Заметки библиофила I [Zametki bibliofila I]

First edition, illustrated with several reproductions, including a photograph of Genss's library as frontispiece. One of two hundred numbered copies, signed by Julius Genss on the limitation leaf. Only three copies on WorldCat (UCL, Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Bremen and Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin).

Grey laid paper wrappers, title label mounted to the front cover. Weak stitching, minor soiling to the covers, light corner creasing to the covers and leaves.

A rare copy printed in small numbers of the autobiography of an esteemed Estonian book collector. The provenance of his vast collection, first pillaged by the Nazis, is being actively erased in real time in Belarus.

First installment of the memoirs of the Estonian art historian, collector, and bibliophile of Jewish origin Julius Genss (1887-1957). One of Estonia's most important art collectors, Genss was especially passionate about illustrated books on Estonian, Jewish, and Russian art. In 1939, the Julius Gens library and collection catalog published in Tallinn listed 1,300 works in different languages, but according to various sources, his entire library comprised between 10,000 and 20,000 books.

His Notes of a Bibliophile, published in 1932, a work in which the collector shares his love of books and which also serves as his autobiography, was continued in 1953, when he published a second volume. Between these two publications, Julius Genss endured numerous upheavals that led to the loss of his collection. From 1940, Estonia was successively occupied by the USSR and by Nazi Germany. In 1941, the Genss family fled the persecution of Estonian Jews and took refuge in Uzbekistan, while Julius's collection was stored at the Tallinn Art Museum, which was destroyed three years later in a Soviet bombardment. Julius Genss's collection would then have been destroyed, had it not already been confiscated by the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR), Alfred Rosenberg being a native of Tallinn and aware of Genss's holdings. Awaiting evacuation to Germany, the collection was discovered by the Red Army in February 1945 at a train station in Pless, present-day Poland, and was sent to Belarus, while part of the volumes were given to the Estonian Academy of Sciences. After the end of the Second World War, Julius Genss's fate was no happier; accused of "cosmopolitanism," like many other Jews in the USSR, he was arrested in 1953 despite poor health and died five years later. Before his arrest, Julius Genss had time to complete a monumental fourteen-volume bibliography of Estonian art, which nevertheless remained in typescript.

Julius Genss's descendants have continued to seek the restitution of his precious library, first looted by the Nazis and then taken as war booty by the Soviets, but no progress has been reported since 2023, when the case received media attention. Julia Genss, the bibliophile's granddaughter, recounted that she had received a letter from a former employee of the Minsk library attesting to efforts to conceal the collection's provenance: library management had ordered staff to tear the bookplates from its volumes.

Autobiographical work of a great bibliophile whose name is being erased from history.