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On a bright, sunny day in 1992, I happened to be in the vicinity of one of the finer bookshops in the area in which I live. As I approached the shop, I could see lines of people extending for almost a city block. When I arrived at the front door, I saw what all the excitement was about, for there, just a few feet before me was Ivana Trump, in all her "lifestyles of the rich and famous" glory. She was sitting on a supple leather wing chair at a beautiful cherry wood desk signing her just released roman a clef. The commotion and the craning necks of this cordoned conga line of the young and the curious salivating for a celebrity signature was in marked contrast to the non-event of the following week. On that day, the bookshop's busy shoppers went about their browsing and purchasing, coming and going with nary a clue that a bit of history was standing in their midst with his just released tale--ninety years in the making. The same leather chair and cherry wood desk were brought out but the cordons were left in storage for not a single soul was on line. Unfazed, the diminutive yet venerable gentleman seemed to be waiting for something to happen or, dare I say, to do. As I approached him in greeting, I relayed to him the irony of the Ivana frenzy of the week before. With that perennial twinkle in his eye, the founder of The Bettmann Archive--the world’s "largest commercial repository of rare illustrations and photographs" (and yes, now owned by Bill Gates) looked at me smiling and said, "Such is life!"
In the next few pages I trust I will be able to convey to the reader something of the life and personality of this bookman, librarian, archivist, historian, musician and scholar.
From boyhood, Bettmann’s interests were music, books, and art--three avocations--tributaries--which coalesced in the making of the man (Baker, 1974, p.24). He literally grew up in the shadow of the Thomaskirche, the church of Bach, where he learned to sing in its boy’s choir and play with distinction "the simple gavottes, minuets, and marches Bach had written for his young sons" (Bettmann, 1995, xiii). Though the Bettmanns were Jewish, they were no less moved by the intricate sublimity of Leipzig’s "holy kantor" and Kapellmeister. Bettmann’s early lessons in music provided him a blueprint for living. As a star pupil, he learned to approach a musical composition--"this language of the heart"--methodically, and not until a work's individual units were mastered could the whole be executed with any degree of accomplishment (Bettmann, 1992, p.7). The music of Bach would forever influence and infuse Bettmann with a sense of order, purpose, proportion, solace and the supreme joy of life that "palliates that existential loneliness that lies deep within each human soul" (Bettmann, 1992. p.164).
Ever the bibiliophile, his father would return home proudly displaying his rare-book "finds", such as an old Latin tome of two centuries earlier, to the delight of his two sons who were only too eager to pour over their contents and quaint illustrations. As the son of a bibliophile, Bettmann grew up with a lively curiousity for books and the knowledge and illustrations contained in them. At thirteen, he compiled a picture book of medicine for his father’s birthday. Rummaging through his surgeon-father’s wastepaper baskets for medical prints and illustrations, he built his own little collection and stored it in an empty cigar box.
He began his secondary schooling at the Oberreal Gymnasium in Leipzig which emphasized the humanistic study of classical and modern languages. Students will perennially ask what is the good of learning their Latin or Greek. Though he forgot his declensions, what proved most valuable for the budding scholar remained with him for a lifetime--learning how to learn (Bettmann, 1992, p.12). But school years are crucial and formative for the budding personality as well. The bigoted rumblings of antisemitism were beginning to be heard, both in the street and in the classroom. Being the only Jewish boy in his class, the tauntings he received at the hands of his classmates only served to instill in him the will to rise above vulgar bigotry and better himself. However, graduating from the gymnasium in 1923, their "crushing effect" succeeded in indelibly marking the sensitive youth with a streak of melancholy for the rest of his life.
He entered the University of Leipzig, having chosen to pursue cultural history and art as his major fields of study. The aim of Germany’s system of education, indeed of all of Europe was "to provide a broad and universal understanding of life" (Bettmann, 1992, p.15). Students were afforded the opportunity to go from school to school to sit under itinerant masters. This longstanding tradition of the "wandering scholar" was still practiced by all the universities. At the University of Freiburg, Bettmann studied paleography, history and philosophy. Edmund Husserl, the brilliant theorist and exponent of phenomenology, was then holding lectures at Freiburg, his long and successful academic career coming to a close. Though Bettmann struggled through the phenomenological arcana of this now world-famous scholar, he managed to acquit himself well. Years later, when the writer of this sketch was about to embark upon the study of this same science, he sought out Bettmann for his advice. With a twinkle in his eye, Bettmann reached for the very book written by Husserl, telling the prospective student, as he opened to its frontispiece portrait of the bespectacled professor, "I studied under Dr. Husserl in Freiburg--I didn't understand him then and I don't understand him still!" Needless to say, the student did not register for the course.
For his dissertation, Bettmann treated the impact of the enactment of copyright legislation in the eighteenth century and was formally entitled, "The Development of Professional Ideals in the Book Trade of the Eighteenth Century." His dissertation having met with the approval of the Leipzig faculty, he was granted the Ph.D. in 1927. He continued post-doctoral studies in England, France and Italy.
Upon his return from the Continent, he was offered a position with C.F. Peters, the prominent music publishing house in Leipzig. He maintained the music archive, a veritable treasure trove of original music manuscripts--museum objects in their own right-- that contained the works of the masters from Bach to Richard Strauss. While happy to be working in this environment, he was beginning to feel a certain restlessness. He was 25 and eager to leave home and spread his wings. It was 1928--the big city beckoned and he longed to be "where the action was" (Bettmann, 1992, p.19).
a la prossima...
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