Walter Schatzki

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Walter Schatzki , actually Walther Schatzki (born August 26, 1899 in Klafeld near Siegen , † January 27, 1983 in New York City ) was a German-American bookseller and antiquarian.

Life

Schatzki came from a Jewish family. He was one of five sons of the graduate engineer Ferdinand Schatzki (1857–1910), who worked as chief engineer at Siegener Verzinkerei AG in Klafeld-Geisweid, and his wife Beate geb. Star from Schmallenberg . His brothers were the textile manufacturer Herbert Schatzki, the aircraft designer Erich Schatzki , the radiologist Richard Schatzki (1901–1992) and the doctor Paul Schatzki. All brothers survived the Holocaust by emigrating .

Frankfurt

After a commercial apprenticeship and military service in the First World War , Schatzki began selling children's and young people's literature as a traveling salesman . With the help of an aunt's inheritance, he opened his own bookstore in Frankfurt am Main in 1920, the Jugendbücherstube at Theaterplatz 12. At the same time, he began building up a comprehensive collection of old children's books, from which he sold 692 titles to the New York Public Library in 1931 . He was one of the first to recognize the antiquarian value of children's books and to deal with it. The edition of Heinrich Hoffmann's Struwwelpeter (IB 66/2) in 1933 in the Insel-Bücherei was based on his collector's copy .

Increasingly exposed to the National Socialist persecution of the Jews , he emigrated to the USA via London in 1937 after the early death of his first wife Hilde in 1936.

His brother-in-law Richard Schumann and Heinrich Cobet continued the business under the name Frankfurter Bücherstube Schumann & Cobet . From 1988 to 1995, when it was closed, it belonged to Suhrkamp Verlag .

new York

In December, Schatzki opened a new shop in New York, initially in shared rooms with Hellmuth Wallach. In 1941 he published his first catalog, Old and Rare Children's Books , which many used as a bibliographical reference work and which was reprinted in 1974.

Books for children and young people remained his specialty; In addition, Schatzki also dealt with drawings and music, especially autographs . Walter Hinrichsen sold autographs from the Peters Music Library through him , which he had taken from Leipzig in 1945, to the American collector Mary Flagler Cary; with their collection they came to the Morgan Library in 1968 . These included Franz Schubert's swan song ; Chopin's Mazurka op. 59, no. 3 and Polonaises, op. 26; as well as parts of Gluck's Iphigenie auf Tauris and Georg Friedrich Händel's cantata Qual ti riveggio, oh Dio (HWV 150). The Octet by Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy , which was also offered to Cary , was bought by the Library of Congress .

Schatzki was one of the founders in 1949 and president of the American Antiquarian Booksellers Association (AABA) from 1962 to 1964 .

Works

  • Children's Books Old and Rare. Catalog Number One. New York 1941
New edition: Children's Books old and rare. Catalog number one (1941). Foreword by Leslie Shepard. Detroit: Gale Research Company 1974.

literature

  • Theodor Brüggemann: Walter Benjamin and other children's book collectors. Karl Hobrecker, Arthur Rümann and Walter Schatzki. In: Klaus Doderer (Ed.): Walter Benjamin and children's literature. Weinheim / Munich: Juvanta 1988 ISBN 3-7799-0443-8 , pp. 68-92; also in: Theodor Brüggemann: Not a penny for an Orbis pictus: selected studies on children's and youth literature from the 16th to the 20th century. Ed. And incorporated. by Reinhard Stach, Osnabrück: Wenner 2001 ISBN 3-87898-373-5 , pp. 18-38
  • Schatzki, Walter , in: Wolfgang Klötzer (Hrsg.): Frankfurter Biographie . Personal history lexicon . Second volume. M – Z (=  publications of the Frankfurt Historical Commission . Volume XIX , no. 2 ). Waldemar Kramer, Frankfurt am Main 1996, ISBN 3-7829-0459-1 . , P. 263
  • Bernard M. Rosenthal: The gentle invasion. Continental emigré booksellers of the thirties and forties and their impact on the antiquarian book trade in the United States. Full text

Web links

supporting documents

  1. ↑ Memories of the Geisweider Jews ( Memento of the original from September 14, 2012 in the web archive archive.today ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed April 21, 2012 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.ns-gedenkstaetten.de
personal data
SURNAME Schatzki, Walter
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Schatzki, Walther (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-American bookseller and antiquarian
DATE OF BIRTH August 26, 1899
PLACE OF BIRTH Klafeld near Siegen
DATE OF DEATH January 27, 1983
Place of death New York City