WW1 Soldier's Diary book

**Uberman** · 11-17-2010, 09:54 PM

Posted this on W-A, no one seems to really care, thought you guys might be more into it.

One of my absolutely favorite possessions, a diary of a WW1 German officer.

While there are other diaries out there, this is a period-published piece. While that certian add to the appeal, I'll do one better: it's the ONLY copy known.

The story of how I came about it is fairly interesting as well. A number of years back, I used to buy a LOT of books from my University library. mostly stuff that got pulled out of circulations, doubles and unwanted donations. I became known as a guy that likes old history books and will gladly purchase foreign language material, which got THROWN AWAY on regular basis.

During all of this, I made friends with one of the librarian, in charge of donated acquisitions. He told me the sad stories of books being bundled up and send to the paper recycling plant. he let me into the "unwanted storage" and left me for a day, telling to get whatever I wanted. Lucky for me, there was still a good 300+ books of a donated library of a local German collector and book lover, Paul Kemper. They were deemed "unfit for an open-minded liberal school", as he had quite a # of 1920's-1930's published books on variety of non politically correct subjects, such as race and etc.

To make long story short, I walked out with about 10 boxes of books, ranging from early natural history to Germanic literature. My car was packed to the top!

Most of the books had printed pages with reference #'s of them held at my local library AND all other world university libraries. A few books were found to be "non-existent" in any library in the world that shares it's open catalog database. And destined for the junk heap, but that's our new "american socialism" for you.

Without further delay, here's my pride and joy. One day I hope to have it translated and published. Unfortunately, my German is not good enough to even get through 1/20th of what's in the book.

Can anyone translate the dedication page?

**SteveR** · 11-17-2010, 11:44 PM

Nice book. Always good information from personal accounts,
SteveR

**oradour** · 11-17-2010, 11:51 PM

Uberman, this publication is the diary of an Unteroffizier (junior NCO) of the 4th Kompanie of Infanterie-Regt. von Lützow (1.Rheinisches) Nr.25 garrisoned at Aachen, being part of IX Armee Korps. I would of thought this was published in the 1930's, is there a date on one of the preface pages ?, it should also give the publisher, how do you know this is the only copy ? I think you may find that there are other copies of this book in circulation.....as it was probably originally printed on a privately limited run, funded by the author, I doubt just one book was printed. We have some German members, who hopefully, will translate for you.
Prost ! Steve.

**Uberman** · 11-18-2010, 12:10 AM

Thanks for the clarification Steve.

There is no publication date, but the back does have the publisher mark.

Funny enough, appears that company (merged, somewhat renamed etc) is still in business:

Verlag*- Druckerei Berger

As for the "only copy" issue, I am basing that on the fact that no other university or major library in the world (that has an electronic database) has one in their collection. I'm sure there might be a few copies floating around in private libraries, but no other institution has it. Which is generally a good sign that this is the only copy. I've dealt with antiquarian books for many years now in my private collection, and generally have a local university librarian give them a look-over to find if anyone else has them held.

Aoh and here's the image of the publisher note.