Foundation Anniversary: Bärenreiter — September 1, 1923

Bärenreiter is a German classical music publisher founded in Augsburg by Karl Vötterle, whose first title appeared on 1 September 1923: issue one of the Finkensteiner Blätter, an eight-page booklet of folk songs compiled by Walther Hensel and printed by the Augsburg firm Mühlberger. Vötterle was twenty. He registered the house as a business in Augsburg on 12 April 1924, the day he came of age, and listed it with the Publishers and Booksellers Association in Leipzig; the Augsburg trade register recorded the entry on 25 April 1924. Around 200 titles were published in Augsburg, latterly by fourteen employees, before the house moved to Kassel in 1927.

A note on this date. Bärenreiter's beginning in Augsburg carries two dates: 1 September 1923, when the first issue of the Finkensteiner Blätter appeared under the Bärenreiter name, and 12 April 1924, when Karl Vötterle came of age, registered the house as a business in Augsburg and listed it with the Publishers and Booksellers Association in Leipzig, with the Augsburg trade register entry recorded on 25 April 1924. Accounts of the publisher give 1923 as its founding year, and this anniversary follows 1 September 1923. Both dates are stated here. We publish it with the warning rather than leave the page out, and if you can point us to a register or an archive that carries it we will confirm or correct it.

Dates verified on Bärenreiter Centenary History Magazine, Augsburg City Lexicon (Wißner-Verlag) and Beckmesser Music Criticism Magazine.