{"id":6600,"date":"2019-11-03T11:06:24","date_gmt":"2019-11-03T10:06:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lesestunden.de\/?p=6600"},"modified":"2025-09-07T00:20:59","modified_gmt":"2025-09-06T22:20:59","slug":"die-buechergilde","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lesestunden.de\/en\/2019\/11\/die-buechergilde\/","title":{"rendered":"Die B\u00fcchergilde"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n

I\u2019m always on the lookout for beautiful books and handsome editions, and of course I came across the B\u00fcchergilde<\/a> quite some time ago. The B\u00fcchergilde places particular emphasis on high-quality craft and artistic book design. That\u2019s exactly what I love, and it\u2019s only natural that over the years I\u2019ve picked up one book or another from them. In this post, I want to report in more detail on that and share a bit about what I really like about B\u00fcchergilde books\u2014and what has convinced me less.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

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The B\u00fcchergilde Gutenberg, based in Frankfurt am Main, has existed since 1924 and emerged from the trade-union environment. The small publisher has had a turbulent history; after the National Socialists seized power, it was brought into line and relocated to Switzerland, where it was very successful with over 100,000 members. Only after the war did it return to Germany and resume work there. For a long time, the B\u00fcchergilde belonged to a trade-union holding company, but in 2015 it became a cooperative. According to an interview with managing director Alexander Elspas<\/a>, the B\u00fcchergilde had around 62,000 members in 2018. Its offerings include high-quality licensed editions, beautiful classics and contemporary literature, English-language folio-format editions, as well as music, films, audiobooks, and attractive little accessories.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

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The concept is that you can become a B\u00fcchergilde member for free and cancel at any time, but you commit to buying one book per quarter. This runs by calendar year, not from when you signed up. I find this business model quite antiquated\u2014very much like the \u201980s and the Bertelsmann Club. In the age of the internet, Amazon, and the consumer\u2019s right to return items at any time, it feels odd and off-putting. In fact, that was a reason for me to wait and save up until I had enough books together to make the premium membership worthwhile. If you remain a member for at least a year, you get one book for free\u2014though the choices are limited and not all titles can be selected as a premium book. In practice, you don\u2019t really save anything, because if your order stays under \u20ac35 you pay \u20ac4.50 shipping (which also feels out of date), and summed over a premium year, you\u2019ve basically \u201cpaid\u201d for the fifth book via shipping costs. Once I had five books I wanted, I signed up, had the first two sent, and then ordered the remaining books quarter by quarter. I\u2019m not sure this concept really fosters sales, because I ended up artificially delaying purchases to meet the quarterly requirement.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

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The B\u00fcchergilde offers newly designed licensed editions. That means these books already exist in another version, but the B\u00fcchergilde reissues them as handsome editions. And there are a number of books I really liked and absolutely wanted. These include Mansfield Park<\/em> by Jane Austen, which looks lovely with its linen binding, beautiful illustration, and matching red edge-staining. I also found Jane Eyre<\/em> very nicely designed. Whitman\u2019s Life and Adventures of Jack Engle<\/em> had been on my wish list for a long time. A few years ago, I ordered Captains Courageous<\/a> by Kipling from the B\u00fcchergilde in a truly wonderful illustrated edition. I\u2019ve also owned Heart of a Dog<\/a> for quite some time. Digging through my shelves I also found a few antiquarian B\u00fcchergilde titles: B. Traven\u2019s The Death Ship<\/em> and Jack London\u2019s The Call of the Wild<\/em>, which I once picked up on eBay for a few euros as very old B\u00fcchergilde editions.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

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When it comes to the design of B\u00fcchergilde books, I\u2019m torn. On the one hand, there are truly beautiful editions like those mentioned above. The linen bindings and their illustrations are especially successful and feel very high quality. The cover art on The North Water<\/em> by Ian McGuire is finely drawn and, to my eye, many times nicer than on the original publication. There\u2019s also almost always a ribbon marker. On the other hand, there are numerous books I don\u2019t like at all, often sporting a pseudo-modern illustrative style\u2014abstract and austere\u2014that probably appeals only to a small art-scene crowd. Resurrection<\/em> by Leo Tolstoy is a particularly unfortunate example; I wonder who approved such an unsuccessful jacket design\u2014especially if you know the very attractive original edition from Hanser, which I reviewed I\u2019m always on the lookout for beautiful books and handsome editions, and of course I came across the B\u00fcchergilde quite some time ago. The B\u00fcchergilde places particular emphasis on high-quality craft and artistic book design. That\u2019s exactly what I love, and it\u2019s only natural that over the years I\u2019ve picked up one book or another … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Die B\u00fcchergilde”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7002,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"slim_seo":{"title":"Die B\u00fcchergilde - lesestunden","description":"Ich bin ja immer auf der Suche nach sch\u00f6nen B\u00fcchern und h\u00fcbschen Ausgaben und nat\u00fcrlich bin ich dabei schon vor l\u00e4ngerer Zeit auf die B\u00fcchergilde gesto\u00dfen. Beso"},"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"_slim_seo_primary_term_category":0,"_slim_seo_primary_term_post_tag":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[101,16],"tags":[225,11,210],"class_list":["post-6600","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book-art","category-book-market-publishers","tag-buechergilde","tag-klassiker","tag-schoene-buecher"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.lesestunden.de\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/buechergilde_beitrag.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lesestunden.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6600","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lesestunden.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lesestunden.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lesestunden.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lesestunden.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6600"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lesestunden.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6600\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lesestunden.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7002"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lesestunden.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6600"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lesestunden.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6600"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lesestunden.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6600"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}