Translated and introduced by Nicholas Jacobs

This article is by Joseph Suschitzky who, driven from Vienna in 1939, and helped by his brother Willi, in 1945 founded Libris (London) Ltd, a London-based antiquarian bookshop which gained a reputation among its clients far beyond that city; with its some 60,000 titles it must have been one of the largest private deposits of German books in the whole of Great Britain. The original German was published in two parts as ‘ “Libris (London) Ltd.” Etwas von Antiquariats-Buchhandel in England. Ein persönlicher Bericht aus den Jahren 1966 und 1971’, in Exilforschung: ein internationales Jahrbuch, XXII, Bücher, Verlage, Medien (Munich: Richard Boorberg, 2004), pp. 201–17; and is slightly abbreviated here. It is published by kind permission of Wolfgang Suschitzky; translation © Nicholas Jacobs.

In 1966 Joseph Suschitzky sent his professional colleagues ‘Twenty-one years of Libris (London) Ltd: notes on the book trade in England and personal notes’, and – five years later, on the occasion of the bookshop’s imminent closure in 1971 – a further article entitled ‘Clients, collectors and buying books: the view from 38a Boundary Road, London, NW8’ (both in German). Both had been initially circulated on typewritten hectograph sheets. The second (in slightly shortened form) was originally published (in German) as ‘Clients, collectors and buying books – farewell to 38a Boundary Road’, in Aus dem Antiquariat, supplement to the Frankfurt edition of the Börsenblatt des deutschen Buchhandels, no. 49, 22 June 1971, pp. 248–52. After clearance as a result of Libris’s closure in 1971, Suschitzky sold the books and more or less totally withdrew from the antiquarian book trade. His intention of continuing to deal from home was limited by ill-health, and he died in 1975. ‘He used to advertise “German Books in Seven Rooms”,’ recorded The Times in an obituary (19 December 1975), ‘and the house in Boundary Road, where amongst many rare titles a big cat would greet the customer, will always be remembered amongst book lovers and amateurs of German and Austrian literature.’

For Suschitzky’s biography, see details in the text, and the short paragraph that follows, also Edward Timms, ‘Libris (London) Ltd: a refugee bookshop and its legacy’, in Buch und Provenienzforschung (Vienna, 2009), pp. 188–201. German readers can also turn to Annette Lechner’s article, ‘Die Wiener Verlagsbuchhandlung “Anzengruber-Verlag, Brüder Suschitzky” (1901–1938) im Spiegel der Zeit’, in Archiv für die Geschichte des Buchwesens, no. 44 (1995), pp. 187–273, and Peter Stephan Jungk, ‘Hommage auf Joseph Suschitzky’ in Tatort Buchhandlung: Ein Geschichtsbuch (Vienna, 2007), edited by Evelyn Polz-Heinzl, pp. 143-4.

Joseph Suschitzky was born in Vienna on 25 November 1902, the son of the bookseller and publisher Philipp Suschitzky who, with his wife Olga, was eventually deported from France in 1942; both died in Auschwitz. Having worked in the family bookshop and lending library, the Buchhandlung Brüder Suschitzky in Vienna, which established its own publishing house, the Anzengruber-Verlag, Joseph and his younger brother Willi were arrested after the Anschluss and imprisoned in Dachau and Buchenwald, before moving to London after their release. In spring 1940, they were interned with other German-speaking émigrés in Britain. Willi was taken to Australia, Joseph to the Isle of Man. From 1941 Joseph ran Foyles’ Rare Book Department until he left to found the Libris bookshop in June 1945. Libris closed in 1971, and the business functioned as a mail-order company for a few years until Joseph died on 14 December 1975; Willi, who had joined him in the business in 1946, died in 1978.

1. Twenty-one years of Libris (London) Ltd (1966)

I can hardly believe that twenty-one years have already passed since I bought the name of the firm Libris (London) Ltd and left my lawyer in Fleet Street with two rubber-stamps and myself £25 the poorer. After a year in concentration camps (Dachau and Buchenwald), my brother and I had arrived completely penniless in London just before the outbreak of war, on 20 August 1939. The only book I was able to bring with me was a paperback Langenscheidt English dictionary. The war made the planned continuation of our trip to the USA impossible. We were not allowed to work, so we devoted most of our time to learning English. After the fall of France, in June 1940, the English lost their heads and interned almost all refugees as ‘enemy aliens’. My brother was sent to Australia and I to the Isle of Man. We were freed again when the Government realized its mistake, and were even given work permits. I earned my first wages dressed entirely in white, handing desserts and ice-cream to waitresses in a large London hotel.

One day, passing Foyles in Charing Cross Road, I saw a sign in the window: ‘Sales-Staff and Packers Wanted’. The position – Manager of the Rare Books Department – to which I was appointed, after a five-minute interview with Miss Christina Foyle, had not been advertised. I asked for a very small wage, indeed would gladly have paid myself, for the chance to inhale the smell of books again. I had never dared imagine that I would ever resume my profession, in exile and in a non-German-speaking country. I therefore threw myself into my work and learned fast. I had made no secret of the fact that I had little knowledge of ‘Rare Books’ in English. I ran the department as if it had been my own business. It was not difficult to sell books during the war; turnover increased by the week. It often happened that my commission (three pence per pound) totalled more than my wages. Despite many attractive offers I stayed in the job until the end of the war, above all because I liked and got on well with Mr William Foyle, who was always approachable. When I gave in my notice in 1945, I was asked to stay and offered a much higher salary. However, I explained that it wasn’t a question of money but of my future. I wanted to be independent, and this was respected. I was given a golden handshake and a glowing reference. What pleased me even more was that, long after I had ceased working for the firm, William Foyle entrusted me until he died with buying for him at auctions for his private library.

With £80 savings in my pocket I now went in search of an honest lawyer with whom I could discuss founding my own company. We were just considering what it should be called, when he suddenly remembered that a Czech had founded a firm through him in 1944 to enable his novelist wife to obtain a paper quota. The limited company was called Libris (London) Ltd and had never left his desk drawer. I rather like the name, so I bought it; with it came two rubber stamps which we still use today and, later, a framed deed of foundation. However complicated it may be to found a limited company on the Continent, in England it was as simple as that.

I soon found a large room in a block of flats at 50 Harben Road, NW6, and got down to buying. Gradually the shelves filled. I had hardly been independent for a few weeks when a collector asked me if I could sell his English-language modern private press editions for him. I agreed with pleasure and he entrusted me with his whole collection – books with a total purchase value of £6000. I made a fine catalogue, which included not only complete sets from the Kelmscott, Doves, Eragny and Golden Cockerel presses, but in addition many vellum editions; large-format books from the wonderful Ashendene Press were also included. We eventually sold everything, and after numerous requests were even able to supply two Kelmscott Chaucers and three Doves Press Bibles.

Then came something totally unexpected. I learned that German prisoner-of-war camps were being transferred from America to England, and that prisoners were allowed to buy books with part of their allowance. That was naturally extremely fortunate. Our stock soon shrunk. Sales were made by catalogue only. As everything was done by correspondence, we never actually set eyes on a prisoner-of-war. We also imported new German books, which a shrewd importer had acquired from a source in Prague. We had no idea of the size of the prisoner-of-war camps and once received an order with astronomical figures that cost me a night’s sleep – 560 Langenscheidt dictionaries, 380 Dudens, followed by two sheets full of such numbers! Of course we knew that this could not last; it was a matter of making hay while the sun shone.

Despite our taking a second room in Harben Road, the problem of space grew ever more acute. After much searching, we found a bombed-out house with shop attached in Boundary Road, NW8, which cost a great deal to renovate. We were just 4 putting the books on the shelves when an old lady put her head round the door and said: ‘What? You want to set up a bookshop here? I’m afraid you won’t do any business. People in these parts don’t buy books!’ It was true. Had we had to rely on the neighbourhood we would have shut up shop. But I hadn’t taken the house merely because it had a shop. Boundary Road is an old street that forms a border between St John’s Wood and Hampstead. When we moved there in 1951 it was still very quiet, with only a few shops, where everyone knew each other and – important for us – with a little post office. Even today this part of London has fortunately not completely lost its village character; even though the traffic has considerably increased, one can still park.

Now at last, with our seven rooms, we had enough space, and the purchase of many private libraries soon filled the ubiquitous bookshelves. The building was near a school and our first ‘customers’ were children looking for stamps. As we would otherwise have been constantly interrupted, we reserved Saturday mornings for this activity. In the course of time we were able to buy up interesting libraries and literary remains. To name only a few customers: Lazarus Goldschmidt, Sir Alexander Korda, Professor Max Alsberg, Benno Elkan, Dr Alice Salomon, Friedrich and Elisabeth Gundolf, Mechtilde Lichnowsky, Dr Schönfeld (Vienna), etc. For a bibliophile, the best library must have been that of the Berlin industrialist Leo Lewin, whose house had entertained the painters Lovis Corinth, Max Slevogt and Max Liebermann. Robert Wendriner’s collection was also something very special; in any case he was the most generous seller I have ever encountered. It didn’t take him long to begin collecting again and he has now built up his third library in Munich. The remains of the Gundolf Library had been laid out on the floor of an Oxford warehouse. We tried to sort the books out, lying flat on the floor ourselves in ill-lit conditions. Most of them ended up being pulped because no one in Oxford was willing to transport them. In August 1965 we were able to sell the whole of Dr Ernst Weil’s important reference library to a Canadian university.

What did I not experience during my time at Foyles and during my various buying trips! If such things were read about in novels they simply would not be believed. For example, a woman came one day to our department in Foyles, wanting to buy a specific book. Unfortunately she had forgotten the title and the name of the author; the only thing she knew about it was that it had a yellow binding. On another occasion, a very well-dressed country lady appeared – all elegant ladies appeared to live ‘in the country’ during the war – and asked us to obtain some 250 books for her. Their size and content didn’t matter, but they must have red spines, ‘to match the curtains’. Such an order is naturally a feast for a bookseller. We satisfied her wishes by picking out all the red-bound books, including incomplete runs, in the shop. As thanks she brought me a dozen eggs on her next visit, a particularly welcome present in the middle of the war. English customers are very grateful if they notice you put yourself out for them; in this respect they are not spoilt. This must be to do with the structure of English bookselling; anyone can open a bookshop, with no qualifications required. There are no such things as courses in bookselling. The main difference between English and Continental booksellers is that the latter bring a professional training to their position and the former pick it up on the job. Naturally, one should not generalize from this; particularly in university towns, there are excellently run bookshops.

I once drove into the provinces to look at a library that had been offered me. As is often the case, the owner didn’t want to part with some individual de luxe editions for sentimental reasons. So I was surprised when she pointed to a Brandus Koran with a particularly fine binding, and said: ‘You can have that. Do you know why?’ I said that I didn’t, whereupon she took it from the shelf and out of its slipcase and held it under my nose. I bought it none the less. On my way home I thought about a cataloguing problem: would it be fair to keep silent about this book’s pungent, goaty smell. Or were there perhaps enthusiasts for such an aroma? However, it never reached the catalogue; we sold it next day to a customer who possibly had a cold. I wasn’t sorry that that beautiful morocco binding found somewhere else to stink.

One day a friend – an English bookseller – phoned me to say he had bought some books from Hitler’s library. Was I interested? He was asking ridiculously little and I kept two of them. One had a page-long dedication from an Obersturmbannführer; both had Hitler bookplates. I must confess that this purchase gave me great satisfaction. If I only think of all the books that have passed through my hands in the course of many years . . . For instance, the Swedish-owned ‘monster’ which, after repeated requests to an Oxford bookshop, was literally dug out from under a huge, barely accessible table. It weighed so much that I could only lift it up with the greatest difficulty, and – when I opened its box – it turned out to be Melchior Lechter’s Indische Reise, one of three copies printed on parchment paper and with an unusual metal binding. I purchased this massive object without trade discount, and, when I brought it into our shop, my colleagues thought it would be a white elephant, difficult to dispose of. However, we only had it for a week – and I wish I’d still got it today. Indische Reise was by no means the heaviest book I’ve ever handled. We had to cart away the first of four copies of the Nibelungenlied, printed on 6 pergamen paper, with illustrations by J. Sattler, from the Goldschmidt Library. The almost man-size Wartburg book from the same source also caused us transportation difficulties.

I personally never had ambitions to have any other career but that of a bookseller, for which I seemed to be predestined. I was already accepted as an apprentice in the Brüder Suschitzky Bookshop when still a schoolboy. My father and uncle had founded the company in Vienna in 1901, and added the Anzengruber- Verlag a little later. I was an assistant there as a student and since 1934 had been its manager. It was the only bookshop in a large working-class district. After my arrest in 1938, this debt-free business with a huge deposit of books was ‘liquidated’ by the Nazis, without the family’s receiving a single groschen of compensation to this day.

When I had to leave Austria, I never thought I would ever be able to work as a bookseller again. I thank fate that this was not the case. What can be better for a working man than that his hobby and his work are one? My parents became victims of the Nazis in France. I’ve often thought of them in the years that have passed. They would never have dreamed that their son would one day sell books in London in his own shop. I have always managed things so that, had my father been alive, he would never have been ashamed of me.

I could never have built up and run the company without the active help of my colleagues, to whom I wish here to express my sincerest thanks. My brother Willi, who was interned in Australia, came into the firm in 1946, following an involuntary voyage round the world. He took over warehousing, dispatch and distribution. He is particularly busy on Mondays and Thursdays when he draws up a list of wanted titles for the German Börsenblatt – our only loss-making activity. Apart from that, he provides our customers with tea or coffee, according to the time of day. He inhabits the second floor of the building, so ‘hasn’t far to travel’. Frau Kamilla Weidmann has kept our accounts ever since Harben Road days; she also catalogues, draws up lists and does a bit of everything. Frau Hanna Cahn, my secretary, cannot remember how long she has herself worked with us. She generally works alongside me as I’m unfortunately not very systematic, and our work is often interrupted; so she often has to call me to order. My friends say that it says something for me that my employees stick it out with me so long. Added to Frau Cahn’s many qualities is the fact that she is an excellent driver, to whom I often and willingly entrust myself. When I recall that both these women had homes and families to care for, I often asked myself how they did it.

For some months we also had a ‘trained’ bookseller with us – Herr Günter Fuchs. He was a passionate cataloguer, very powerfully built, and threw away thousands of books (something I unfortunately found very difficult to do). We had him to thank for the fact that we now had more space and that there were no longer piles of books on the floor and stairs. For almost a year we have had the help of a young Viennese – Fräulein Lieselotte Sperl, conscientious, extremely helpful and a very fast learner. (If she carries on like this I shall have to revise my ideas about Viennese women.) Two more employees are unfortunately no longer alive, Fräulein Susanne Friedburg and Frau Ida Armstrong. Both put their knowledge and energy at the disposal of Libris Ltd for many years.

What did we achieve during twenty-one years of hard work? Judging by the many welcome letters, we seem to have a great many customers throughout the world. Through personal contact, many customers in London have become our friends. Our stock of German books is the largest in the whole of England; it embraces all subjects and is almost exclusively built up from purchases within the country. When colleagues visit us from abroad they are astounded by what we can offer. Our balance sheet is good – we have no debts, only creditors. Our name has become known abroad thanks to repeated advertisements in the German trade press. There can hardly be a European bookseller who has not received a response from us to their annual list of ‘Books Sought’. We export German books bought in England throughout the world, mainly to Germany, Switzerland, the USA and Japan. Our prices are intentionally low. From our varied lists – which are relatively cheap to draw up (though they contain much work) – we sell an average of 80 per cent, which in this business is unusually high. For some books we get up to twenty orders – impossible to satisfy all customers . . . Our printed catalogue, Ein kleiner Querschnitt durch ein großes Lager (‘A small selection from a large collection’), is more or less sold out. Apart from orders by letter, we counted forty-two telegrams and twenty-five telephone calls from the Continent. Our printing costs alone amounted to £290. If you consider that we could easily have sold all the books without a catalogue, such high expenditure can only be justified by regarding a large part of it as an advertising budget.

What are the future prospects? I am often asked if our sources of German books in England will not soon dry up. The answer is no. It should not be forgotten that thousands of German refugees who came to England since 1933 were able to bring their sometimes valuable libraries with them. Many of these private collections will sooner or later come on to the market. Of course it has become much more difficult for us to find really good books in recent years. But in my opinion that is not because there are no longer valuable books here, but because their owners are doing well economically and do not have to sell them. In general, financial reasons for selling books are receding all the time. How do I want to go on? I would like to enjoy continuing harmonious relations with my staff, the possibility of buying good libraries, and the ability to satisfy our customers. The only occasional rather angry letters we get are from disappointed customers who fail to receive what they order. To this one can only say that it is in the nature of the antiquarian book trade that only one example generally exists of a rare book, and replacements can seldom be found.

We really do try and handle orders fairly. To give just one example: from our last catalogue we received an order from a very good customer for sixteen books, to the value of 4800 German marks. We sent him five titles for 1700 marks and shared the rest of the books among four other customers who would otherwise have gone away empty-handed. That was actually quite unbusinesslike and would never have happened in any other profession. Of course, if we had put our prices up we would have got fewer orders, but even that would not necessarily have been the case, as one can see from a story an English colleague told me recently. He had priced an old book in his catalogue at £4 and it wasn’t ordered. In a new catalogue a year later he listed the same book by mistake at £40 and immediately received two orders for it. In a big London store each shop window has the following slogan: ‘Never knowingly undersold’. That is our slogan too and we will always try to offer good and rare books at reasonable prices.

It’s a strange profession, bookselling. A few weeks ago we offered a London colleague a volume on linguistics for £30 – a book he had actually ordered. Two days later we received a letter (which I kept), in which he wrote that the price was so ‘reasonable’ that he had written a cheque out for £35. Last week I asked a colleague in a big bookshop the price of a Grosser Brockhaus dictionary in the window. When I heard the price, he concluded from the tone of my ‘No!’ that he had asked too little. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘ you can give me £2 more for it if you want’, which I willingly did. Do such things happen in other professions?

A few weeks ago a woman I didn’t know rang me to ask my advice about a publishing matter. When she came she brought with her an old lady who she introduced to me as Frau Simon. ‘I didn’t know of the existence of your firm till yesterday,’ she said. ‘When I see what you’ve done with it I am really proud of your business. You don’t realize that I am actually responsible for Libris’s existence. It was my late husband who founded it for me in 1944!’ So it took Frau Simon nearly twenty-one years to find us and to complete the circle.

2. Farewell to 38a Boundary Road (1971)

38a Boundary Road is soon going to be destroyed to make room for new flats. When I wrote the short sketch, ‘Twenty-one years of Libris (London) Ltd’ five years ago and sent it to a few friends and clients, I was surprised that people found it so interesting. We received an amazing number of letters. People mostly regretted not being able to imagine exactly how we ran the business, because I had not described it. People also wanted to know who our clients were and what they bought. Now, as we have sold most of our stock to a Canadian university (250 sacks – over ten tons in weight), perhaps the time has come to make up for what was missing.

38a is an old building with a cellar. It has a front office with large windows. Behind the windows are to be found our lemon trees, growing out of two pots. They flourish in the window and fill its upper part with leaves. At times, when the sun shines on the leaves and a draught blows through the shop, they give off a lovely scent. We are often asked for cuttings – they do well anywhere without much attention. My desk and that of Frau Cahn, my secretary, are in the front part of the shop. For years we have advertised as ‘German books in seven rooms’. That was an understatement because we didn’t count the passages and stairways. Just how many books a twelve-by-four-metre corridor can contain we only learnt when we moved out and packed up. Over the years bookcases or bookshelves were put up or installed wherever space allowed, and were immediately full to bursting. High on the wall in the front office hung three framed Piranesi engravings. I cannot count how many times I’ve been asked the price of these. I would have put a large ‘Not for Sale’ sign beside them a long time ago if it wouldn’t have looked so unsightly. They are just as little for sale as is our ‘Saint’, who looks down at us from above from a niche that seems specially made for him.

How did this saint stray into our possession? About fifteen years ago, I bought a small library from a widowed Englishwoman who had been married to a Hungarian. When we wanted to put the books in the car, she told me she had a statue of a saint that we should take with us – she asked nothing for it. Whereupon she produced a metre-high baroque figure which (to my great joy) held a book in its right hand. I told her that it was certainly valuable and that I couldn’t accept it as a present. ‘So 10 give me a token payment of ten shillings,’ she replied. Two months ago a German dealer offered us six times as much, but I wouldn’t sell it for a thousand pounds.

Who are our customers? We have almost no passing trade, as the street is too quiet and isolated. You have to look us out. Mainly students, university teachers, doctors, librarians, collectors, authors, and many gentlemen from the German and Austrian embassies come into the shop. Our best customers are booksellers from all countries; they mostly buy in bulk and cheap. In many cases we load purchases directly into our customers’ cars, and recently into a rented lorry, brought over specially; the savings on packaging and post were considerable.

An habitual guest in our shop was Scholem Asch – he lived only a few minutes away. When he began to tell stories, work came to a halt and we all listened spellbound. He was a great book-lover and I remember once when tears began to roll down his cheeks because he thought he couldn’t afford a book I had shown him – this, despite the fact that he was well off, if not even wealthy. But he worried about spending money, as do many old people, and I had an agreement whereby he could borrow secondhand books and take them home, which greatly pleased him. His library, built up with great knowledge, contained great rarities.

Karl Otten, the poet who lost his sight in the war, often came to us with his wife. He was a great connoisseur and collector of Expressionist literature, and we were able over the course of time to give him substantial help in building his collection. He was as happy as a child if we had something he did not have. I once told him over the telephone that I had bought a lioness carved by August Gaul. He came over immediately and I can see him distinctly before me, stroking the bronze figure. I was happy that he bought it and was able to take it with him when he moved to Ascona. One of our oldest customers was Dr Alfred Wiener. We were able to find many rare items precisely in his areas of special interest – Judaica and National Socialism (pro and contra). We still supply books to the Wiener Library and to the Institute of Contemporary History headed by Professor Walter Laqueur.

Ever since we began we have provided the tireless Wilhelm Sternfeld with material. He did pioneering work on establishing a bibliography of émigré literature. It is incredible how many small and tiny publications have been produced in emigration, and how difficult it often is to establish their authorship, and where and when they were published. Herr Sternfeld went about these problems like a detective, solving many of them through systematic and patient research and investigation. Dr Richard Friedenthal is a popular customer. We learn much from him, not only about literature but about bibliophilia. He has an incredible memory and tells comic stories with a completely straight face. It is said of him that he is someone who knows what goes on ‘under the bottom line’ (in the footnotes).

Martin Esslin has been a regular visitor for many years – we are not far from where he lives. He is now considered one of the best Brecht scholars and has built up an important collection. I am proud of the fact that some of his finest volumes come from us. Esslin speaks seven languages and, with his brilliant memory, always knows what he wants. (We always say of him that he speaks like a book.) He is one of the few refugees who has had a significant career in the artistic sphere: he has for a long time been Head of Radio Drama at the BBC and is everywhere in demand as a lecturer (which is not the right word for him as he mostly speaks without a script). That a non-Englishman, born on the Continent, can occupy such a position at the BBC is hardly imaginable, but speaks very well for the BBC management. When Dr Elias Canetti visits us, I am always sure that he will dig out something unusual. We pay great attention when he quietly explains why a particular book is important to him and is being added to his library. One of our regular customers is Professor Jacob P. Mayer, editor of the great French edition of de Tocqueville, Companion of the Légion d’honneur, husband of our former colleague Lola Mayer. He says that he finds more in our shop than anywhere else.

One afternoon, a strikingly handsome and fashionably dressed young woman came into the shop and asked if we stocked modern German literature. I told her that this wasn’t exactly our strong point but that I could show her a few things. The first book I offered her was Gisela Elsner’s Riesenzwerge, which had just won the Prix Formentor. ‘No,’ she said, ‘I specifically don’t want that book – I wrote it myself.’ Ever since then she and her husband often come to us to browse.

An English client, a university lecturer, was working on a book about German literature and the poetry of the First World War. He was particularly keen on finding unpublished work. But where could we find such a thing? At that time I bought a small library and was delighted to find it included the detailed war diary of its deceased female owner, who had worked as a nurse in a hospital in the First World War and had made conscientious daily entries. Our client was naturally very pleased to have an original manuscript. A few weeks later a friend came into the shop and told me that he had seen many German books in a junk-shop, and wouldn’t I like to have a look at them? My secretary drove me there. We found a shop where one would hardly expect to find any books at all; I doubt if the owner knew how to read or write. But there stood some bookcases containing a more-than-usually substantial German library of a very learned nature: literature, philosophy, Judaica, history, and politics all represented. I chose some 250 volumes for which the shop-owner asked very little and which we took with us immediately. When I looked through them on my return I discovered a thick volume that I must have chosen only because of its fine binding. It turned out to be the war diary of the owner of the library who had spent the world war as a male nurse in a hospital. His was, so to speak, the male counterpart to the earlier manuscript, but much more interesting because it also contained the diarist’s many poems. Just think: within a short time I found two First World War diaries that a client really needed. In my long experience I had never even found one. Was it pure chance? Or, was it, as Wilhelm von Scholz called it, ‘mutual magnetism’?

We had a great understanding and much patience for collectors. You need to have because a real collector talks only about his speciality. One of the most devoted was my Berlin-born friend Dr F.E. Loewenstein who had in Germany been a Heinrich Heine collector. From the day he arrived as a refugee in England, Loewenstein became a G.B. Shaw collector, so that – as he put it – collector continuity could be preserved. He read and bought everything he could find on G.B.S. In this way he acquired an enormous knowledge of his favourite writer. After he had thus prepared himself and felt confident enough, he approached G.B.S, who appeared to be very pleased. Thus it came about that a native of Berlin became Shaw’s ‘bibliographer’ and was able to live and work in the same house as his idol. G.B.S. carried on a huge correspondence, answering letters that poured in from all over the world. He had his own specially printed cards for all possible eventualities and queries, one of which – for biographical enquiries – read: ‘You had better ask Dr F. Loewenstein who knows more about my life than I can remember.’

Another passionate collector, to whom we have sold for years, is Dr R. Klein. He is a Hans Christian Andersen expert and his London collection is internationally famous. What he has amassed over the years is astounding. He does not just collect books of and about Andersen in all languages, but everything to do with him – glasswork, china, medals, matchboxes, napkins, Christmas cards, theatre programmes, sweet-wrappings, etc. Just as droll is one of our most interesting customers, an English doctor who, all his life, has collected everything he can about chimney sweeps. But to describe all our customers in detail would be going too far, and might also lead to complications.

Generally business runs smoothly, although many years ago I had to resort to taking a case to law. In summer 1949 I bought the Austrian collector Dr Sch––– ’s library from his widow. The only books we could not agree on were the forty-five-volume (plus four supplementary volumes) Propyläen edition of Goethe, bound in black morocco. This chronological edition is in itself difficult to sell, and Frau Sch––– was anyway asking too high a price. Her request to sell it on commission I could hardly turn down, but I refused to take all forty-nine volumes for lack of space, and took only the first and last volumes as samples. Despite my efforts I could for a long time find no one interested in it. Eventually a London collector turned up who wanted to buy it from me (I had added only a 10 per cent commission to the price agreed). I went happily to the telephone to inform Frau Sch–––. Her reaction, however, took me by surprise: ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘now that the pound’s been devalued, I’m not giving you the Goethe – please return the two volumes!’ But I didn’t. After a few days a letter arrived from her solicitor demanding their return. I replied that I had sold the edition and would like to have the remaining 47 volumes. For months nothing happened; my client, to whom I had explained the situation, understood it fully and waited. The following spring a Dr T––– invited me to his house as he wanted to sell his library to me. When I got there I saw the Propyläen Goethe in his bookcase – forty-five volumes in half-cloth. I told him – without mentioning names – what had happened to me with the whole-morocco edition. ‘Was that in London?’ asked Dr T–––. ‘No,’ I said, ‘in C., twenty miles away.’ A few days later I received a letter from Frau Sch–––. ‘You have my cousin, Dr T–––, to thank that you can now pick up the rest of your Goethe edition.’ In this way did I and my customer acquire the complete Propyläen Goethe. I had no idea of the family connection and assume that Dr T––– simply read his cousin the riot act.

Saturday mornings at 38a are generally very pleasant. Regular customers gather and are served tea or coffee. New acquisitions are inspected and there is lively discussion. The nucleus of these Saturday-morning gatherings is our clients and friends – Dr F. Hayek (a polymath historian whose memory I envy and whose information is always absolutely reliable), H. Raumann (despite his youth, an Austrian of the old school in the best sense of the word), Ernst Pories (a great booklover and Karl Kraus connoisseur), Martin Esslin (whose praises I have already sung) and, recently, Dr Wolfgang Fischer, the young and gifted author of Wohnungen. Now we have to submit to the complaints of these gentlemen, who no longer know where to go on Saturday mornings. Indeed, ever since it was known that we have to leave no. 38a, we have received an endless succession of visits of condolence.

The decision not to carry on Libris Ltd really was not an easy one. I shall be (if I survive) 70 next year. Although I am still healthy and robust, I don’t want to work so hard or burden myself with problems and responsibilities. It is generally said that Libris Ltd is an ‘institution’ (and when you hear it so often, you actually begin to believe it to be true), and that the only German antiquarian bookshop in England should not disappear. I was really moved when I was asked if we needed financial help. No, that would not have helped. What we looked for and could never find, despite taking much trouble, was a business space at an affordable rent. Shops that sell books cheap (and other such businesses) can only exist as long as rents remain stable. In recent times, rents and all other costs have risen so much that running a viable business at a reasonable profit has become almost impossible. However, this is not just in England. I read an article in a German paper that forecast the closure of 25 per cent of German bookshops.

The twenty-six years of Libris (London) Ltd have passed incredibly quickly for myself and my colleagues. We can say with a good conscience that throughout those years we were at pains to satisfy the needs of our customers and to provide a ‘good service’. I sometimes ask myself if there is a profession other than the book trade with such an extreme imbalance between the necessary work, time, trouble and research expended, and the service provided. By this I am not just referring to the many daily telephone calls, through which we serve as an information centre. When an English customer thanks you for getting him a book and says, ‘You do not just sell me a book, you give me a service’, he hits the nail on the head.

We are predicted to stay in Boundary Road until the middle of July. I was recently able to sell two good libraries that were fully displayed in the shop. I don’t intend to give up completely but to continue running the firm on a reduced basis and with scarcer books. More information about this will be given to clients and friends who are interested at an appropriate time.

[ Joseph Suschitzky, ‘ “German books in seven rooms”: memoirs of Libris (London) Ltd, 1945–71’ [2004], The Book Collector, 2016 ]