Arena Verlag:
A 75-year-old love affair with books and stories
If you stand in the enchanting front garden of Arena Verlag’s home in Würzburg, you will begin to have some idea of the magical moments and wonderful worlds that lie hidden behind its doors. Katja Brandis is just one of the many famous writers whose books have graced our catalogues. Others include Isabel Abedi, Willi Fährmann, KNISTER, Kerstin Gier, Alice Pantermüller, Stefanie Dahle, Jo Nesbø, Anna Ruhe and Andreas H. Schmachtl. If Alexandra Schönleben, our managing director for the last seven years, dips into the bookcase behind her desk, she will find countless best-sellers.
This year, Arena is celebrating its 75th anniversary, and it can look back on an impressive history of more than 10,000 titles. Since its foundation, it has collaborated closely and successfully with countless German-speaking authors and illustrators.
It all began in 1949, the year which also saw the birth of the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany). Georg Popp, the founder of Arena Verlag, was just 21 years old at the time. His aim was “in the spirit of this new intellectual freedom, to enable young people to follow new paths and build new bridges into the future and into the world.” The young publisher, who was already very active in his work for Catholic youth, was determined to provide exciting new reading material for a generation whose childhood had been shattered by the horrors of war. He loved books. And although he had been helping his mother to rebuild the parental car business when he was 17, he had resolved even then to choose a different career. In due course, he applied for a publishing licence. On 19 September 1949, immediately after the occupying forces had lifted restrictions on magazines and other printed matter, he registered himself and set up his own publishing company in a converted garage next to the old Main Bridge.
The enthusiastic young publisher rapidly expanded his business. In 1955, he added a bookshop in Würzburg’s Domstrasse. By then he had already published 60 books with sales totalling almost 750,00 copies. His programme for young adults included books by such well-known public figures as Carlo Schmid, Franz-Josef Strauss, David Ben Gurion, and the famous mountaineer and explorer Heinrich Harrer.
In 1958, Georg Popp became the first children’s book publisher to adopt a technology and format which Rowohlt had been using since late 1946 for its inexpensive adult novels: the technology was rotary print, and the format was what we now call paperback, which gave many new readers access to literature and to non-fiction books. The result was many new series of books in a programme that grew bigger and bigger every year.
Georg Popp remained at the head of Arena Verlag for three decades, but then he handed the reins to the Westermann Group so that he could fulfil another of his dreams: to write his own books. By then he had published 1500 books for young readers, with a total print-run exceeding 30 million copies! Among the treasures this passionate publisher had given to the world was Otfried Preussler’s fantasy novel for young adults, Krabat, which won numerous awards. Arena had now become one of the biggest and most prestigious children’s book publishers in Germany, and it remains so today.
Again in the 1980s, Arena’s top quality books won countless awards, including the Deutscher Jugendbuchpreis for Willi Fährmann’s Der lange Weg des Lukas B (1981) [The Long journey of Lukas B] and for Isolde Heyne’s Treffpunkt Weltzeit Uhr (1985) [Meeting Place World Time Clock] – a story set in both East and West Germany. In 1987, the company moved to its current premises as a result of its massive expansion.
The 1990s brought lots of new series that are still successful today. Arena Children’s Classics, for example, consist of famous children’s books from all over the world that should be on every bookshelf. Der Bücherbär [The Book Bear], inaugurated in 1992, is a series for reading beginners. In 1995, Arena broke new ground with Bandolos: these are educational, practical games through which primary schoolchildren can get their first experience of exciting, amusing and entertaining subjects. The figures speak for themselves: over 3,000 titles and over 45 million copies sold.
Arena has continued to expand through the acquisition of other companies. In 1987, we took over Benziger Verlag, and the turn of the century saw the acquisition of Ensslin Verlag. At the same time, new programmes were introduced, such as touch-and-feel books for the tiniest of readers, punched board books and puzzle books. The non-fiction books that were so important for Georg Popp were boosted by a new series called the Arena Bibliothek des Wissens [The Arena Library of Knowledge] – compact paperbacks, in clear and lively language, and covering a wide range of subjects from history to the sciences, which are helpful for readers of all ages and at all stages of their education. They have been the saviours of many essays and theses!
At the turn of the century, the world of the media underwent a major transformation: it rapidly became clear that stories could be told in many different ways, and that the media need not cancel one another out but, on the contrary, could bring in additional fans. Arena Verlag’s response was to issue its own brand of audiobooks: Arena Audio. At the same time, Arena books became increasingly attractive to film-makers: since 2004, 20 titles have been successfully adapted for the screen. These include KNISTER’s best-seller Hexe Lilli [Lilli the Witch], Cressida Cowell’s Drachen zähmen leicht gemacht [How to Train Your Dragon], and Alice Pantemüller’s Mein Lotta-Leben [My Life as Lotta]. At the time of writing, the first film in Katja Brandis’s Woodwalker series is about to be launched.
From the 2010s onwards, Antje Babendererde has become one of the company’s most famous authors. In many of her books, she vividly describes the fate of the Native Americans, while her most recent novels focus increasingly on ecological themes and the need for a more responsible use of nature’s resources. As a natural consequence, Arena has subsequently published all her work using sustainable techniques. This led to Antje Babendererde’s novel Schneetänzer [Snow Dancer] being Arena Verlag’s first title to be given the prestigious German ecolabel Blauer Engel [Blue Angel] in 2019 – a perfect match between form and content.
The founder’s vision of enabling “young people to follow new paths and build new bridges into the future and into the world” is precisely the aim of Alexandra Schönleben and her editors today, in their choice of subjects and stories. One example is the book that won the 2023 Vielfalter-Literaturpreis, which is awarded for the promotion of diversity and tolerance. In the novel Die Tasche [The Bag], the teacher Kornelia Wald and her former student Houssein Kahin discuss genuine and less genuine forms of integration, tolerance and racism, friendship and hostility, all of which form part of the migrant’s everyday life in Germany.
“Georg Popp’s love of books was what led him to creating Arena Verlag,” says Alexandra Schönleben. “And we share his passion. That’s why we devote ourselves to our novels, fiction and non-fiction, always with the aim of opening our young readers’ eyes to the fantastic and realistic, unusual and everyday wonders of the world.” Her eyes sparkle when she talks about the family atmosphere of mutual respect and affection that sweetens the collaboration between colleagues, authors and illustrators. “And when both children and adults – sometimes years later – tell us how much an Arena book has meant to them, that is the best compliment they could pay us.”