Marie Lomnitz-Klamroth

Marie Louise Lomnitz-Klamroth (born December 14, 1863 in Moscow ; died May 17, 1946 in Leipzig ) was a German librarian and expert on the blind. She became known as the long-standing director of the German Central Library for the Blind in Leipzig (DZB).

Life

Marie Klamroth was the daughter of Karl Klamroth (1828–1912), concertmaster of the Imperial Opera in Moscow . Her older brother was the later painter Anton Klamroth . At the age of six she moved to Gotha with her brother and mother . She was trained as an organist at the Conservatory in Leipzig from 1885 and passed her final examination in 1890. In 1892 she married the publisher Eduard Ferdinand Lomnitz, who ran the prestigious Georg Wigand publishing house from 1891 until his death in 1913 .

In November 1894, several committed citizens founded an association for the support of the blind, which supported the newly founded library for the blind, the first of its kind in Germany. Marie Lomnitz was a founding member of the board; her husband also contributed to the association as a sponsor. From 1895 the association also ran a printing press in Braille. From 1901 Lomnitz took over the management of the library as director. Under her leadership, typewriters for the blind were purchased (the systems from Hall and Oskar Picht ).

After the death of her husband and the outbreak of the First World War, the association under Lomnitz was dependent on state support, which she received because of her commitment. From 1914 the library for the blind received more public awareness, from 1916 a heyday of the library began: Another support association was founded, a central information and advice center was expanded, and an archive for bibliography for the blind took shape. With the help of Lomnitz's technically talented niece Tony Mahler, a teaching material workshop was set up. The previously voluntary activities of the librarians could now be remunerated. From 1916 onwards, the printing company also reproduced literary as well as scientific works, and from 1918 also using the new plateless printing process in better quality. The free loan reached the entire German-speaking area. Over the years Lomnitz had also developed a systematic braille- based braille typography , for which she published a textbook in 1930.

In the 1920s, however, the DZB under Lomnitz also entered into unfriendly competition with other libraries for the blind, such as the Hamburg Central Library, which was also a leading library and was founded in 1905. Institutions that did not adopt Lomnitz's typography teaching were attacked by her; conversely, it defended the universality of its system and insisted on its intellectual authorship. These disputes also led to the exclusion of DZB publications from the magazine Blindenwelt .

With the global economic crisis , funding collapsed again massively; the DZB was again run on a voluntary basis and also closed for a short time. Lomnitz, which also had Mein Kampf printed in the 1920s , only distanced itself from National Socialist politics after 1934. In 1936 Lomnitz left the DZB.

She died in Leipzig in 1946; her grave in the Leipzig south cemetery has not been preserved.

Honors

• In 1914 Lomnitz received the honorary award of the city of Leipzig. In 1925 she was made an honorary citizen of Leipzig and in 1928 an honorary senator of the university .
• by the Kingdom of Saxony Lomnitz was the Carola medal in silver and Maria-Anna-medal awarded

plant

• Instructions for handwriting transcriptions in braille for the staff of the German Central Library for the Blind in Leipzig (Leipzig 1915)
• Textbook on systematic braille typography and technical information (Leipzig 1930)

literature

• Ute Tartz: Women Personalities in Leipzig , web publication 2011