‘An Acquisition of Inestimable Value’: The Men Who Funded the Berlin Collection

Exhibit Location: The Joseph Regenstein Library, Fourth Floor
Exhibit Dates: February 11 – April 15, 2016

Have you ever wandered through the stacks browsing in books for significant dedications, humorous doodling, or interesting bookplates?  If you have, you undoubtedly came across one bookplate more than any other.  Tens of thousands of titles bear the Berlin Collection bookplate, proudly listing its nine donors.  Who are these nine men and how did they come to fund this “acquisition of inestimable value”?  It was accomplished through the diligent work of the University’s first President, William Rainey Harper, and the generous donations from four key members of the original Board of Trustees and five prominent Chicago businessmen.

While vacationing in Berlin with his family some fifteen months before the new University of Chicago was scheduled to open in 1892, William Rainey Harper came across a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.  G. Heinrich Simon of S. Calvary and Company, a world renowned bookselling firm that was going to close its doors, wanted to sell off his massive stock en bloc. After some negotiating, the two men agreed upon a final price of $45,000 (or 180,000 marks), an enormous amount of money for the time, but in reality nothing in comparison to its actual value. Indeed, this collection was so vast that it would immediately catapult the University of Chicago into the top tier of research universities in the United States and the entire world. Only one obstacle remained, raising the money for the purchase.

When his first attempts to find funding fell flat, Harper placed the matter before the Board of Trustees, which recommended that the Board itself purchase the Berlin Collection.  According to Thomas W. Goodspeed, Secretary of the Board of Trustees, “Rust began the subscription with $12,000. Kohlsaat followed with $6,000, and Ryerson and Hutchinson assured the rest.”  Along with Harper, Martin A. Ryerson, H. H. Kohlsaat, C. L. Hutchinson, Byron L. Smith, A. A. Sprague, C. H. McCormick, C. R. Crane, H. A. Rust, and C. J. Singer subscribed the entirety of the $45,000 needed to complete the purchase. All the donors with the exception of Harper are commemorated on the bookplate for the Berlin Collection.

This two-case exhibit features biographies of the 9 donors along with highlights from the history of the purchase of the collection.

For a detailed account of the acquisition of the Berlin Collection see Robert Rosenthal’s “The Berlin Collection: A History” in The Berlin Collection: being a history and exhibition of the books and manuscripts purchased in Berlin in 1891 for the University of Chicago … ([Chicago]: University of Chicago Library, c1979).