Richard Landwehr

[merriampress]

Thank you for posting here and for the update on Richard Landwehr. Is Richard is going to reprint his older issues like those of issue 1 to 27?

I'm looking for some selected Siegrunen issues and I had already ask my friend in US to order (from your website) and he will bring back to me to Malaysia because the shipping cost from US to Malaysia is too expensive to cover my budget for Siegrunen issues.

I sent you a PM

Panzermahn

Richard will not be reprinting any of his magazine issues. He will be reusing some of the material in them to create either a book on a single subject (the Budpest monograph currently available and produced by me for Richard, is an example, as it utilized the material originally published in an issue of SR with some additional material) or an anthology-type work combining a selection of articles from various issues, possibly following some basic theme.

Of course, one reason I have produced a lot of material on PDF to be sold on CD discs is to cut down on costs - in both printing as well as shipping. Most PDF only orders are sent free (first class in U.S. and airmail elsewhere). Only orders under $5.00 are charged an extra fee since the cost of filling an order that is less than $5.00 would not make it worthwhile for me to bother with. All of the books I publish, including Richard's, are also available in PDF format on CD disc, usually for $6.95. And no, none of it is available for direct download after purchase. I don't have the capability to accept orders in real time, nor the space on my web site to store some 400 PDF files (and growing), especially since some of those files are hundreds of MBs.

[Lorenz]

Ray Merriam wrote:

........He is still in Oregon, though has moved after selling his book store in the 1980s (the town was becoming "hippie" central for the area). He doesn't have a web site, hence I have been selling his books through my web site, while he continues to sell by mail.

Thanks for the informative reply, Ray. You won't recognize me from my screen name, of course, but you and I go back to those early years of the 1970-73 period. I'm sure I was one of the "100" first subscribers to Siegrunnen. I also was one of the first subscribers to your Military Journal (Military History Journal? - time dulls the memory) and I remember how much I enjoyed it for the off-the-beaten-path obscuria that was one of the Journal's big pluses, along with the great new book news, associations news and many other features. I really, really enjoyed it, Ray, and you deserve great credit and a hearty "thanks" for publishing it.

Around 1978 or thereabouts, you very kindly sent me the following to help with my research on the NDH at the time:

Aid, Matthew M. The Croatian Armed Forced at War, 1941-1942. Unpublished manuscript. Beloit (WI), 1976.

"Our" Matthew Aid has been in the news recently regarding NSA documents at NARA and at the National Security Archive in WashDC, so it looks like he never lost the seed of World War II curiosity and scholarly inquiry while he was taking his degrees at Beloit College.

As for Landwehr, I'm glad he is still productive and apparently well. Yes, it doesn't surprise me that he evacuated his community with the arrival of the hippie hoards. Somehow, hippies and Richard L. just do NOT go together in the same sentence!

And thanks for all your news. I, too, will visit your web site and get current. We may be a couple of "old boys" now, Ray, (in my case, REAL old!) but we can still read and enjoy history, especially of World War II.

Cheers,

--Lorenz

[merriampress]

Thanks for the informative reply, Ray. You won't recognize me from my screen name, of course, but you and I go back to those early years of the 1970-73 period. I'm sure I was one of the "100" first subscribers to Siegrunnen. I also was one of the first subscribers to your Military Journal (Military History Journal? - time dulls the memory) and I remember how much I enjoyed it for the off-the-beaten-path obscuria that was one of the Journal's big pluses, along with the great new book news, associations news and many other features. I really, really enjoyed it, Ray, and you deserve great credit and a hearty "thanks" for publishing it.

Around 1978 or thereabouts, you very kindly sent me the following to help with my research on the NDH at the time:

Aid, Matthew M. The Croatian Armed Forced at War, 1941-1942. Unpublished manuscript. Beloit (WI), 1976.

"Our" Matthew Aid has been in the news recently regarding NSA documents at NARA and at the National Security Archive in WashDC, so it looks like he never lost the seed of World War II curiosity and scholarly inquiry while he was taking his degrees at Beloit College.

As for Landwehr, I'm glad he is still productive and apparently well. Yes, it doesn't surprise me that he evacuated his community with the arrival of the hippie hoards. Somehow, hippies and Richard L. just do NOT go together in the same sentence!

And thanks for all your news. I, too, will visit your web site and get current. We may be a couple of "old boys" now, Ray, (in my case, REAL old!) but we can still read and enjoy history, especially of World War II.

Cheers,

--Lorenz

Hi Lorenz (I think I recall your last name but won't reveal it here - which is amazing because I am really, REALLY bad with names!)

It was just "Military Journal". Actually, that was the third name for what was really the same publication, even though we started the numbering from Vol 1 No 1 again when we switched to Military Journal.

It started out in 1974 as "World War Enthusiast 1939-1945", name changed to "WW2 Journal" with Vol 2 No 2 in 1975. Prospective readers all of a sudden started complaining about the title telling us, "I'm not ENTHUSIASTIC about war", which was not the point of the title of course. It was meant to refer to a WWII history buff, not a warmonger, but those were the days when everyone was anti-military what with the Vietnam War. Another problem with the original title was that when mentioned in reviews and such, the dates were always left off and some people thought the magazine was about the FIRST World War.

In late 1976 I made the mistake of deciding the magazine could become bigger and better by covering more than just WWII history, and thus was born "Military Journal", with Vol 1 No 1 coming out in Jan 1977, which lasted for 12 issues, and folded in 1981, mostly because we lost too many of our old WWII subscribers and the new blood wasn't enough to offset the loss.

Many of the old readers of those issues have contacted me in later years to make comments much as yours about how much they enjoyed the magazines. Alas, we just didn't have the muscle or the resources to make it financially successful.

I well remember Matthew Aid and his contributions to the magazine.

I just turned 55 last month - where does the time go??? It's been almost 40 years since I started this as a small (very small) newsletter.

[Lorenz]

Thanks for that, Ray! Your words jogged the old memory cells and I now realize that I had predated my recollections by a couple of years. I had resigned from the service in October 1968 after coming back from Vietnam, prompted mainly by the rampant anti-militarism that was sweeping the country, and had gone home to Rochester to settle into a family-owned business that I ended up not enjoying. I moved to Florida at the beginning of 1975 to work on a graduate degree and my old address in Orlando may be the one you connect with my name, which I think you do indeed remember. But don't feel old and decrepid yet, Ray, because I've got 13 years on you!

Thanks again for bringing back some fond memories, and I will hit your web site this week for sure.

God speed, OM, and keep on truckin'!!

--Lorenz

[merriampress]

Thanks for that, Ray! Your words jogged the old memory cells and I now realize that I had predated my recollections by a couple of years. I had resigned from the service in October 1968 after coming back from Vietnam, prompted mainly by the rampant anti-militarism that was sweeping the country, and had gone home to Rochester to settle into a family-owned business that I ended up not enjoying. I moved to Florida at the beginning of 1975 to work on a graduate degree and my old address in Orlando may be the one you connect with my name, which I think you do indeed remember. But don't feel old and decrepid yet, Ray, because I've got 13 years on you!

Thanks again for bringing back some fond memories, and I will hit your web site this week for sure.

God speed, OM, and keep on truckin'!!

--Lorenz

The reason I think I recall your last name is because, if I am correct about your last name, my maternal grandmother's last name was very similar.

Always great to hear from some of the "old gang"!

[merriampress]

Today (8 May 2006) I updated the Siegrunen Magazine and Monograph pages on my web site. I mentioned previously that I have been having trouble getting my web site to work properly until just last week after the web hosting company switched to new servers (and from Unix to Linux) in January (for five days my web site was unavailable to anyone, even myself!). The web site search feature didn't work and I couldn't easily update my web site and when I did certain things didn't work properly.

Anyway, I can now update the site quickly, the web site seach is now working, and everything appears to be working (for now!).

I had received copies of Siegrunen Magazine 76 and 77 and those are now listed with pricing and can be ordered online. A few other issues have had their availability noted - SR 32 and 44 are now down to a single copy of the original printed editions each, after that they will be available as PDF files. SR 47/48 is also now available in limited supply in the original printed edition. Many of the back issues prior to No. 70 are in short supply in the original printed editions.

As mentioned previously, if you really prefer printed copies to the PDFs on CD disc, I can supply laser printed copies at 25 cents a page.

The pricing on the four SR Monographs (Steadfast Hussars [Waffen-SS Cavalry units]; Budapest [Stalingrad of the Waffen-SS]; Alarm Units; French Volunteers of the Waffen-SS) has been revised. These four titles are now being professionally printed by an outside printer using print on demand (all of my books will eventually be done this way).

They are now 6x9 inch page size; paperback edition is true trade paperback quality with full-color one-piece cover perfect bound; hardcover is very high quality with title stamped in gold on the spine and full-color wrap-around dust jacket. Print quality is excellent; photo quality does vary, mostly due to the quality of the originals used as one can imagine, but I've seen worse reproduction from the big-time commercial publishers even when they work with good quality photo prints.

The cost of these books is higher, thus the retail prices are higher, but considering the quality and the limited sales potential for books on such specialized topics, the pricing is not unreasonable and comparable to other specialized topic books on the market today.

Among the books I've published under my own imprint, Merriam Press, there are over 60 titles available on a wide range of topics (including some that would have direct interest to those on this forum, such as one on the Wallonien). Many are actually veterans memoirs (so far all U.S. veterans, though am working on one by a Japanese Army veteran which should be out shortly). Several more titles are in preparation and will be out this year.

I will keep this thread posted when new issues of Siegrunen are available and when new SR Monographs are released - at least two should be available later this year.

[Helmut Von Moltke]

hi panzerman, if you go to Germany, you will be able to find a bunch of Siegrunen issues and mongraphs in the Bundeswehr Koblenz museum bookshop That's where I got my copy of "Freikorps Danmark". The Issues cost around 16 Euro. The place where they are is when you go into the bookshop, turn right then walk down on the first corridor to the end.

K

[merriampress]

hi panzerman, if you go to Germany, you will be able to find a bunch of Siegrunen issues and mongraphs in the Bundeswehr Koblenz museum bookshop.
K

I find this info interesting as some years ago Richard told me that Sigerunen had been banned from being imported into the country (even subscribers copies were being confiscated by customs) and Richard was tried in absentia by German courts for disseminating "hate literature" and if he sets foot in Germany he is subject to immediate arrest.

Speaking of SR, issue #78 just came out and can be ordered either from Richard or myself through my web site (if you are not already a subscriber). Details of what's in the issue can be found on my web site.

[Helmut Von Moltke]

ah well. The Bundesrepublik will be like that unfortunately in the near future.

However the museum has been around for quite while, so maybe the Bundeswehr subscribed to some copies of it before it was banned in the Bundesrepublik.

K

[Lorenz]

HvM wrote:

ah well. The Bundesrepublik will be like that unfortunately in the near future.

I don't want to start an argument or a heated political discourse here, but I think the question is rather one of why are all of the Munin Verlag histories of SS formations as well as those published by other publishers permitted in Germany while Landwehr's writings are not?

You do not have to respond to this, HvM, because it's a rhetorical question.

--Lorenz

[Helmut Von Moltke]

No argument or flame war intended here Lorenz. Judging by what I have read in 'Der Freiwillige", Munin Verlag's things are not are political as Landwehr's, since Landwehr's work has a lot of bias, political comments, etc. Add on that some revisionist sites have some of his articles.
Best Wishes.

K

[Jan-Hendrik]

Damn , didn't knew that !

Jan-Hendrik

[merriampress]

To further update the Siegrunen situation, Richard is currently down to producing about one issue a year of SR, and it has become thinner (fewer pages, though with smaller text) due to ever increasing costs of printing and postage.

He is seriously considering using print on demand to do SR, though whether it will still be an actual magazine remains to be seen. Richard and I have been discussing this for a while now, since my switch to using a print on demand printer for all of my books which has worked out well.

One idea being kicked around is an annual or semi-annual book format of a couple hundred pages, with material reprinted from old out of print issues of SR (with corrections and additions where necessary) along with new material.

[Jan-Hendrik]

One idea being kicked around is an annual or semi-annual book format of a couple hundred pages, with material reprinted from old out of print issues of SR (with corrections and additions where necessary) along with new material.

In my opinion an intersting proposition , dear Ray !

Jan-Hendrik

[Tom Houlihan]

One idea being kicked around is an annual or semi-annual book format of a couple hundred pages, with material reprinted from old out of print issues of SR (with corrections and additions where necessary) along with new material.

That would be nice for some of the older issues that aren't available any more.