charlotte in the previous year on 22 July 1834.
The publishing house Friedrich Vieweg and son went on to the eldest son Eduard Vieweg (1797-1869), who was a partner since 1825. Friedrich Vieweg junior (1808-1888) founded in 1837 in Paris its own publishing house, and one of the daughters, Blanca, married to a publisher Georg Westermann.