Joseph Baer & Co.

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The company Joseph Baer & Co. was one of the most important antique shops in Germany and Europe. It existed in Frankfurt am Main from 1785 until it was forcibly dissolved during the National Socialist era in 1934.

history

Joseph Abraham Baer (1767-1851), son of the bookseller Abraham Baer from Hanau, opened an antiquarian bookshop in 1785 in the defeat of the Dominican monastery in Frankfurt . It was the first German antiquarian bookshop and had its formal headquarters in Bockenheim, Hanau , since Jews in the imperial city of Frankfurt were not allowed to become citizens and therefore were not allowed to set up a company. Through the mediation of influential customers, he was able to relocate his business to the better-located Steingasse in Frankfurt's eastern old town between Töngesgasse and Schnurgasse in 1792 .

In 1824 he passed the business on to his sons Bernhard Joseph (1799–1864), who became authorized signatory, Leopold Joseph (1805–1861) and Hermann Joseph (1811–1881). Bernhard Joseph became a Frankfurt citizen in 1834 and was thus able to officially register the company "Joseph Baer - trading and shipping, combined with antiquarian bookstore" on April 23, 1834. From this the company "Joseph Baer, ​​Antiquariat, Buch- und Kunsthandlung" emerged in 1836, in which his brothers became authorized signatories.

In 1841 Leopold Joseph Baer took over the management of the company and expanded it into one of the leading antiquarian bookshops in Germany and Europe. The antiquarian bookshop soon became the meeting point of intellectual Frankfurt, especially that of Vormärz . With its extensive book inventory of over 200,000 volumes around 1848, Jacob Grimm , Arthur Schopenhauer and Otto von Bismarck, among others , were among its customers. In 1850 the business and the scientific publishing house, which had since been connected, were relocated from Steingasse to Roßmarkt . In 1853 the company was appointed "Chief Commissioner of the Imperial Public Libraries in Moscow and St. Petersburg etc." by the Russian Tsar. It also played a major role in equipping public libraries in Germany.

After Leopold Joseph's death in 1861, Hermann continued the business with his widow until Leopold's son Simon Leopold (1845–1919) took over this stake, who had managed the company since 1873 with Hermann's son Saly Baer (1855–1882). Hermann went to France in 1869 and founded a branch in Paris in 1871, which his second son Joseph (* 1853) took over after his death in 1881, but who died in 1884. The Paris business was then sold to F. Fetscherin ("Joseph Baer et Cie. (Jules Moutonnet et F. Fetscherin successeurs)"). In 1871 he also entered into an association with Henry Sotheran's second-hand bookshop in London, which was dissolved again in 1873, but the London branch continued until 1884.

Since October 26, 1872, the Frankfurt company has been called "Joseph Baer & Co." The second-hand bookshop was one of the largest in Europe with a stock of around 500,000 volumes when it was moved to a specially built house at 6 Hochstrasse in 1899 moved. Baer auctioned u. a. the libraries Arthur Schopenhauer (1905) and Otto Denekes (1909) and the autograph collection of the Brentano- Birchstock family (1896).

In 1901, long-time employee Moriz Sondheim (1860–1944) became a partner in the antiquarian bookshop. The sons of Simon Leopold Baer Leo (1880–1948) and Edwin Baer (1881–1965) continued the antiquarian bookshop with Moriz Sondheim, from 1905 as authorized signatory, from 1911 as co-owner. On January 1, 1916, Simon Leopold left the company as co-owner. The company organized important auctions, such as the library and incunabula collection of Kurt Wolff (1912/1926).

As a result of increasing pressure on Jewish companies (boycott of Jewish shops; reduced allocation of foreign currency, which prevented the acquisition of books from abroad; prohibition of public institutions from shopping at Jewish companies), the company was forced to close down in the spring of 1933 after the ban the professional practice for the owners by the Reich Chamber of Fine Arts in June 1934, it was stopped. Leo and Edwin Baer went into exile abroad in 1934, where they both continued to work as antiquarians.

Family tree of the Baer family

Catalogs

The company published over 1,000 catalogs.

  • Joseph Baer's antiquarian Anzeiger 1, 1855 - 201, 1871
  • Antiquarian indicator by Joseph Baer & Co. 202, 1871 - 473, 1898
  • Warehouse catalog. Josef Baer & Co. Frankfurt a. M. 1, 1864-791, 1933
  • Antiquarian bookshop catalog 561 [1908] - 782 [approx. 1934]
  • Frankfurt book lover. Announcements from the antiquarian bookshop Joseph Baer & Co. 1, 1899/1900 - 11, 1913; NF 1 = 12, 1914/19 - NF 4 = 15, 1921/22

literature

  • Richard Däschner (pseudonym for Moriz Sondheim ): The Baersche Antiquariat in Frankfurt a. M. In: Zeitschrift für Bücherfreunde 3, 1899/1900, pp. 348–351 = in: Moriz Sondheim: Collected writings. Books - Bibliophilia - Literature - Art, among others J. Baer & Co., Frankfurt 1927, pp. 205–208 ( digitized version ).
  • Friedrich Hermann Schwarz: On the history of the company Joseph Baer & Co. (1785–1944) . In: From the Antiquariat 29, 1973, no. 9, pp. A 415 – A 418.
  • Alexandre Baer: Joseph Baer & Co, fondée en 1785 . Baer, ​​Paris 1977.
  • Eberhard Henze: Joseph Baer & Co. In: Lexicon of the entire book system . 2nd Edition. Volume 1. Hiersemann, Stuttgart 1987, pp. 218-219.
  • Andrea Hopp: Jewish bourgeoisie in Frankfurt am Main in the 19th century . Steiner, Stuttgart 1997, ISBN 3-515-06985-2 , pp. 46-54.
  • Werner Schroeder: The 'Aryanization' of Jewish second-hand bookshops between 1933 and 1942 . In: From the Antiquarian Book Shop NF 7, 2009, No. 5, pp. 295-320.
  • History of the German book trade in the 19th and 20th centuries . Volume 1. De Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2010, pp. 263–266.
  • Ernst Fischer: Publishers, booksellers and antiquarians from Germany and Austria who emigrated after 1933. A biographical handbook . Verband Deutscher Antiquare, Stuttgart 2011, ISBN 978-3-9812223-2-6 , pp. 29-30.

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