Harrybert Tenshirt is the world s leading global rare book antiquarian dealer. He has been in the business for over 45 years, and in that time he has acquired over 250,000 volumes of rare books. He is a professor of English at the University of Freiburg, an honorary doctorate recipient, and an honorary professor of German literature. He was awarded in 2002 the prestigious Chevalier de l'Or des Arts et des Lettres medal from the French government. And in 2010, he received an honorary Doctorate honoris causa from his alma mater, The University of Frankfurt, recognizing his many decades of preserving the world's literary and cultural heritage.
00:05:25.400And so in the early 60s, I bought these books
00:05:30.620And then I realized that they have their own value, not financial value, not mercantile value, but their own value, which in my way was about the beauty of the elder of the older books.
00:05:58.500But then I went to university and I was collecting fine books for small money, of course.
00:06:11.500And only at the end of my university career, which was when I was assistant for romance languages in the Middle Ages,
00:06:24.740I thought of becoming a rare book dealer because I saw that science was not the real aim for me.
00:06:43.640And so I started in 1977 with a small antiquariat, as we say, antiquarian business.
00:06:53.700And I, of course, offered the small library that I had assembled in the last 12 or 15 years.
00:07:03.300Now, 12 years later, I think if I remember, if I did my homework correctly, you then had caused quite a splash in the book collecting world when you had purchased a handwritten copy of Franz Kafka's The Trial. Is that correct? Am I getting that right?
00:14:25.760What's the mechanism for someone at your level of book dealing?
00:14:31.660Where do you go to actually look for these treasures?
00:14:35.620In the beginning, it was auction sales, of course.
00:14:41.100Sotheby's, Christie's, the many, many French auction sales, German, Italian, Spanish, and so on, in the beginning.
00:14:50.800And then I built several collections of manuscripts, of very fine books, of Inconabula, and so on.
00:15:02.180And this was this network that I built.
00:15:07.040And so, meanwhile, in the last 20, 25 years, I get those books that you never see, you never get from this network, from my colleagues, from private collectors, and so on.
00:15:25.020Do you ever get, it would have to be a wealthy person, a super wealthy person reaches out to you because of your status in the industry and says, I am commissioning you to go find me this book.
00:15:41.220Does that often happen or is it more you just go about your business and then eventually the customers find their way to you?
00:15:47.800or is it targeted someone you know whomever bill ackman reaches out to you he's a he's a wealthy
00:15:53.580hedge fund guy from new york and says hey i want something dealing with da vinci
00:15:58.020please find it for me heribert no that doesn't happen um people know that when they come to me
00:16:06.200they will have um a choice that is uh unique we have about say 25 000 really good books
00:16:16.18025 000 and we have another 250 000 that are not bad and until one year and a half i had 200
00:16:28.940medieval manuscripts medieval manuscript but illuminated medieval manuscript so when people
00:16:35.600come of course sometimes they may say i want this very book normally i have it normally
00:16:44.760If I don't have it, I can say, okay, I get you that.
00:16:49.720If it isn't just, say, first edition of the Don Quixote or the Gutenberg Bible, normally I can do this within one or two years.
00:17:09.160I hate to say this, but I have to be honest.
00:17:12.040My reading consumption is much more reserved for nonfiction, so that even though, of course, this would be an example of a novella, 95% plus of all that I read and acquire is nonfiction, and I think it's something that I have to try to resolve because I'm missing out on infinite number of incredible literature.
00:17:39.500but in your industry within your specific sort of very high rarefied antiquarian books
00:17:45.800are most top books likely to be in the fiction world or non-fiction and if one is more than the
00:17:53.680other what determines that there's not so much difference between the one and the other
00:18:01.300But I have to add one very important fact.
00:18:41.960Also here, you know, I try to get the finest copy on earth, printed on vellum, on parchment, or printed on Japanese paper, on China paper, bound in the finest bindings that you can imagine, and so on.
00:18:58.280So, it's both, what you are asking, it's both here, and both is offered, and both is collected, of course.
00:19:12.040So, what are some of the, okay, when you showed the trial, you showed it without the dust jacket.
00:19:19.020Once you add the dust jacket, and if it's a very rare one, and if, of course, it's an immaculate condition, that's going to bring up the price.
00:19:25.500if it's signed of course it's going to bring up the price if it is signed to someone that is
00:19:32.020uniquely relevant to the author there's a narrative behind the thing that's going to increase the price
00:19:37.460are there other things that you know most of our listeners and viewers would not know that contribute
00:19:44.680to the price fluctuation yes um the main the main factor is condition state of preservation
00:19:56.920the main factor really and you know i mean you are um alluding to books of the 20th century of
00:20:06.300the 19th century. I have in view the books from 1450 to, say, 1960, 1970, 1980. And this,
00:20:22.620of course, widens your perspective and also your understanding of bibliophily. And so,
00:20:32.460So, of course, say, a first edition with a dedication by the author
00:20:41.680is a more valuable thing than the thing itself.
00:20:48.440But I'm sorry to say that there are so many other factors
00:28:42.200So if I were in your position, I would be the worst book dealer of all time because I never want to sell any of the books once I get them.
00:28:50.540do you suffer from this where okay i just got this holy grail book that i've been dreaming
00:28:56.360about for the past 20 years now here comes some wealthy guy who says all right i'll i'll pay you
00:29:01.680whatever you want and you go you know what i i'm not selling this one yes i i totally understand
00:29:09.620you god but i have so many you know so you're so the business part of your brain takes over
00:29:18.160I have many, many hundreds, even thousands of books of which everyone is one that I wanted to have and of which I never could have imagined to sell it.
00:29:38.400But I have so many and we all have to survive.
00:29:43.540So only some books that are totally unimportant are not for sale.
00:35:44.520And the painter of these miniatures is the so-called master of the Petrarch's Triumphs, one of the finest manuscripts in the Bibliothèque Nationale in France.
00:37:11.100Starting with midnight, this is matutin, and so on and so on.
00:37:16.200And so I assembled a collection of printed books of ours from 1487 to 1550 or so.
00:37:27.720We are now printing the last three volumes of our catalogue, which then will have 12 folio volumes with about 6,000 pages and about 7,000 color illustrations.
00:42:14.780But, of course, as these were prayer books, the main illustrations are from the New Testament, of course.
00:42:25.680But, you know, you have to think of the fact that perhaps in this book, there are about 1,120 smaller and larger illustrations.
00:42:39.980And of them, one third is totally non-religious.
00:42:45.260So it is about historical, even erotic, and so on and so on.
00:42:52.660Do you typically, in a given book, are the illustrations done by a singular artist, or you might have a book that has 19 different artists that contributed the illustrations for that book?
00:43:07.300No, I mean we do this in a very thorough way
00:43:15.520Perhaps the book of ours of Louis XII was painted by two court artists
00:50:20.380Are there still any artisans, if we could put it in this way,
00:50:26.140or artists that are trained in the art of making?
00:50:31.160And by the way, one of my cousins married to my mother's sister, their name is Bookbinder.
00:50:39.820And actually, one of the sons became a very well-respected cardiologist.
00:50:46.020In Arabic, you say Bookbinder, but in English or German or whatever, it'll be Bookbinder.
00:50:51.460So are there now this kind of ongoing tradition to train artisans to be these incredible, elaborate, either book illustrators or bookbinders, or are there fewer and fewer as the years go on?
00:51:08.220Yes, there are still some very good bookbinders.
00:51:13.460By the way, one of the most important piano players in Austria is Rudolf Buchbinder.
00:51:20.520Oh, and so you said it in almost the same way I said it in Arabic.
00:51:26.160Buchbinder, he's a Beethoven interpret.
00:51:30.900But of course, you find good bookbinders, especially in England and in France, also some in Germany.
00:51:39.500I think there are a lot of them in the United States.
00:55:02.380Do you, if you, forgive me for asking a personal question,
00:55:04.860But is this something that, as you're thinking about your legacy, is this something that you would want your family to be involved in, to continue your legacy? And if yes, are they interested? If no, can you make them interested? What's the dynamics of how we could extend the legacy forever?
00:55:23.880Yeah, that's a good and a difficult question, because I know that no one of my family would ever be as enthusiastic and passionate as I am.
00:55:42.040So I think the only idea that I can have is to think they will be cared for.
00:55:56.620But I would like to do these foundations for, say, the next 30, 40 years.
00:58:19.300And I had asked him a similar question, because I think a lot of people have the incorrect view that to be, you know, a rare book antiquarian dealer, you have to have very deep pocket.
00:58:33.640I mean, you have to be Heribert, right?
00:58:35.060You have to be already somebody who speaks with a European accent.
00:58:39.320But the reality is we can all start on that journey at our own prices, right?
00:58:45.140I mean, I've bought books, which to me seem incalculably amazing for $20, right?
00:58:51.600I bought a Kipling, Just So Stories for, I don't know what it was, maybe $22 from 1903.
00:58:58.680Well, I would have thought that that should go for a lot more, but it brought me as much
00:59:03.040joy, the fact that I found this and it's now in my collection than had it been priced 50