Klaus-Jürgen Holzapfel (; 18 May 1930 – 15 July 2025) was a German publisher.

Life and career

Holzapfel was born in

Berlin Berlin ( ; ) is the Capital of Germany, capital and largest city of Germany, by both area and List of cities in Germany by population, population. With 3.7 million inhabitants, it has the List of cities in the European Union by population withi ...

on 18 May 1930, as the son of the publisher Adolf Holzapfel. After his death in 1958 he took over the Neue Darmstädter Verlagsanstalt (NDV) founded by his father. Under his leadership, the company increasingly specialized in political manuals. In 1971 the company moved to

Rheinbreitbach Rheinbreitbach is a municipality in the district of Neuwied, in north of Rhineland-Palatinate, bordering North Rhine-Westphalia in Germany. Administratively it belongs to the municipality (''Verbandsgemeinde'') of Unkel. The town is an officially ...

. In addition to Kürschners Volkshandbuch

Deutscher Bundestag The Bundestag (, "Federal Diet") is the lower house of the German federal parliament. It is the only constitutional body of the federation directly elected by the German people. The Bundestag was established by Title III of the Basic Law fo ...

, handbooks on the German state parliaments and the

European Parliament The European Parliament (EP) is one of the two legislative bodies of the European Union and one of its seven institutions. Together with the Council of the European Union (known as the Council and informally as the Council of Ministers), it ...

were published. In 1990, a popular handbook with the biographies of the members of the first freely elected

Volkskammer The Volkskammer (, "People's Chamber") was the supreme power organ of East Germany. It was the only branch of government in the state, and per the principle of unified power, all state organs were subservient to it. The Volkskammer was initia ...

was published. In cooperation with the school television of the

Westdeutscher Rundfunk (; "West German Broadcasting Cologne"), shortened to WDR (), is a German public broadcasting, public-broadcasting institution based in the States of Germany, Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia with its main office in Cologne. WDR is a const ...

(WDR), NDV published accompanying material. In 1998, it launched the biographical database ''politikus.de'' on the Internet. At the beginning of the 2000s he gradually retired from the operative business of the publishing house and handed over the management to his son Andreas. He lived in

Linz am Rhein Linz am Rhein (, ) is a municipality in the district of Neuwied, in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. It is situated on the right bank of the river Rhine near Remagen, approx. 25 km southeast of Bonn and has about 6,000 inhabitants. It is the s ...

. Holzapfel died in

on 15 July 2025, at the age of 95.Klaus-J. Holzapfel ist gestorben

Honors

*2011:

Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany The Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany (, or , BVO) is the highest state decoration, federal decoration of the Federal Republic of Germany. It may be awarded for any field of endeavor. It was created by the first List of president ...

for his great contributions to political education.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Holzapfel, Klaus-Jurgen 1930 births 2025 deaths Businesspeople from Berlin 20th-century German publishers (people) Officers Crosses of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany