Jacques Rosenthal

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Franz von Lenbach : Portrait (1904)
Antiquarian bookshop catalog Helvetica (1911)

Jacques Rosenthal (born July 17, 1854 in Fellheim as Jakob Rosenthal ; † October 5, 1937 in Munich ) was a German bookseller and antiquarian .

Life

Jakob was the youngest son of the market trader Joseph Rosenthal and Dorlene nee. Bacharach. His mother came from a local Jewish butcher family from Fellheim in what is now the Unterallgäu district . His father Joseph ran an art and antique shop in Fellheim. His three other siblings were Jette, Nathan and Ludwig. Jakob first grew up in the rural Jewish community of Fellheim . In May 1867, after all restrictions on Jews in Germany were removed, the family moved to Munich. There he learned the English and French languages ​​from a private tutor. In Munich he completed an apprenticeship as an antiquarian bookseller in the company of his brother Ludwig Rosenthal . After completing his apprenticeship, he initially took a job in Ernst Carlebach's art antiquarian bookstore in Heidelberg , and later moved to Bielefeld's antiquarian bookstore in Karlsruhe . After that, on January 20, 1874, he joined his brother Ludwig's company as a junior partner alongside his brother Nathan.

Paris

In 1878 he went to Paris on behalf of the company . There he made contacts with well-known people in the city's bookselling trade such as Léopold Victor Delisle and Emile Chatellain. He changed his name from Jakob to Jacques. Among other things, he was able to acquire a copy of Frederick the Great's, which he had sent to Voltaire for examination. He acquired the “Evangelium Prumense” for the Berlin National Library. Jacques and Ludwig Rosenthal also maintained close contacts with the Bavarian court under Ludwig II. The king was then busy planning Herrenchiemsee and Neuschwanstein and is said to have requested several books on French architectural history through the Rosenthals. One could therefore come to the conclusion that the Rosenthal family contributed indirectly to the design of the architectural style of the buildings. However, this cannot be proven in the documents of the Royal Cabinet Treasury.

Rosenthal Antiquariat in Munich

On December 21, 1882, Jacques Rosenthal married Emma Guggenheimer, daughter of the Munich wholesaler Simon Guggenheimer. Three of the father's brothers worked as bankers at the Guggenheimer & Co bank. Theodora and Erwin emerged from the marriage. Rosenthal received a request to acquire citizenship of the city of Munich on July 29, 1888. In 1895 the three brothers decided to split the company. On May 1, 1895, Jacques Rosenthal opened a “book and art antiquariat” at Karlstrasse 10. Between 1909 and 1911, Rosenthal had a representative city palace built at Brienner Strasse 47 , where the business premises of the antiquarian bookshop were also located. During the First World War , the company's business activities declined. Even after the war, the antique book trade found itself in a difficult economic environment. Towards the end of the Weimar Republic, the industry flourished again, as many pens and aristocratic houses in Bavaria and Austria ran into financial difficulties and felt compelled to sell their valuable book holdings. Rosenthal's son Erwin opened branches in Berlin and Lugano . But overall, the Rosenthal antiquarian bookshop's financial freedom of action had become less. The increasing hostility towards Jews and professional bans did the rest. Rosenthal was forced to enter into a silent partnership with his competitor Georg Karl. At the end of 1932 he suffered a stroke . In July 1935, the city palace at Brienner Strasse 47 was sold. It was later badly damaged in several of the 73 Allied bombing raids on Munich, in which 90% of the buildings in the old town were destroyed. The antique shop moved to Konradstr. 16 and Rosenthal lived with his wife in the Regina-Palast-Hotel at Maximiliansplatz  5 until his death. Emigration to Switzerland, at that time still possible without any problems, was out of the question for the couple.

On October 5, 1937, Rosenthal died, relatively unnoticed, in the Hotel Regina in Munich. After a funeral service he was buried in a small group in the Old Israelite Cemetery . The new company owner Hans Koch was also present at the celebration, and son Erwin thanked him in a letter for his presence. Erwin Joseph Rosenthal was the father of Bernard M. Rosenthal (* 1920 in Munich, † January 14, 2017 in Oakland ), who was also an antiquarian and lived in the USA, and Albi Rosenthal (* October 5, 1914 in Munich, † August 3, 2004 in Oxford ), who worked as a music antiquarian and musicologist in Great Britain .

Orders, decorations and titles of honor

literature

  • Fellheim an der Iller. An illustrated tour through the former Jewish town center of Fellheim , hrs. v. History, Customs and Chronicle Working Group in cooperation with the Office for Rural Development and the Fellheim community (2007).
  • Sigrid Krämer:  Rosenthal, Jakob. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 22, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-428-11203-2 , p. 77 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • City Archives Munich (ed.), The Rosenthals. The rise of a Jewish family of antiquaries to world fame. With contributions by Elisabeth Angermair, Jens Koch, Anton Löffelmeier, Eva Ohlen and Ingo Schwab, Vienna a. a., Böhlau. 2002, ISBN 3-205-77020-X .
  • Bernard M. Rosenthal: Cartel, Clan, or Dynasty? The Olschkis and the Rosenthals 1859-1976 . In: Harvard Library Bulletin 25, 4, 1977, pp. 386-397.
  • Antonöffelmeier, Michael Stephan: The Jacques Rosenthal company and family archive in the Munich city archive . In: Barbara Magen (ed.): "... because the actual study of humanity is man." Contributions from Egyptology, history, coptology, art history, linguistics, medicine and its history, musicology, philosophy, political science, provenance research and legal history in honor of Alfred Grimm on the occasion of his 65th birthday, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz 2018, pp. 213-224 ISBN 978-3-447-10959-8 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Munich City Archives (ed.), Die Rosenthals. The rise of a Jewish family of antiquaries to world fame. With contributions by Elisabeth Angermair, Jens Koch, Anton Löffelmeier, Eva Ohlen and Ingo Schwab, Vienna a. a. Böhlau. 2002, p. 131
  2. ↑ John Windle; Bernard M. Rosenthal Turns 90 - A Life for Rare Books and Manuscripts Article online at ILAB
  3. ↑ Article online at ILAB
personal data
SURNAME Rosenthal, Jacques
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Rosenthal, Jakob (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German bookseller and antiquarian
DATE OF BIRTH July 17, 1854
PLACE OF BIRTH Fellheim
DATE OF DEATH October 5, 1937
Place of death Munich