Edition Splitter
Edition Splitter, a small but refined publishing house situated in the centre of Vienna, was founded in 1991. Its publications number approximately 55 titles at present, with an average of five new publications being added to this total each year.>The working philosophy of Publisher Batya Horn does not freely lend itself to conventional public taste. Edition Splitter’s publications nevertheless maintain their place on the fringes of international mainstream literature. Central to the Splitter agenda is to further the cause of experimental literature.
Edition Splitter does not shy away from associating itself with the most radical and experimental contemporary literary forms; poetry in its broadest sense.
The publication of the complete works of Eugen Gomringer had shown, once and for all, that ‘the father of concrete poetry’ is much more than an ambitious storyteller.
Edition Splitter sees itself primarily as a forum for contemporary Austrian literature, happy to publish the work of both established authors and of those who until now have been known only to a very select readership: Elfriede Gerstl, Elisabeth Wäger, Angelika Kaufmann, Paul Blaha, anselm glück, Stephan Eibel-Erzberg, Bodo Hell, Gerhard Jaschke, Heinz Markstein, Karl Riha and others.
Another of Edition Splitter’s main concerns is to raise critical interest in cultural-philosophical issues, an aim that has been furthered by the work of authors such as Burghart Schmidt, Peter Daniel and Ingo Nussbaumer.
The very name ‘Edition Splitter’ outlines our working philosophy very precisely; the attempt to abandon that which is unchallenging and apparently obvious truths and, moreover, to allow old and familiar things to be ‘split apart’, while at the same time seeking to reunite that which has been fragmented and ‘split’. What appears to be unwieldy and not readily accessible always seeks to distance itself from the world of purely consumer-based reading habits.
The publications of Edition Splitter therefore, show the way back to a critical approach to reading. In the words of Burghart Schmidt, ‘lesen heisst jetzt splittern’
[From now on reading will be known as splittern]
Deutsche Version