Desider star

Desider Stern (born April 24, 1907 in Breslau , † April 29, 2000 in Vienna ) was a Jewish documentary , collector and bibliographer .

Life

Desider Stern lived in Czechoslovakia until 1938 and in Vienna since 1949. A book collector and documentary since his youth, Stern worked as a full-time businessman , commercial agent and as an inventor and manufacturer of household machines.

The catalog of Desider Stern's works by authors of Jewish origin in German for a book exhibition - also initiated by Desider Stern - of the B'nai B'rith-Loge in Vienna in 1967 (previously published in three editions: Vienna 1967, 1969, 1970) is an important contemporary bio-bibliographical reference work on Jewish authors in German-speaking countries and is considered a standard work. It includes around 400 short biographies and bibliographies by authors of Jewish origin from the 19th and 20th centuries.

The expanded fourth edition, which was planned to be published by Moses Mendelssohn to this day , could no longer be published because Desider Stern went blind in 1991 and could not continue his work. For the fourth edition he had expanded the content: It was to include material on German-speaking Jewish authors from the entire cultural sector and academia and non-German-speaking authors of Jewish origin (e.g. literature in Yiddish , Polish or Hebrew).

In the summer of 1993 Desider Stern donated his archive to the Austrian Library in Exile: 134 folders with approx. 30,000 items and a reference library. The collection, which documents around 10,000 Jewish personalities, includes newspaper clippings, correspondence, short biographies, photos (originals and reproductions), programs, offprints, publisher's brochures, autographs, primary texts and secondary literature.

collection

The existing Desider Stern collection has meanwhile been expanded to include newspaper clippings from the press documentation of the Documentation Center for Newer Austrian Literature and the Austrian Exile Library until 2004 and is to be updated and expanded in the future. A database of 13,000 names already exists and can be used.

Awards

• In 1994 he was awarded the Cross of Honor for Science and Art, 1st Class, for his life's work.
• In 1999 he was awarded the Golden Medal of Honor of the City of Vienna.

Works

• Works by authors of Jewish origin in German . 2nd Edition. B'nai B'rith, Vienna 1969 (previously: books by authors of Jewish origin in German, an exhibition by B'nai B'rith, Vienna, March 5-14, 1967 in the Künstlerhaus Vienna , catalog: Desider Stern , DNB 1045425419 ).

Web links

• Literature by and about Desider Stern in the catalog of the German National Library
• Exhibition by the Austrian Library in Exile