{"id":24201,"date":"2021-08-24T19:12:37","date_gmt":"2021-08-24T19:12:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/scarc\/?p=24201"},"modified":"2021-08-24T19:12:41","modified_gmt":"2021-08-24T19:12:41","slug":"hints-of-gold-in-the-backlog-part-3-of-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/scarc\/2021\/08\/24\/hints-of-gold-in-the-backlog-part-3-of-4\/","title":{"rendered":"Hints of Gold in the Backlog: Part 3 of 4"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This is Part 3 of a research exploration by Cataloger Vance Woods and History of Science and Rare Books Librarian Anne Bahde. Part 1<\/a>; Part 2<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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We were heartened by Professor Bruce Moran\u2019s response to our inquiries, though they had introduced new questions. We sent scans of the rest of the pamphlet to Moran, and told him of our discovery of the title in this index<\/a>, to see if he could shed any further light. He replied:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI can affirm that this is a preface to a work that is focused on the Disputatio de auro potabili <\/em>of Thomas Erastus.\u00a0 Libavius admits that the man (Erastus) is dead [Erastus died in 1583], but that what he wrote is still alive; and he points out that Erastus, in his book, has brought together nearly all the arguments that “we recollect he wrote and said against our opinions\/ views.”\u00a0 So, this is very much a counter-thrust, but without seeing the text itself there is no way of knowing what kinds of arguments Libavius has in mind.\u00a0 The main thing is, you have here only the preface to the work itself.\u00a0 I looked at the library in Jena to see what it has. \u00a0 That copy also has only the preface.\u00a0 So, it too is not complete and has no text beyond what you have.\u00a0 The interesting thing is that the preface refers to the Disputatio<\/em> as having been edited fourteen years before.\u00a0 We know that the book appeared in 1578, so that would make the composition of the Libavius text, if not its publication, 1592.\u00a0 I have no idea where the date 1596 in the index<\/em> comes from.\u00a0 The Jena copy has no date.\u00a0 Perhaps the text went to print later.\u00a0 But since both you and Jena have copies that have no date and only include the preface (and nothing else), perhaps the text was never published (for one reason or another) and all that remains are a few copies of the preface itself.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Professor Moran\u2019s interpretation provided some fascinating answers, but yet again we had more questions than we began with. We knew now that the item was likely meant to be used in an educational context, and was intended to be presented in direct juxtaposition to Erastus\u2019 work on Paracelsus and the ingestion of gold. But we also knew that what we held was only a fragment of what was intended to be part of a larger product; because it had been potentially separated from its original context, we could not fully appreciate how it was intended to be used and understood. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We puzzled further over the item’s provenance and began tracing its potential movements from the date of its publication through various owners, and ultimately to SCARC\u2019s backlog. A review of acquisition records confirmed that we lacked clear documentation about how or when it was acquired by OSU.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We began this research from the ownership mark we did have, the bookplate from pharmacologist Emil Starkenstein. Starkenstein was one of the most important figures in European pharmacology<\/a> in the 20th century. He published prolifically on a wide range of topics in the field and held respected teaching positions. He had a passion for book collecting early in his career, and he built an unrivaled pharmacological collection<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We quickly found other evidence of other treasures he collected. The Morgan Library holds a 14th century manuscript herbal<\/a> from his library, and a census of the rare Fabrica <\/em>of Vesalius<\/a> indicates a copy with his bookplate.  The bookplate in his rare Libavius piece was one of at least four lovely plates<\/a> Starkenstein used to mark his books. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But this brilliant life was among the six million murdered by Nazis in the Holocaust. According to an oral history<\/a> from rare book dealer Ludwig Gottschalk cited in Starkenstein\u2019s Wikipedia entry<\/a>, Starkenstein\u2019s family agreed to sell the collection to him before Starkenstein was sent to Mauthausen in 1942. But \u201cwhen Gottschalk faced deportation to the camps himself, he secreted the library in several locations in the Black Forest and went into hiding. After the war, he reassembled the Starkenstein books and for nearly half a century sold items from the collection under the name Biblion, Inc., in Forest Hills, New York.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our pamphlet likely laid hidden in the forest with the rest of Starkenstein\u2019s collection during the war. This heartbreaking report urged us to consider the awful decisions Starkenstein, his family, and Gottschalk had faced as they were persecuted for their faith. Making the decision to part with a lovingly acquired, splendid collection must have been achingly sad; perhaps that sadness was only outweighed by the immense fear Starkenstein must have felt for himself and his family.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gottschalk selected those hiding spots for the precious books hoping to live through the war and come back for them. As keys to his potential economic survival after the war, he must have hoped desperately that they would still be there. What had seemed at first an unassuming pamphlet now stood to us as a potent symbol of the profound losses of the Holocaust.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As far we as could tell from other compiled provenance data for our collections, we held no other books with Starkenstein\u2019s bookplate. As we reviewed internal historical acquisitions files, Anne found a typed dealer description for our item. Though no dealer was listed on the page, the format and style matched many other items in our collection with dealer descriptions from the well-known Los Angeles book dealer Zeitlin & Ver Brugge. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is unknown how the pamphlet moved from Gottschalk\u2019s Biblion to Zeitlin & Ver Brugge, but we began to look closer at how it may have moved from Zeitlin & Ver Brugge to OSU.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The unmarked, typed dealer description that matches the style of others from Zeitlin & ver Brugge<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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A typical typed dealer description from Zeitlin & ver Brugge<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Catalog for the sale of Jake Zeitlin’s stock at Swann Galleries, 1988<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Shelf lots at the end of the Swann Galleries Part 1 Sale<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Upon Jake Zeitlin\u2019s death, his stock went to Swann Galleries<\/a> to be sold. This sale took place in two parts in 1988. We were able to consult a copy of the catalog for Part 1, and asked a library holding the catalog for Part 2 (University of Washington Special Collections) to consult their copy, which they graciously did despite having very limited access to collections during COVID. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Libavius title is not listed in the catalogs to either Part 1 or Part 2 of this sale, but could have appeared in one of the \u201c10 uncataloged shelf lots\u201d listed at the end of Part 1, which consisted \u201cprimarily of works in chemistry, physics, and medicine.\u201d OSU\u2019s Special Collections department was founded in 1986, and librarians at the time were building history of science book collections through bulk purchase.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

While we don\u2019t have direct evidence of an OSU purchase, we do have indirect evidence that an OSU special collections librarian was at the Part 1 sale in April 1988, in the form of an unrelated piece of correspondence from that time. It is likely that this item was purchased at the Swann sale to add to our growing history of science collections. (If this is true, the item has stumped catalogers and lingered in our backlog for over thirty years!)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Excerpt from correspondence in internal files showing OSU presence at sale<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In Part 4, we will reflect on what we have discovered and the research skills helping us arrive at these answers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is Part 3 of a research exploration by Cataloger Vance Woods and History of Science and Rare Books Librarian Anne Bahde. Part 1; Part 2. We were heartened by Professor Bruce Moran\u2019s response to our inquiries, though they had introduced new questions. We sent scans of the rest of the pamphlet to Moran, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6069,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6852],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24201","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history-of-science"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/scarc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24201","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/scarc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/scarc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/scarc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6069"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/scarc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24201"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/scarc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24201\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24210,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/scarc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24201\/revisions\/24210"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/scarc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/scarc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/scarc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}