The Fritz Stransky Family Bookplate Collection: A Precarious Legacy of Hitler's Europe

The Weisman Art Museum is pleased to present The Fritz Stransky Family Bookplate Collection: A Precarious Legacy of Hitler's Europe. The exhibition features more than 100 pieces from a personal collection, recently donated to the Weisman, that survived the Holocaust. A Precarious Legacy looks at the cultural and artistic milieu in which these miniature etchings were made and collected as well as their journey to Minnesota. The exhibition opens on October 26 and runs through December 31, 2001.

A bookplate, or an ex libris, is a small graphic work of art pasted inside the front cover of a book or on the reverse of the title page. Its role is to identify the owner of the book. Usually, it bears the inscription ex libris, the name of the owner, and a symbol or a drawing. The Latin words ex libris mean "from books."

The first bookplates date from the 15th century, even before the invention of printing. In those days, they were each done by hand, indicating either the name of the owner or the coat of arms of the family.

The practice of bookplate collecting started more than a century ago. In the early 20th century, the making, collecting, and exchange of bookplates grew to become a widespread vogue. Most collections were built through the exchange of duplicate bookplates. A passion for ex libris collecting started in Germany and England and spread throughout Europe.

One such collector was Fritz Stransky, a lawyer who established a successful practice in the small city of Most, Czechoslovakia. Stransky engaged in two hobbies--music and the collection of fine art, particularly paintings. The largest category of his art collection was his ex libris collection, which numbered more than 1,200 pieces.

After the German annexation of Bohemia and his native Prague in 1938, Stransky was identified as a Jew and transported to Auschwitz, where he died. Some of his personal possessions, including the ex libris collection, were given to neighbors who protected them and returned them to his wife, Lisa, and daughter, Anita, both of whom survived the Holocaust. The bookplates remained in two suitcases in Madison, Wisconsin, where Anita Stransky lived with her husband, Walter Schwarz. Anita donated the collection to the Weisman and the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at the University of Minnesota.

European aristocratic families collected books and thereby established their cultivated sophistication. Later, the middle classes were also able to afford and build personal libraries, and the use of ex libris spread among them. Middle-class book collectors often adapted the form of aristocratic crests and coat of arms for their use in bookplate designs. For example, instead of a coat of arms, the bookplate of the bourgeois collector might have an image representing the owner's trade and education. Sometimes the bookplate design contained an allegorical drawing.

Quite often, allegorical imagery in bookplates echoed those of classical literature and neoclassical painting, drawing from Greek and Roman antiquity for their themes. Later, bookplate designs adopted modern artistic trends. The specific subject matter in these modern bookplates became less important than the daring pictorial design. Soon the creation of bookplates became a specialized vein of artistic production in itself.

Many techniques and mediums are used in making of bookplates. These include woodcuts, engravings and etching on metal, silkscreen, and pen and ink. The revolution in the graphic arts in the late 19th century and invention of increasingly ingenious mechanical printing methods made it cheaper and quicker to print images or drawings on paper. This revolution contributed to the broad dissemination of ex libris.

Artists of many stripes were commissioned to make ex libris prints. The Stransky collection is a good representation of the wealth of styles that reigned from 1890 to 1930 in Europe. Superb examples of the modern styles of expressionism, futurism, art nouveau, and art deco contrast with older styles including neoclassicism, romanticism, and symbolism. The exhibition is divided into categories based upon the bookplates' thematic content: mythology, periods of history, images of men and women, World War I, erotica, religion, and the influences of new art movements.

The Weisman Art Museum and the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies extend a special thanks to Walter and Anita Schwarz of St. Paul for their generous donation of the Fritz Stransky Family Bookplate Collection, and to students in Jewish Studies 5900 Seminar, spring 2001, who worked on the exhibition. Cosponsors of this exhibition include the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Center for Austrian Studies, Center for German and European Studies, and the Weisman Art Museum at the University of Minnesota.