Bernard H. Breslauer

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Bernard H. Breslauer (born July 1, 1918 in Charlottenburg ; died August 14, 2004 in New York ) was a German-British book antiquarian .

Life

Bernd Hartmut Breslauer's father Martin Breslauer founded a book antiquarian in Berlin in 1898. Bernd was the only son and made the acquaintance of the bibliophile author Stefan Zweig as a young poet in his father's business . After the handover of power to the National Socialists in 1933, the family had to give up the house in Lichterfelde and move to an apartment on Meinekestrasse . Bernd had to leave high school in 1935 for racist reasons and from then on worked in his father's antiquarian bookshop , starting with a traineeship with Leo S. Olschki in Florence . The operation was hampered by the persecution of the Jews and finally expropriated with the means of the Reichsfluchtsteuer . The family emigrated to Great Britain on July 1, 1937 . The art collector Robert von Hirsch , a customer and friend of the family, who had emigrated to Switzerland in 1933, helped with a loan to rebuild the antiquarian bookshop in London.

When war broke out in 1939, Breslauer was interned on the Isle of Man as an enemy alien . Breslauer's father died in 1940 immediately after a German bombing raid on Bloomsbury , London , where the family was staying. Bernard was a soldier for four years, first in the Auxiliary Military Pioneer Corps and then in the British Secret Service.

After the war he resumed the antiquarian book trade in his mother's apartment in Chiswick and opened a shop in the City of London in 1947 . Breslauer became a specialist in book covers from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, as well as autographs. As a dealer, he has published more than a hundred catalogs. He wrote articles for bibliographic journals and essays on book history.

In 1977 he moved his business to Fifth Avenue in New York . There he bought a Gutenberg Bible at an auction at Christie, Manson & Woods for the Württemberg State Library in Stuttgart at the then unimaginable price of 2.2 million US dollars. In 1980 he bought the best pieces from Hans Fürstenberg's book cover collection .

In 1992 the Pierpont Morgan Library showed the exhibition The Breslauer Collection of Manuscript Illuminations. His collection of illuminated manuscripts was one of the largest private collections, it had more than a hundred copies. He also owned a collection of book illuminations . Part of the collection is now in the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles .

In 1997, Bernhard B. Breslauer donated the company and family archive of the Breslauer family to the Berlin State Library . In the same year he received an honorary doctorate from the Free University of Berlin . He was not married and had no biological offspring. Therefore, shortly before his death, he founded the BH Breslauer Foundation New York . In 2014, it was awarded the Max Herrmann Prize for its regular support of the Berlin State Library .

In 2005 his estate was auctioned at Christie's. Breslauer donated the University of California funds for a professorship in bibliography and endowed the Houghton Library of Harvard University Library and the British Library with funds for the purchase of rare books. In 2008 the International League of Antiquarian Books added the name of its four-year award to the ILAB Breslau Prize for Bibliography

Fonts (selection)

  • Heinrich IV. Count and Lord zu Castell. A German book collector of the Renaissance and the bindings made for him during his student years in Orléans, Paris and Bologna . Degener, Neustadt ad Aisch 1992 (English 1978)
  • The uses of bookbinding literature . Book Arts Press, New York 1986
  • Hans Fürstenberg or ... about bibliophile fame . In: Imprimatur: Ein Jahrbuch für Bücherfreunde , Vol. NF 11, 1984, pp. 121-133

literature

  • William M. Voelkle; Roger S. Wieck; Maria Saffiotti Dale: The Bernard H. Breslauer Collection of Manuscript Illuminations . Pierpont Morgan Library, New York 1992.
  • Breslauer, Bernd . In: Rudolf Vierhaus (Ed.): German Biographical Encyclopedia. Volume 2. Saur, Munich 2005 pp. 64-65.

Web links

Commons : Bernard H. Breslauer  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b c Nicolas Barker: Bookdealer and collector across two continents , The Independent , September 25, 2004.
  2. ↑ Friends of the Berlin State Library on the award
  3. ↑ Bibliotheca bibliographica Breslaueriana: the first portion: 150 important manuscripts, association copies, finding bindings, Monday 21 March 2005, the property of the estate of Dr. Bernard H. Breslauer , at Christie's.
  4. ^ History of the ILAB Prize , at ILAB.
personal data
SURNAME Breslauer, Bernard H.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Breslauer, Bernd Hartmut (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-British book antiquarian
DATE OF BIRTH July 1, 1918
PLACE OF BIRTH Charlottenburg
DATE OF DEATH August 14, 2004
Place of death New York City