Books

Red Baron loves books. Unfortunately, I have too little time (left) to read all that I once bought, still buy, and want to read. My love for books started with fairy tales. By the way, my blog about My Fairy Tales is the second most read of all my blogs so far.

The other day I read an article in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) about an early Frankfurt book fair. I knew that before the war, Leipzig and not Frankfurt was Germany's place for books, but with the German division, West Germany revived the Frankfurt Book Fair. Now my country has the luxury of two book fairs when paper books are increasingly replaced by electronic media.

Philipp Erasmus Reich (©Wikipedia)

How did it happen that in the 18th century, Leipzig took over from Frankfurt, becoming the home of Germany's book fair? 

The man behind the change was Philipp Erasmus Reich, the prince of Germany's booksellers. 250 years ago, on April 20, 1764, he packed all his books in Frankfurt and wrote a letter to the elector of Saxony, "Following the last Frankfurt fair, I and other colleagues bid farewell to the city and so to speak buried the book fair thereat."

In fact, Reich buried an agonizing fair for, in April 1764, only 34 publishers were present in Frankfurt, whereas, in May of the same year, 179 booksellers attended the Leipzig book fair. One reason for the change was that at the start of the 18th century, modern German science and literature had moved to and was at home in the area between Hamburg, Berlin, Breslau, Jena, Halle, and Göttingen. 

Another reason was the fight of publishers against pirate editions. In South-West Germany, Switzerland, and Austria, printers had begun systematically to reprint books from Saxony, Prussia, Hannover, and Hamburg. An existing imperial system of protection did not work anymore. Even the emperor in Vienna encouraged pirating books, so the imperial book inspector in Frankfurt was useless.

Some of Red Baron's books arranged on IKEA's Billy shelf units

With the lack of space, Red Baron started to buy e-books when available. Like many people, I miss the touch and feel of a paper book, but there are other advantages to reading e-books on an iPad: the possibilities of marking and noting text are remarkable.

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