Helmuth Domizlaff

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Helmuth Artur Friedrich Domizlaff (born May 20, 1902 in Erfurt , † August 30, 1983 in Übersee ) was a German antiquarian . Helmuth Domizlaff had been running an antiquarian book trade in Munich since 1931. In 1949 he was a member of the founding board of the "Association of German Antiquaries and Graphics Dealers", which was transferred to the Association of German Antiquaries in 1952 .

family

His father was Georg Heinrich Christian Domizlaff (born June 14, 1854 in Soest ; † October 28, 1937 in Leipzig ), President of the Leipzig Post Office and field postmaster during World War I , his mother Anna Catharina Boeter (born December 10, 1866 in Hamburg - Eppendorf ; † 1944 in Murnau ). His siblings were Hans Domizlaff (1892–1971), advertising consultant and writer in Hamburg, and Hildegard Domizlaff (1898–1987), sculptor in Cologne .

biography

Helmuth Domizlaff was a knowledgeable collector during his school days at the Nikolaigymnasium in Leipzig . The young art historian Karl Friedrich Suter stood by his side as a mentor and later friend. At the age of nineteen he had already amassed a collection of German literature.

He passed his Abitur in 1921 at the Thomas School in Leipzig . He began his training in 1922 in the Otto Harrassowitz bookstore in Leipzig. In 1924 he finished his apprenticeship and moved to Frankfurt to Joseph Baer & Co. Here the focus was on bookbinding and the illustrated books of the 15th and 16th centuries, an area that became Domizlaff's preferred area.

From 1925, his next stop was a branch of Jacques Rosenthal's “L'Art Ancien” in Lugano on Piazza Alessandro Manzoni. Around 1928 Domizlaff moved to the Munich antiquarian bookshop Jacques Rosenthal at Brienner Strasse 47 . In addition to Jacques Rosenthal, his son Erwin Rosenthal and Fritz Finkenstaedt worked there. Other employees were Adolf Seebaß and Waldemar Lessing. Domizlaff became Erwin Rosenthal's assistant.

After the First World War, Munich was, alongside London, the international center of the antiquarian book trade in Europe. The most important German antiquarian bookshops and auction houses were gathered here in the streets between the university quarter and Karolinenplatz. Domizlaff moved into a simple apartment on Nikolaiplatz in the Schwabing district.

As early as 1930, the effects of the global economic crisis were also becoming apparent in the antiquarian book trade. Nevertheless, in December 1931 he started his own business with a small business. Under the National Socialist dictatorship, the intellectual climate in Germany was extremely bad for an international antiquarian bookshop. Regardless of this, he was able to develop the company into a successful rarity antiquarian despite the crisis and the subsequent war years.

The antiquarians were also affected by the prohibitions of the Reich Chamber of Culture Act of 1933. The Jewish bookshops and numerous well-known second-hand bookshops were gradually closed in the years up to 1938, and the Jewish booksellers were banned from working. Thus, under the National Socialist dictatorship, within a few years an antiquarian bookshop landscape of international standing that had grown over six decades, whose exponents inevitably spread across North America and Europe.

The appreciation of his international colleagues helped him after 1945 to re-establish the contacts that had stunted during the war. At the beginning of his time in Munich, Helmuth Domizlaff met the English antiquarian Percy M. Muir, with whom he has been on friendly terms ever since. This friendship lasted over the time of the Nazi dictatorship and finally proved itself in the post-war years.

After the war, the Amsterdam antiquarian Menno Hertzberger suggested the formation of an international association of national associations of antiquarian booksellers. In 1948 the International League of Antiquarian Booksellers (ILAB) was founded in Copenhagen and Percy M. Muir was elected as its president.

In January 1949, the German antiquarians merged in Munich to form the "Association of German antiquaries and graphic dealers". The founding board included Helmuth Domizlaff as chairman, Ernst Hauswedell from Hamburg, Willi Heinrich from Frankfurt and Georg Karl and Bernhard Wendt from Munich. Helmuth Domizlaff initially refrained from any activity in the direction of admission to the "International League of Antiquarian Booksellers (ILAB)", "in order not to be exposed to the risk of being rejected," as he said in an interview in 1977. Finally, as chairman of the German Association, he received an official invitation to attend the League Congress in Brussels in September 1951. There the German association was then accepted into the league as the thirteenth member.

Helmuth Domizlaff continued his antiquarian book trade in Schwabing until 1980, before he settled in Übersee on Lake Chiemsee in 1983. His company was considered unusual even in industry circles. He was known among antiquarians in Germany as one of the few “marchand amateur” who was more a collector than a dealer.

In August 1983 Helmuth Domizlaff died at the age of 81 in his overseas home.

literature

  • Peter Sumerauer, Carmen Zotta: Helmuth Domizlaff - The antiquarian as an ambassador . In: Mühlrad, Schulbank and Carrière - History and family traditions of the Domizlaff from Pomerania and Prussia . Tübingen 2003, ISBN 3-89308-360-X , pp. 485-501.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Gottlieb Tesmer, Walther Müller: Honor roll of the Thomas School in Leipzig. The teachers and high school graduates of the Thomas School in Leipzig 1912–1932. Commissioned by the Thomanerbund, self-published, Leipzig 1934, p. 38.

Web links