The Bookseller of Frankfurt am Main: An Interview with Burkhard Schneider of philabooks.com
The most 'international' philatelic literature dealer
This article was first published as “The Bookseller of Frankfurt am Main: An Interview with Burkhard Schneider of philabooks.com.” Philatelic Literature Review 69 no. 2 (Second Quarter 2020). A slightly longer format was published online on the journal’s website.
It won the American Philatelic Research Library’s 2022 Thomas F. Allen Award for the best article to appear in the Philatelic Literature Review the previous year). It is being reproduced here with light edits and more images.
On 4 August 2022, Burkhard suffered a stroke and has not been keeping well since. Sales was suspended and his website carried this message for months:
Wegen einer Erkrankung von Herrn Schneider ist derzeit leider nur ein sehr eingeschränkter Betrieb möglich.
Bestellungen können leider im Moment nicht angenommen werden.
Sobald sich eine neue Lage ergibt, werden wir hier berichten.Derzeit können E-Mails leider nur sporadisch beantwortet werden. Wir versuchen aber im Rahmen unserer Möglichkeiten alles abzuarbeiten.
Due to an illness of Mr. Schneider, unfortunately only a very limited operation is possible at the moment.
Unfortunately, orders cannot be accepted at the moment.
As soon as a new situation arises, we will report here.
Unfortunately, e-mails can only be answered sporadically at the moment. But we try to work through everything within the scope of our possibilities.
Presumably with little hopes of a full recovery, in February 2023, an email was sent out by his sister announcing the closure of the business. Subsequently, the books have been sold to Bjöern Rosenau of Frankfurt who may restart the business soon. However, Burkhard’s “nice little shop” is shut forever.
Burkhard and I became friendly during his interview. Over emails or phone, he would often offer to take me to dinner in an Indian restaurant in Frankfurt, especially when I asked for a discount on my purchases! Unfortunately I never did visit him, a regret I will carry for long.
In Frankfurt am Main, Germany’s international hub and one of the most important of all European cities, sits the small shop (in his own words) of Burkhard Schneider (Figure 1) who exclusively deals in philatelic literature of the world with a special emphasis on European titles. European literature especially in German, French, and Italian is very rich and English-speaking philatelists will be surprised at the breadth and depth of publications in these languages by visiting through Burkhard’s website: philabooks.com. It is no exaggeration to say that he is the most ‘international’ of all philatelic literature dealers; he is also perhaps the biggest dealer in the world in terms of the number of titles that he has on sale at any one point in time. I eagerly await his Friday listings of new material in the hope that I can snare something on my want list before anyone else!
In June 2015 I happened to be in Zurich. I was on a holiday with my family and, with due respect to the Swiss, I was getting bored!
A few days earlier when I was in Paris I had hoped for some philatelic tourism; unfortunately when I visited them none of the four or five different stamp shops in that charming city’s passages were open. Deprived of philately for more than 10 days and in a city which was as different from the lovely countryside that we had been too as chalk is to cheese, I wanted some philatelic action. I visited the venerable Swiss auction house – Corinphila – to pick up some lots that I won a few weeks earlier. I asked the lady who attended on me if I could find a philatelic book shop in the city. She quickly went inside to check with her colleagues and came back with the reply that there were none around; the nearest was Burkhard Schneider, some 400 kilometres (around 250 miles) away!
Last year when I purchased a couple of Burkhard’s old philatelic literature price lists, I because curious about the history of his business. He said that he will revel all when I did his interview! I had a feeling that he had a lot of stories to share and I readily agreed. I sent him a questionnaire and in return received, after many months, the first part of his biography. Exactly opposite to an interview, I had to arrange some of the questions to suit the answers. Later we communicated over WhatsApp and Burkhard answered many of my remaining questions over voice chats.
The reader will notice that the most interesting parts of the interview are firstly Burkhard’s own personal reminiscences and secondly his stories about his important library purchases from some of the greatest European philatelists. His memories are fascinating and never-ending; unfortunately I had to put a stop somewhere so that the interview that is to be published in a journal did not take the shape of a book!
Burkhard, please tell me about yourself.
I was born in 1957 in Freiburg in South Baden. It is not far from there to France and Switzerland. It is a beautiful district, popular with tourists. My parents had a large carpentry workshop, which took on factory dimensions during the boom of the 1960s and also due to the early automation that my father introduced.
I have two daughters, Hanna who is 19 and Elisabeth who is 15. Hanna is at the University and Elisabeth is finishing high school. They both help me from time to time at the office. Hanna is interested in history and is very good in English; she also speaks a bit of French, Italian and Swedish. At my shop she can do almost everything I can apart from describing the books. Elisabeth helps me with packing and is an expert in all forms of modern communications!
Were you interested in stamps and stamp collecting before you started dealing?
I began to collect stamps when I was about seven years old; my two older siblings had small collections which they gradually gave to me. My siblings soon began to study in other cities and my parents rented rooms in our big house to two Norwegian students who soon became the best suppliers for my stamp collection. Letters were the only way to keep in touch with home in the mid-1960s and so several letters came from Norway every week. The stamps were soaked off cleanly in the bathroom and dried on towels. Oddly enough, 30 years later, the two former students still collected stamps when I visited them in Norway, then for a charitable organisation; but they also gave me a bag, in the old tradition!
The postman was also a close ally; he came twice a day on his moped and was eagerly awaited. My aunt in Switzerland, married to a well-known lawyer and notary who received a large amount of mail, supported me with big ‘letter packets’ for Christmas and my birthday with wonderful stamps from Switzerland and Liechtenstein. When I was ten years old my mother drove once a week into the city (we lived with our business on the outskirts of the city) and I received packets of stamps of all countries. I had five albums, neatly separated into continents. At the age of 10, I had bought my own first stamps. At the age of 11 or 12 I knew all the countries of the world by heart.
We visited my grandmother in Basel in Switzerland regularly every four weeks until she died when I was 14; at that time, I often went to the Spalenberg where several stamp shops and art galleries were situated. There was an old-style shop with a very friendly, older lady, Frau Watzlawick, who did not send a 10-year old lad out right away. There I bought my first second-hand, three-year old Zumstein catalogue of Switzerland, the 1964 edition, for CHF 4 (Figure 2). I was there again on my next visit to Basel, but then the shop was no longer there; the lady's husband had perhaps passed away. Around the corner there was also a big, impressive shop, but I didn't dare to go in there. It must have been the shop of Ernst Müller or Charlotte Hassel, two very famous Swiss stamp dealers. But in the meantime, I had already discovered two stamp shops in Freiburg. I became a regular customer of Frey’s shop in the Bursegang. I also had some exchange partners and even in my father's company, on Fridays after work, stamp exchanges took place from time to time. This is how I acquired my first British colonial stamp. At the age of about 13 I stopped collecting stamps; and started collecting science fiction books together with two of my best friends.
So how did you get back into stamps?
While in Frankfurt am Main to study economics, I got back into collecting stamps through a fellow student. She had taken out her old collection at Christmas and it was a big "spark", not only with the stamps! During the college holidays I had a lot of time and I spent a total of five months in Southern Africa on two longer trips. My brother was in the automobile industry and worked there for a long time. In Johannesburg I got to know Lutz Heffermann, an Austrian who at that time published his South African Stamp Colour Catalogue, the first colour catalogue for the South African countries. I sent him many, many stamps once I was back in Germany and the stamp business began at the age of 21.
You once told me that you used to visit many philatelic shows when you were younger. Many of the contacts you made were made at such shows.
The very first exhibition that I visited was Naposta 1978 in Frankfurt. The enthusiasm grew and the exhibition at Earls Court in London followed in 1980. I was able to make contacts on longer journeys through the USA and Canada from East to West, later also to East Asia and Australia; among others I visited the Ausipex 1984 exhibition. In New York I was at the impressive ASDA show at Madison Square Garden in 1993.
At IBRA in 1999 (Figure 3) I got to know Manfred Amrhein (Figure 4) from Costa Rica and also John Taylor of the USA, an American specialist in German philately, who took over the distribution of my books in the USA for a while, but who sadly died suddenly. I made many interesting contacts thanks to my friend and colleague Fred Muche (Figure 5) of Frankfurt am Main, a highly regarded visitor to American fairs until his death in 2006 shortly after he returned from the exhibition in Washington. Through him I was also able to access the circle of leading international postal historians such as James Van der Linden, Leo de Clercq, Dick (Richard) Winter, Paolo Vollmeier, and many others. I was a regular in stamp shows till about 10-15 years back.
Then via the Internet I made countless interesting contacts worldwide in the years that followed. Among them were two Englishmen – Philip Robinson who kindly helped me to translate text into English and John Jackson who is of great help by letting me know the interesting books published in the UK.
Tell us more about your stamp dealing business.
The early 1980s were the boom years in the stamp trade and at the age of 26 I opened a large stamp shop in downtown Frankfurt (Figure 6). There were then still about 35 stamp shops, some of them in the best locations. At that time, I probably had about 400 stock books and hundreds of new issue subscribers. Apart from material of the British colonies, a lot of People’s Republic of China passed through my hands; as far as I know, in the early 1980s, hardly anybody but me seriously acquired them in Germany. Through a customer who bought all Saudi Arabia from me, I expanded my material on offer to the entire Middle East and I also had visitors from this region. It brought me local fame when one day a taxi with four sheikhs in their national costumes drove up to buy stamps. Further, many thematic collectors were interested in my large overseas stock.
But the boom didn't last much longer and I sold everything in 1987 at good prices and went back to the university to study education and history for another four years.
I read somewhere that you used to work with dyslexic children.
After graduating in 1991 I worked for two years at the J.W. von Goethe University in Frankfurt and among the tasks was compiling the literature for certain lectures. After further training, I worked for about 15 years in the afternoons as a learning therapist with a focus on dyslexia.
This left me with a lot of free time and I started buying some larger collections again in 1993 and my first library in 1996. Various office locations followed until I settled in 2004 in the Luisenplatz, where I still am today.
How did you move to dealing in philatelic literature?
I was collecting British Commonwealth and the United States and I needed specialized literature for myself. At that time, I was already dealing in stamps and I was getting books and catalogues. Then I realized that other collectors had the same difficulty in getting books pertaining to their interests; this was in the 1980s when one needed to write to publishers or authors by letters which used to take a lot of time, then pay by bank transfer which was very expensive, and finally shipping was very difficult as well.
I published my first offering of literature in the 1980s - literature from Vera Trinder in my special field of interest, the British colonies. In 1995 my first real literature list was published (Figure 7). This was followed by a total of 25 printed catalogues and numerous supplementary lists up to May 2003. In the beginning I was also regularly present with my stock of literature, stamps and covers at Sindelfingen, Berlin, Paris (together with Ted Proud), London, Verona, Brussels (Erik Paaskesen's two major fairs), Basel (Basler Taube 1995), and others.
When did you start dealing on the internet? What was your experience in the initial days? How did you come across the domain name philabooks.com since you used to deal under your own name earlier?
I was thinking of getting my website in 1997 but it was very difficult to get people to develop sites at that time. So I started making a database of information so that I could have all the special sections on my website that I have now. Since about 15 years I have a computer engineer named Michael Lenke doing the programming. He is a philatelist specializing in Poland’s 1919 Crakau Overprint Issues and has recently published a book on that subject. He understands philately which many technicians do not.
I always wanted an English name for my web domain since I wanted it to sound ‘international’; I wanted to deal with people from across the world. The name philabooks.com was available at that time and I took it. My website went online in 1998.
Your website says that you have almost 15,000 titles in stock. Is all of your stock on the internet? If not, what percentage do you think is not? What kind of titles would these be (perhaps journals, books not in good condition, etc).
Almost my entire stock is on the internet. When I buy surplus stock I often sell them in bulk to other dealers and get rid of them. I do not want too much lying around because I have a nice little shop (60 square meters of floor area and 3.5 meters high) in a nice area and space is a problem (Figure 8). So I always focus on what is important and what is not. Of course, when I make large purchases I rent extra space.
Further, from my experience in stamp dealing, I list everything that I think may be important or useful to a collector; not just items which are top sellers or which have sold quickly in the past. Sometimes I have sold books after 10 or 20 years of listing! There are still some books which have not seen any demand as yet but I think they may in the future.
What would be the language breakup of your stock? What percentage in German, English, other European languages etc.
Quite a bit of my stock of books is German. Then I have a lot of books in English and then some other European languages. I have customers from all over the world; perhaps 90 countries!
Do you fulfill want lists when you do not have certain titles in stock?
Yes, I accept want lists from my regular customers. I put in the names in my database so that the books they want are on my buying list.
What is your typical day like? Do you have any employees in your business? Many a time when I have written to you, you have mentioned that you have “immer viel zu tun!” (always much to do).
On a typical day I start between eight and nine in the morning. I check my emails for orders. There is always too much work and therefore I need to split it with my helpers.
Either my helpers1 (earlier I used to have three or four but now I have two; due to Covid-19 I am working alone presently) or I get the ordered books out and write the invoices. Meanwhile I may be attending telephone calls or sorting of books. My helpers are not here every day; I describe the new books added to my stock so that they can photograph and scan them and upload them on my website.
I work until four or five in the afternoon; not too late. Then I like to do some biking or sports. Sometimes at home I get on the internet and check my emails and work for an hour or two. Some 15-20 years ago I used to work on Saturdays too listing books on eBay but do not do that anyone; I mostly stopped selling on eBay in 2002 or thereabouts though I did list occasionally items that I bought in bulk for a few more years.
You not only stock second-hand out-of-print books but also some of the latest titles from across the world. Why do you do this when most of your contemporaries do not? Possibly since margins are not that great. The only other dealer I can think of is Leonard Hartmann.
I believe that the most important person to me is my customer and his collecting interests and what he needs for his collection. Hence, I buy all important new books that I think may be useful to him. I think of it as a service and they my customers surely appreciate it a lot. The margins are, of course, most of the time not so large. Further, I personally like books and am interested in seeing them; if I find them good, I order more. I am also interested in philately and I like to read about the latest research that is taking place currently.
You also stock titles from other European countries. How do you manage to describe them? How many languages do you know?
Apart from my native German, I speak English and I have knowledge of French and Italian. I see the contents of a book and its printing before stocking them. My database of 35,000 titles also helps. One needs to have a good knowledge of stamps of the world, which I do due to my being a collector as well as my earlier dealing in stamps and postal history.
I see that most literature dealers do not stock long runs of journals. Do you? Why or why not?
Buying journals is a problem since space is limited in Europe and it becomes costly to stock them. Further they are time-consuming to sort through. When I started, there were collectors who wanted to buy long runs of certain journals. Such a collector does not exist anymore. From a supply perspective, there are not many libraries which have long runs in them. The one library that I purchased that had many journals was the “Taunus” library in 2000-01. Just last week I sold 18 volumes of the German magazine Der Philatelist which came from here; it was unsold for almost 20 years and I had to offer the lot at a reduced price of €300 just to get rid and make some space!
So you would prefer not to buy journals?
I would buy specialized journals as well as journals pre-1950 or so. I prefer bound runs since they not only look nicer but, since binding is expensive, I can sell them for good rates. I would buy unbound journals only if they are complete runs or if they are interesting enough. However I would avoid the many general journals which are not of much interest to most.
You must have a list of your own favorite philatelic literature titles? Which are those?
My favorite titles include many of the limited bibliophile hardbound works. I like the Crawford catalogue as it is the key for philatelic literature. Another is Katalog der Bücherei des Reichs-Postamt, Band 1: Bücher published in Berlin in 1899. The German post office did much research on world-wide postal matters and had an immense library; this book helps me with early postal history items.
Your website has a page giving details of the philatelic libraries you have purchased. You seem to have been buying a few libraries every year! Do the sellers come to you or do you know them well enough to ask them if they would be willing to sell?
Till March 2020 I have purchased 87 notable libraries! Many of the important philatelic literature collectors are my customers and I am in close contact with them. They give my name to their family or friends and when they are no more, I get called to pick up their libraries. I also work in close co-operation with several auction houses in Europe and UK. From the philatelist’s estate, they buy the stamps and I get the books; or they buy everything and sell the books to me. Sometimes I buy the entire estate and while I do not retail the stamps, I sell them to collectors and dealers I know.
The important thing is that I am in the middle of Europe and distances are not far. I can drive to Switzerland, Italy, Austria, Denmark, Netherlands, Belgium, France, Lichtenstein, or Luxembourg to collect the libraries. Of course, if they are far away, they will have to ship them to me; the airport is only 25 minutes from my place.
Tell me about some of your important and memorable library purchases.
In 1995 I made my first price list for second hand philatelic literature.
In 1996 I bought the library of Michael Hillebrecht who is still an active collector. It was mainly German language literature on Germany and German states.
At that time I used attend most major shows and I used to visit London regularly as well. In 1997, through another dealer, I was able to buy books in the library of Robson Lowe Ltd.
Once again through my contacts I got access to the Garratt-Adams library.2 I went to Wales to his castle in the spring of 1997. The castle was in a very nice area and quite impressive. I met the young owner of the castle, the grandson of Adams.3 They still had a lot of books there.4 Some were stored in the garden house and some in places which were not so good for the books; hence, books had rusty staples or stitching – that’s typical for many of the books in Adams’ library. I purchased handbooks and auction catalogues that I was interested in. For the balance stock including early journals and price lists, I recommended Schwanke & Sohn, the German auctioneers.
In 1998 I also got the chance to buy part of the Robert Danzig stock. Danzig was the describer of the Garratt-Adams library and he was then moving from London to the Isle of Wight.
In 1999 I bought a big lot of European auction catalogues from a South German businessman. His father was collecting as well since 1932, and they had long runs of catalogues till 1995 or so. They had a separate villa where the stamp rooms were. In the same year I bought the journals of the Berliner Philatelisten-Club, earlier one of the most famous philatelic societies in Germany.
In 2000 I bought the Wolfgang Diesner library. Diesner is almost forgotten today but played an important role in organizing the postal history symposium at Internationale Briefmarkenbörse in Sindelfingen. He did a lot of postal history research especially on transit mail. Unfortunately he died at an early age of around 60. Diesner was one of the most international of all German philatelists at that time. Hence, he had a lot of English literature from all over the world.
In the same year I was involved with the sale of a big Latin America estate and I could get the library – the “La Plata” library. This library was of a Swiss collector who had made around 40 trips to all countries and islands of Latin America to collect philatelic material including books. There were a lot of Spanish and English books in it.
One of my most important purchases was the ‘Taunus’ library in 2000-01 (Figures 12 and 13). The owner of this library was Hans-Herrmann Mette. Mette was probably the most important philatelic literature collector of his time in Germany and he had one of the largest private libraries. He was a book binder with very good craftsmanship. He used bound all his journals personally; it was like a hobby for him. Not only that, he did the binding work of many other philatelists and hence was well-known in the community. I got in contact with him when I started dealing in philatelic literature and we became friends quickly. He used to sell his surplus books to me and in turn buy what he did not have. He died suddenly when he was about 60. I bought his library which is my the largest purchase till date. It occupied three vans and there were about 10,000 different titles as well as duplicates and long runs of journals. It also had rare postal publications as well as auction catalogues; for example those of Gilbert & Köhler sales in Paris including the G. Koch German States auction catalogues in three parts which sold in 1908; I have handled that catalogue only once!
In 2002 came the purchase of literature from a Swiss postal library. They were duplicate philatelic journals from 1875 onwards. During World War II, Switzerland was neutral and hence they had received almost all journals from abroad which are very difficult to find otherwise. Especially interesting was the Asia Stamp Journal published in 1939/40. This journal was brought out by refugees from Vienna, Austria after the Anschluss5 in 1938 and who settled in Shanghai. At that time, there were only three cities open to Jewish refugees without passport and one of them was Shanghai.
In 2006, I bought the “Raketen” (rocket) library of Alfred Klein. Apart from books, the collection contained two rockets! (Figure 14) One was part of one of the six rockets made by Dr. Gerald Zucker who experimented with sending mails by that medium. The other rocket was one for sending propaganda leaflets from East to West Germany.
Another interesting purchase in 2007 was the Prof. Dr. Juergen Settgast library. Settgast was a well-known Egyptian expert and his library contained many rare auction catalogues from about 1930 onwards. I think he took his catalogues with him to his archaeological excavations. To prevent insect infestation in his books, he used to put moth powder on them, which brought about an unpleasant odor. However it was too interesting material to throw away. One of my customers with knowledge of chemicals said that I should put it in the oven at 50 degrees Celsius but I did not do that in fear of getting divorced! I eventually put them in a room with an open window for almost two years before the odor left.
In 2009, I purchased most part of the library of Paolo Vollmeier, RDP. Vollmeier was one of the giants in postal history research and one of the big names in philately. I visited him in Lugano in southern Switzerland, near Italy. He had a lot of Italian and French books and worldwide postal history books. He was an international philatelic judge and had a lot of exhibition catalogues as well. He was interested in forgeries and was the editor of the first six issues of Fakes Forgeries Experts, the annual journal on forgeries. He used to do a lot of research in archives on the postal history of mainly Italy and Switzerland; his wife told me how once when they were on a holiday someplace he spent the entire day in that city’s archives!
Besides the Taunus library, the other big library I purchased was the “Ried” library. In 2011 I received a call from a gentleman who had moved abroad and was liking the place so much that he did not want to return to Germany. He had some philatelic literature stored in an old barn about 50 km from Frankfurt. Since the owners wanted the barn space back, he requested me to go there and check the books out. When I went there, I realized that it was an immense collection; later I counted 330 banana cartons (Figure 15).6 There were a lot of cheap stuff but there were some interesting items too. I sold most of them to another collector but retained 50 cartons containing the better titles.
(Note: The list of libraries purchased by Burkhard can be found here: https://web.archive.org/web/20221007055036/https://www.philabooks.com/pages/aufloes.asp)
How do you break down libraries? Do you sell only the important titles and sell the balance in auctions or collections?
I have some 35,000 unique titles in my database of titles I have sold in the past, of which I have some 15,000 currently in stock. So when I have to describe them, I need to take photographs to show condition but the other information is available in my database and hence I can quickly list them again. Sometime I know the buyer for particular items since I have his want list in my database. For certain books, which I have enough copies of already or I am not interested in, I know a few people who I can sell to in bulk.
Do you maintain contacts with other literature dealers?
I have had contacts with most major philatelic literature dealers in the world. I regularly buy books from them which they either publish or which I need for my customers; sometimes I make them offers. Generally we are not competitors rather friends since they are so few of us dealers in this part of the philatelic world as compared to the others.
How do you compare philatelic literature now against say 15-20 years back?
I would say that the focus on philatelic literature is much more. You have the internet which has dropped the price of books and some say digitization has too. In my opinion, digitization does not play a big role in philately because collectors have grown up with books and do not want to sit on the computer the whole day. They like to have the book in front of them, study them, and then put them back on the shelf.
Yes, the internet has caused a drop in prices of books. But not so much for philatelic books as general ones. These are under big pressure mainly because of the high printing numbers. Further a friend of mine who is in the general book trade told me that now details of all books are online. Collectors compare prices on the internet and hence they just keep going down, even for books which have very limited numbers available. As far as philatelic literature is concerned you have limited printing numbers say 150 copies or less; maybe the English ones are more but not the German ones. So, prices will stay stable and even go up; just compare prices of modern stamps with literature!
Which titles in the recent years have been the most popular?
We have two types of collectors. One is a book collector who wants all unusual books, good condition books, numbered ones, and limited edition ones, in his collection. Someone who buys his books by the Crawford catalogue. The other is someone who wants books to improve his knowledge, often an exhibitor or advanced postal history collector. Very often they want to have all important books pertaining to their collecting area.
Some of the books which have been most popular in recent years are British Letter Mail to Overseas Destinations 1840-1875 by Jane and Michael Moubray (1992 with a revised edition 2017), Understanding Transatlantic Mails by Richard Winter (in two volumes published 2006 and 2009), Marques de Passage by James Van der Linden (1993), The Postal History of Mongolia by Wolfgang Hellrigl (2011).
Some German titles that I have sold many copies of are Privatpostkarten-Katalog Band I, Deutsches Reich von 1873 bis 1945 by Hanspeter Frech (3rd Edition 2003), Österreich Handbuch und Spezialkatalog by Dr. Ulrich Ferchenbauer (7th last edition 2008), Chronik der Post in Frankfurt am Main by Karl Heinz Kremer (2008) of which I am the sole distributor, and Zusammenstellung der Portosätze für die Correspondenz mit dem Ausland, Taler-Währung 1846-1875 by Werner Steven (1985) which was published by me.7
Which title have you wished you handled but never managed to?
I never got to handle all of Die Postwertzeichen der Russischen Landschaftsaemter by Carl Schmidt (Figure 16). The book is about the Russian Zemstovs and was published in eight parts. It is very rare. I only have had some parts passing my hands but never all of them
How long do you wish to continue dealing in literature?
I am 63 now and have no plans of retiring at present. But if in the years to come someone comes around who likes books and is prepared to take over my business and do a good job of it, I would be willing to sell and retire.
Burkhard’s word for his part-time employees.
A detailed article by Robert Danzig on the Garratt-Adams library can be found in “The Story of the H. Garratt-Adams Philatelic Library” published in The Philatelic Literature Review (Vol. 43 no. 3, 3rd Quarter 1994).
Danzig records the name of Garratt-Adams’ grandson as Caius Hawkins.
The Garratt-Adams library was so huge sold over three auctions by Huys-Berlingin of Liechtenstein between 1994 and 1997. Some parts were also sold by the auction house Schwanke & Sohn in 1999 and 2002.
The Anschluss refers to the annexation of Austria into Nazi Germany on 12 March 1938.
Each of these banana cartons measured 24 x 54 x 39 centimeters (or 9.5 x 21.25 x 15.35 inches).
The English equivalent titles of these four German books are Private Postcard Catalog Volume I, German Empire from 1873 to 1945, Austria Manual and Special Catalog, Chronicle of the Post in Frankfurt am Main, and Compilation of Postage Rates for Correspondence with Foreign Countries, Taler Currency 1846-1875 respectively.