Friedrich Wilhelm Christern

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Friedrich Wilhelm Christern , mostly Frederick W. Christern in the USA (born September 14, 1816 in Grünhof, today part of Geesthacht ; † April 24, 1891 in New York City ) was a German-American bookseller and publisher.

Life

Friedrich Wilhelm Christern was the son of the owner of Grünhof and Tesperhude Johann Friedrich Christern († already in 1822 at the age of 37) and his wife Catharina Wilhelmine, née. Nölting. Friedrich Nölting and Johann Matthias Friedrich Christern, bailiff at Tesperhude, were his godfathers.

After his confirmation he started an apprenticeship at the Lüneburg publishing house Herold & Wahlstab at the age of 14 . Here he met his future brother-in-law and business partner in New York City, Rudolph Garrigue . In 1836 it went to the Heroldsche Buchhandlung in Hamburg , run by JG Herold († 1840) , which after Herold's death in 1840 was taken over by his nephew Gustav Eduard Nolte (politician, 1812) . The Hamburg fire in May 1842 destroyed the business except for the handbooks, which could only be saved with great difficulty; only the Leipzig warehouse was left of the publishing house. At that time Christern was a journeyman on the road. He worked in numerous European bookshops, including Warsaw . In 1850 he was living and working in Munich when he received an invitation from Rudolph Garrigue to follow him to the USA.

Astor House (1862)

Christern first went to Philadelphia , at that time the center of the book trade in the USA, and learned the peculiarities of the American market from John Weick. In 1853 he came to New York and took over the shop at Rudolph Garrique, who concentrated on importing German books. They went into partnership under the company Garrigue & Christern . The bookstore was located in the luxury Astor House hotel at the beginning of South Broadway .

Garrigue's plan to use the English edition of the picture atlas published by FA Brockhaus-Verlag to move from the assortment business to the publishing business in North America was thwarted in 1854 by a major fire in which all preparatory work and the printing plates were destroyed. In frustration, he left the bookstore business to Christern, who ran it under the company FW Christern: retailer of foreign books . In 1856 Christian became a citizen of the United States.

Stamp of the bookstore FW Christern until the move in 1866

His shop was at 763 Broadway from 1856. Synchronized with the relocation of the business center in Manhattan to the north, it moved several times: in 1866 to 863 Broadway, then to 77 University Place and later to 37 West 23d Street. It ended up at 154 Fifth Avenue . Christern published a Monthly Bulletin of Foreign Literature . The Boston Public Library made him their main buyer of European literature.

His business became a meeting place for almost all German scientists and writers traveling to New York.

He was a member of the German Society of the City of New York and numerous other associations of German immigrants in New York. At the time of his death he was trustee of the German Hospital, member of the Metropolitan Museum of Art , the New York Historical Society and the New York Geographical Society.

Christern died in his home at 420 West 20th Street in 1890 and was buried in the New Cemetery of Trinity Church on 153rd Street in Uptown Manhattan . The Publishers Weekly obituary recognized him as the oldest and perhaps most honored member of the import book trade in the United States. He left a widow, Emilie H., geb. Garrigue (s) (born October 17, 1819 in Copenhagen , † April 29, 1893 in New York) and two daughters, Cecilia, married. Blondin (1858-1931) and Marianna (1860-1893).

After Christern's death, the bookstore was bought by Paul L. Dyrsen and Ferdinand F. Pfeiffer and continued under the company FW Christern, Dyrsen & Pfeiffer, successors .

literature

  • Frederick W. Christern , in: Publishers Weekly 39 (1891), p. 632 (obituary)
  • John Hruschka: How Books Came to America: The Rise of the American Book Trade , Penn State Press, 2012 (English)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ According to Hamwarde Church's baptism record on September 29, 1816, accessed on ancestry.com on November 30, 2017
  2. ^ See on the Herold family , family in Schmidt: German booksellers. German book printer digitized
  3. ^ Garrigue, Rudolph in Rudolf Schmidt: German booksellers. German book printer
  4. ↑ His store has for many years been the rendez-vous of almost all scientific and literary men visiting this country, who almost invariably brought letters of introduction to Mr. FW Christern. Obituary (lit.)
  5. ↑ Business circular , archival material in the library of the Börsenverein der Deutschen Buchhandels zu Leipzig
personal data
SURNAME Christern, Friedrich Wilhelm
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Christern, Frederick W.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-American bookseller and publisher
DATE OF BIRTH September 14, 1816
PLACE OF BIRTH Grünhof, today part of Geesthacht
DATE OF DEATH April 24, 1891
Place of death New York City