Lecture: Bettina von Arnim and Goethe's Letters

In 1929, the Arnims, a Prussian noble family, sold their extensive literary archive in a high-profile auction series with the Berlin bookdealer Karl Ernst Henrici, after decades of concealment in the family manor of Wiepersdorf in Brandenburg. The family manuscripts' crown jewel was personal correspondence between matriarch Bettina von Arnim (1785-1859) and Germany’s most celebrated author, Johann Wolfgang Goethe (1749-1832). At Henrici’s, the letter exchange sold for the eye-watering sum of 59.000 Reichsmark to German-American collector Dannie Heineman (1872-1962). Today, the letters are housed at the Morgan Library & Museum.

This lecture by Grolier Club member Dennis Schaefer will chart the erratic path of this treasure trove of German literary history from Wiepersdorf and its scandalous 1929 auction in Berlin to New York City. Dennis is a Ph.D. student in Princeton University's Department of German. He has received research fellowships from the Goethe Society Weimar, the Prussian Heritage Foundation, and the Klassik Foundation Weimar, and is a recipient of the 2023 Princeton Library Research Prize. He joined the Grolier Club as a winner of the 2024 National Collegiate Book Collecting Award and is an avid collector of illustrated editions of E.T.A. Hoffmann.

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