Publishers, Booksellers and Rare Book Dealers in Exile - A Biographical Handbook by Ernst Fischer

A New Publication of the German Antiquarian Booksellers' Association (VDA)

Erich Aber – Arthur M. Adler – Bernard Amtmann – Herbert Ashbrook – Susanne Bach – Franz Bader – Edwin Markus Baer – Leopold Alfred Baer – Rudolf Baer – Nathan Bamberger – Hermann Baron – Gottfried Bermann Fischer – Morton H. Bernath – Frederick A. Bernett – Ilse Bernett (geb. Blum) – Julius Berstl – Otto Bielitz – Luise Therese Bing – Herbert Bittner – Ilse Blumenfeld – Walter Blumenfeld – Alfred Bodenheimer – Eric H. Boehm – Louis Bondy – Friedrich Brabec – Samuel Braner – Bernd H. Breslauer – Martin Breslauer – Alfred Buschke – Albert Cohn – George Efron – Heinrich Eisemann – H. A. Feisenberger – Hans Fellner – Martin Flinker – Theodore Front – Lucien Goldschmidt – Ludwig Gottschalk – Paul Gottschalk – Paul Graupe – Emil Hirsch – Abraham Horodisch – Hans Peter Kraus – Louis Lamm – Emil Offenbacher – Otto Ranschburg – Herbert Reichner – Mary S. Rosenberg – Erwin Rosenthal – Albi Rosenthal – Bernard M. Rosenthal – Marianne Salloch – William Salloch – Walter Schatzki – Walter Zadek …

The "Machtergreifung" of the National Socialist Party 1933 was a deep, destructive incision into the entire German literary culture. The Nazis denounced all who did not follow the new totalitarian regime as "undeutsch" ("un-German") or "Jewish", excluded them from social, cultural and economic life, closed their companies, confiscated their property and money, persecuted the former owners, their families and employees, deprived them of their existence, and drove them into exile. Most of those who did not leave were deported and murdered.

Thousands of authors, artists, musicians, scientists were forced to leave the country, among them hundreds of publishers, booksellers, literary agents, auctioneers, and rare book dealers. In England or Palestine, the Netherlands or Scandinavia, the United States or South America, they tried to find asylum and to build up a new existence. Some of them failed, others succeeded, established new companies, and played an important role in exile, in their new home countries, and in the international book trade. Although this was probably the most dramatic event in the history of the trade, there had been no attempt to research the fate of all those displaced publishers, booksellers and antiquarian book dealers, until Ernst Fischer's biographical handbook "Verleger, Buchhändler & Antiquare aus Deutschland und Österreich in der Emigration nach 1933" was published by the German Antiquarian Booksellers' Association (VDA) in January 2011.

Ernst Fischer is a Professor at the Johann Gutenberg University Mainz (Germany) and well-known for his numerous publications on the history of the book and the book trade from the 18th to the 20th century. He is co-editor of the "Geschichte des deutschen Buchhandels im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert" (History of the 19th and 20th Century German Book Trade). His main interest lies in the history of bibliophily and the antiquarian book trade, especially during the Weimar Republic from 1919 to 1933 and the German exile from 1933 to 1945.

Since the 1990s Ernst Fischer had been travelling to Israel, the United States, Great Britain and The Netherlands to interview witnesses like Walter Zadek, Bernd H. Breslauer and Albi Rosenthal. He collected data, facts, correspondences, newspapers, obituaries, catalogues, advertisements, photographs and every imaginable evidence of the lives of the people who had to flee from Nazi Germany. The result is a biographical documentary that traces the life and work of the emigrants who left Germany and Austria after 1933. In more than 800 articles it depicts the fate and career of publishers, editors and agents like Gottfried Berman Fischer, Fritz H. Landshoff, Hermann Kesten, Paul Zsolnay, George Weidenfeld and antiquarian booksellers like Susanne Bach, Bernard M. Rosenthal, Walter Schatzki, Frederick A. Bernett, Mary S. Rosenberg, Albert J. Phiebig, Emil Offenbacher, Karl Anton Steiner, William Salloch, Lucien Goldschmidt, Bernard Amtmann, Martin Breslauer, Bernd H. Breslauer, Albert Cohn and many others. The stories are supplemented by detailed bibliographical data, photographs and an essay "Eine Vertreibung und ihre Folgen" (An evicition and its aftermath). They provide a vivid picture of life in exile, and of the remarkable influence that this group of emigrants had - and still has - on the trade and on our culture worldwide.

An enormous scientific work, an important historical reference, and a handbook, worth reading from the first page to the last.

Ernst Fischer: Verleger, Buchhändler & Antiquare aus Deutschland und Österreich in der Emigration nach 1933. Ein biographisches Handbuch

With an essay and 20 photographs. Typography and design Ralf de Jong. Verband Deutscher Antiquare, 2011. 432 pp. Clothbound. (ISBN 978–3–9812223–2–6) price: € 68 plus shipping

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