Letters from Eugen Gutnov to Elbrus Gutnov

The Publishing House and the Journal Spolokhi

Eugen Gutnov, owner of the publishing house that bore his name, became widely known among Russian émigrés in Berlin in 1921 with the launch of the journal Spolokhi (1921–1923).

Gutnov not only published the journal but also financed it himself. This, together with the “unconditional democracy” proclaimed as the journal’s chief principle and its own production facilities — the publishing house operated its own printing shop from 1919 to 1925 — attracted a large Russian-speaking readership and leading figures of Russian émigré literature.

A. Drozdov, who became editor of Spolokhi in 1921 and remained in that post until moving to the newspaper Nakanune in 1923, invited authors from Soviet Russia to contribute in keeping with the journal’s stated aims. This naturally added to the popularity of Spolokhi among Berlin’s émigré community and beyond.

The journal published such well-known writers in Russia and abroad as K. D. Balmont, I. A. Bunin, N. M. Minsky, N. A. Otsup, V. F. Khodasevich, M. A. Voloshin, and A. N. Tolstoy. After Spolokhi ceased publication, E. Gutnov continued to work both with Russian authors he had met through the journal and with new writers.

Historians of Russian émigré literature estimate that Gutnov’s Berlin publishing house issued 215 titles on philosophy, literature, natural science, and culture. The calibre of its authors, the quality of its books, and the breadth of its subjects secured the publishing house a place in the history of Russian émigré literature.

Work Connected with North Ossetia

Publishing in the Russian émigré community was not the only aspect of Eugen Gutnov’s work. A native of North Ossetia, he did much to establish publishing in his homeland.

Gutnov published books by the Ossetian writers K. Khetagurov, G. Maliev, and A. Guluyev and sent them to Vladikavkaz. He issued Ossetian translations of classics of world and Russian literature and helped printing houses in Vladikavkaz acquire modern printing equipment, typefaces, and other materials.

In 1927 Eugen Gutnov even travelled to Vladikavkaz to resolve organisational matters connected with the supply of this equipment.

Kirill Gutnov and the Brothers’ Correspondence

Eugen carried out this work through his brother Kirill Gutnov (1892–1937), who was also involved in publishing in North Ossetia.

The brothers’ extensive correspondence continued until 1935 and became the principal basis for accusing Kirill Gutnov of “participation in a bourgeois-nationalist espionage organisation” following his arrest in 1937.

Eugen Gutnov’s letters to his brother were preserved as “material evidence” in the archives of the KGB of the North Ossetian ASSR. Later, during perestroika and a revival of interest in Eugen Gutnov in North Ossetia, the documents were transferred to the Central Republican Archive and partly published in the journal Daryal.

They are now available to researchers and help clarify Eugen Gutnov’s role in the development of publishing in North Ossetia, as well as details of his life before the Second World War.

Unknown Chapters of His Life

Despite the importance of Eugen Gutnov’s publishing work to the Russian émigré community, his own biography has remained almost entirely unknown.

The available literature states that he emigrated from Russia in 1912, worked as a typesetter at a Berlin printing house, then married the owner’s daughter and eventually inherited the business.

A fuller reconstruction of the Berlin publisher’s life is connected with the youngest of the three Gutnov brothers, Elbrus Alexandrovich Gutnov (1906–1983).

Before the war, Elbrus Gutnov was a well-known printing specialist and organiser of the so-called “First Book Design Brigade.” As a member of this collective, he proposed and implemented a number of innovative approaches to the design of mass-produced books.

From 1922 to 1927, Elbrus Gutnov worked as a typesetter in his brother’s Berlin printing shop while studying graphic art at the German Academy of Arts. After completing his studies, he returned to the USSR.

Eugen Gutnov’s Final Years

From the late 1930s onward, Elbrus Gutnov lost all contact with his brother. In the late 1960s, however, he asked the Soviet branch of the International Red Cross to trace Eugen.

The search was successful, and Elbrus received a series of letters from Eugen that provide a picture of the second half of his brother’s life.

During the war, Eugen had lost all his property, settled in West Berlin, and unsuccessfully tried to establish a new business. At the end of 1968, the rising cost of living, a meagre pension, and an incurable illness forced him to move to West Germany, where he died soon afterwards.

In the 1990s, German researchers established that Eugen Gutnov left East Germany on 6 September 1968 and had lived until 13 August 1968 in the village of Vehlen, near Obernkirchen in Lower Saxony.

He then moved to Heeßen, a suburb of Bad Eilsen, where he lived at:

Lange Straße 17

After that, all trace of him disappears.

Eugen’s Letters to His Brother Elbrus (1967–1968)

Presented below are five letters that Elbrus received from Eugen after tracing him through the Soviet branch of the International Red Cross. The author’s style and distinctive manner of expression have been preserved.

No. 1. 10 August 1967

Dear Elbrus,

Your kind little letter of 16 May made me very happy. You would understand this joy if, for example, you had heard twenty years ago that I was no longer alive. You probably do not yet know that I had to leave Gottengarten seventeen years ago. Frida was terribly ill and died in 1952.

I am alive and well, but my life is pointless, since I am unable to work and in six months I shall be eighty. Kostya has left me and thinks only of himself. I do not even know his address, since he does not write to me. I am married for the third time now, but I am not happy.

I have known for a long time that Father and Kirill are no longer alive, but this is the first I have heard from you about Nikolai. Please write to me in greater detail if possible.

Warmest greetings,

Your Eugen

No. 2. 11 October 1967

Dear Elbrus,

I received your letter of 3 October in exactly six days. The importance of this letter to me is boundless! Our Frida might still be alive today if Kostya had been a normal person. The war was the reason I had to leave my beautiful house — a two-storey house with two three-room flats, one downstairs and one upstairs. My original plan, in the event that I became disabled, was to keep one flat for ourselves and let the other so that we might have at least a little income, since my life insurance is minimal. After leaving Gottengarten, I opened an import-export firm, and without consulting me Kostya rented a five-room flat with furniture. The renovation cost 45,000 marks. He had no money. That is how we went bankrupt. He would have been arrested and sent to prison for several years if I had not taken the blame upon myself on the lawyer’s advice. I saved him that way, but never in my life received any gratitude from him!

Now I am poor, of course, because I am eighty and no one will give me work, while disability insurance pays an amount that is impossible to live on! That, in brief, is my situation. If you are able to send anything, I would of course be very grateful. I am glad that you are happy with Zhenya, and it both surprises and pleases me that Nadya is still able to travel from Ossetia to Moscow every year.

Greetings to all of you. If only I were again able to help you all as I did fifty years ago, it would make me happier still, for even then I gladly helped every one of you.

Warmest greetings,

Your Eugen

No. 3. Berlin, 17 November 1967

Dear Elbrus,

On 7 November exactly I sent you a registered letter, but I do not know whether you received it. I am now in the library and can therefore write to you on a typewriter. I found various certificates among my papers:

A certificate from the newspaper Kazbek in Vladikavkaz, where I studied and worked for five years (1903–1907).
A certificate from the Ministry of Finance printing house in St Petersburg (1912).
A certificate from the Administration of the Mountain Soviet Socialist Republic stating that I left Russia on 8 November 1913.

That means I have now been in Berlin for exactly fifty-four years! As a young man I had wanted to go to America, but I did not have enough money, so I stayed in Berlin, and the war forced me to remain in Berlin for ever. I am sending you these documents just in case and ask you to confirm that you have received them. I also ask you to tell me whether you received the photographs in the letters that reached you on 26 October.

So this is how we pass our time and the final days of our lives!

I wish you success and your family good health, and I kiss you all with all my heart!

Your Eugen

No. 4. 19 December 1967

Dear Elbrus,

Your letter of 25 November 1967 is again before me on the table. Although I answered it, I clearly did not do so very well, since I had spent exactly fourteen days in bed and became completely weak during that time.

And so, once again: please do not send any parcels, because here they are not worth even half what they cost you. I do not need parcels, but money for all the other expenses. A flat here, for example, costs almost six to eight times more than where you are, and then there is gas and electric light — all of it is considerably more expensive here. I am looking for a small flat, but no one is willing to exchange one for anything.

You ask why I sent you the documents. Your question surprises me. You wrote that you needed permission to send money. I know that they will ask you who this person is, why he is abroad, and so on. That is why I sent proof that I am not a Soviet émigré but left the country because of illness almost five years before the Revolution: at a large consultation of experienced specialists in Petersburg, I was told that I had at most three, four, or six months to live. I sent you home then because I did not want to frighten all of you by telling you that my life was nearing its end. That is why I sent you the documents; I have never been involved in politics in my life.

Well, you probably want to know what illness I had in 1912. It was tuberculosis, which even today cannot yet be completely cured. In 1905 the World Congress of Homeopaths was held in London. Its chairman was a Russian Jew, a certain Professor Brazol. At the time I read almost all of his speeches, and in 1912 this professor was living in Petersburg. I visited him after the consultation of allopaths I mentioned above, who had “allowed” me only another three to six months of life. He laughed; I paid him no less than one hundred roubles and visited him for exactly two months. Every three days he gave me new powders from his cupboard! Then he told me: “Now you are healthy and may go wherever you wish!” In my heart I did not believe him, but as you can all see, I am still alive and have lived another fifty-six years since then!

The Berlin doctors did not believe my story at all, either, but several years later, when they took X-rays, they became convinced that Brazol had cured my lungs! I have now donated my body to the University of Berlin, because this interests them enormously. There you have the brief history of my illness in Petersburg and why I left it then.

And so, under no circumstances send parcels!

Despite everything, I wish you all good health!

Your Eugen

No. 5. Berlin, 3 May 1968

Dear Elbrus,

You were ill and, unfortunately, I too was ill and still am; my illness is probably incurable. Neither Germany nor any other country will mourn me. And I have already lived long enough. On 11 March of this year I reached the age of eighty, and that is enough for a man. I have donated my body after death to the university for the students. They will find many interesting things in my body. Afterwards I shall be cremated, and I shall not have to pay anything for all this, nor will anyone else have to pay (no payment is necessary — D. G.), because the state pays for it. I still have five kilograms of Russian and Ossetian books published by me and in Vladikavkaz, and I do not know whether they can be sent to you or not.

Here they are foreign and no one needs them, but there they may be valuable. If I am still alive, I intend to move to West Germany at the beginning of September this year. I can no longer pay for my flat here, because in a short time rents have risen by as much as fifty per cent. Disability payments, however, have risen by only eight per cent. If you wish to reply to me before August, I shall be glad. And so I wish you health and happiness.

Your Eugen