- physdesc
-
{"format"=>"structured", "physdesc_components"=>[{"name"=>"extent", "value"=>"16 linear feet", "unit"=>"linear feet"}, {"name"=>"extent", "value"=>"43 boxes", "unit"=>"containers"}], "supress_display"=>true}
- unitid
-
{"value"=>"MssCol 6318", "type"=>"local_call"}
{"value"=>"6318", "type"=>"local_mss"}
- unitdate
-
{"value"=>"1866-1939", "type"=>"inclusive", "normal"=>"1866/1939"}
{"value"=>"1873-1914", "type"=>"bulk", "normal"=>"1873/1914"}
- date_inclusive_start
-
1866
- date_inclusive_end
-
1939
- keydate
-
1866
- unittitle
-
{"value"=>"Leopold and Berta Katscher papers"}
- repository
-
{"value"=>"<span class=\"corpname\">The New York Public Library. <span class=\"subarea\">Manuscripts and Archives Division</span></span> <div class=\"address\"><span class=\"addressline\">New York, New York</span></div>"}
- abstract
-
{"value"=>"The collection consists of the papers of journalist and peace activist Leopold Katscher (1853-1939) and his wife, the novelist Berta Katscher (1860-1903). The bulk of the collection consists of Leopold Katscher's papers, while his wife is represented to a lesser degree. Approximately half of the collection is made up of correspondence. The remainder consists of copies of Katscher's published articles, manuscripts, legal and financial case files, papers of peace, social justice and feminist societies and associations in which the Katschers were active, and personal documents. Katscher's correspondence includes numerous letters from writer and peace activist Bertha von Suttner."}
- prefercite
-
{"value"=>"<p>Leopold and Berta Katscher Papers, Manuscripts and Archives Division, The New York Public Library.</p>"}
- origination
-
{"value"=>"Katscher, Leopold, b. 1853", "type"=>"persname"}
- bioghist
-
{"value"=>"<p>Leopold Katscher</p> <p>Leopold Katscher was a journalist and social reformer. He was born on August 30, 1853 in Csakova near Temesvár (Habsburg Kingdom of Hungary), to Ignatz and Rosalie Katscher (née Engel, Ignatz Katscher's first wife; his second wife was also called Rosalie). As a young man, Katscher attended the commercial academies in Pest (1868-1869) and Vienna (1869-1871) and studied medicine, law, literature, and economics in Vienna, Budapest, and London, respectively. The fact that he was in later years addressed as \"Dr. Katscher\" may indicate that he held a doctorate. As a young man, he worked as a correspondence secretary in various businesses, including in a hardware store, a credit union, and a lumber and grain import business in Temeswar, Szegedin, and Vienna (1872-1875), respectively. Katscher traveled extensively throughout Europe from 1875. From 1881-1884 he resided in London, and subsequently lived in Berlin, Budapest, Baden, and in Switzerland.</p> <p>Katscher began to write as a teenager and submitted his writings for publication in serials as early as 1869. Among his many pseudonyms, some of which he later shared with his wife, are Ludwig Koelle, Ludwig Ungar, Albert Kellner, Ludmilla Koelle, Berta/Bertha Katscher, Dr. L. Tschaker, Kosmopolit, Spectator, and Humanus. His earliest writings include poems and humorous short fiction; from 1870 on, he began to submit journalistic commentary pieces to the local press.</p> <p>In his writings, Katscher progressed from literary themes to literary history and travel journalism to sociopolitical topics. His articles were distributed through several syndicates throughout Europe. In addition to his own writings, Katscher also translated works from English and French. He was especially interested in England's literature, society, and industrial and technical achievements. Katscher authored ethnographic essays, particularly on China and Japan. In later years, he largely abandoned his literary efforts, concentrating instead on the social movements of his time, including cosmopolitanism, pacifism, women's rights, workers' rights, postal reform, and socialism.</p> <p>Katscher designed and co-founded several journals, most notably <span class=\"title\">Weltstädtische Plauderspaziergänge</span>, which he co-owned and edited together with O. Felsing. The journal contained gossipy articles about recent events in the European capitals. Other projects included a Hungarian edition of <span class=\"title\">Moderne Kunst</span>, <span class=\"title\">1-Kreuzer-Abendblatt</span>, <span class=\"title\">Eigene Monatsschrift</span>, <span class=\"title\">Internationales Literaturblatt</span> (with M. Levin), <span class=\"title\">Briefkasten-Korrespondenz</span>, and <span class=\"title\">Der Freimüthige</span> (with Romeo Katscher). In 1887, Leopold Katscher assumed all responsibilities and renamed the publication <span class=\"title\">Hauptstädtische Plauderspaziergänge</span>.</p> <p>Beginning in the early 1880s, Leopold Katscher criticized practices in the publishing industry that were at odds with authors' interests. He entered into a series of oftentimes successful litigation aimed at protecting his copyrights, collecting permission fees, and enforcing oral contracts. In 1888, he formalized and expanded on his concerns about copyright protection by establishing and directing the Überwachungsgesellschaft zur Nachdrucksverfolgung, whose express purpose was to trace unauthorized reprints in the European press and take legal action against publishers on behalf of the authors. The society received a percentage of the settlements and permission fees collected. The proceeds in excess of costs were in turn added to a fund, also established by Leopold Katscher, to support impoverished writers and their families, called the Lennertsfonds (after its first beneficiary, the Lennert family).</p> <p>In the mid-1880s, Bertha von Suttner sparked Leopold Katscher's interest in the international peace movement. He had helped Suttner find a publisher for her anti-war novel <span class=\"title\">Die Waffen Nieder!</span>. Katscher served as the executive director of the Austrian Peace Society, founded by von Suttner in 1891, and subsequently held offices in the German and Hungarian Peace Societies and the Swiss Committee for the Preparation of the League of Nations. Beginning in the 1890s, Katscher involved himself increasingly in social reform movements and followed socialist and communist movements attentively. Notably, he showed great interest in the growing women's rights movement and in profit-sharing, and served as the director of the European Committee for Social Reform.</p> <p>Between 1895-1901, Katscher actively pursued opportunities to broker real estate sales and development projects to investors, and to procure funding for a wide range of artistic projects and technical inventions. Renowned for his international network of contacts, Katscher would be approached by parties in need of a loan and would match them with suitable investors for a commission. Some of the negotiations seem to have been of a dubious nature; he was rebuked on several occasions by correspondents for unsolicited interference, for lack of discretion, and for misrepresenting himself as a non-existent client's spokesperson.</p> <p>Leopold Katscher died on February 25, 1939 in Lucerne, Switzerland.</p> <p>His writings include:</p> <p><span class=\"title\">Marienbad</span> (1872) <span class=\"title\">Geschichte der englischen Literatur</span> (1878) <span class=\"title\">Zierden der englischen Literatur</span> (1880) <span class=\"title\">Bilder aus dem englischen Leben</span> (1881) <span class=\"title\">Bilder aus dem chinesischen Leben</span> (1881) <span class=\"title\">Charakterbilder aus dem 19. Jahrhundert</span> (1884) <span class=\"title\">Aus England</span> (1885-1887) <span class=\"title\">Nebelland und Themsestrand</span> (1886) <span class=\"title\">Aus China</span> (1887-1891) <span class=\"title\">Praktische Gedanken eines Schwärmers</span> (1890) <span class=\"title\">Frieden! Frieden! Frieden!</span> (1890) <span class=\"title\">H. Rollets Leben und Wirken</span> (1894) <span class=\"title\">Schuldlos verurteilt!</span> (1894) China (ed. 1901) <span class=\"title\">Bertha von Suttner, ein literarisches Porträt</span> (1903) <span class=\"title\">Japan. Interessantes aus dem Mikadoreich</span> (1904) <span class=\"title\">Mit-, nicht gegeneinander!</span> (1905) <span class=\"title\">Wie es in der Welt zugeht</span> (1905) <span class=\"title\">Russisches Revolutionstagebuch</span> (1906) <span class=\"title\">Das Postwesen einst und jetzt</span> (1906) <span class=\"title\">Interessante soziale Gemeinwesen</span> (1906) <span class=\"title\">Moderne Wunder der Technik</span>(1909) <span class=\"title\">Freimaurerei</span> (1924)</p> <p>Bertha Katscher</p> <p>Berta Katscher was born on June 12, 1860, in Trencín (Slovakia) to Joseph Katscher and Therese Blumgrund. Berta's sister Rosalie was the second wife of Leopold Katscher's father, Ignatz. Berta Katscher grew up with an aunt; in her youth, she lived in Hungary and Turkey. Berta married her cousin Leopold Katscher at the synagogue in Temesvár/Fabrik on May 17, 1881. The couple went to live in London and Berlin; after 1897 they settled in Budapest where they lived until Berta's death. Their letters to each other are written largely in English.</p> <p>Berta Katscher started her literary career at her husband's urging. Initially, she wrote children's books; later she contributed romantic and humorous fiction to magazines in Vienna and translated English literature into German (Hardy, Buckley, and Stevenson among others). Her journalistic pieces treated the peace movement, women's rights movement, social reform, and animal rights. Her fiction is often set in contemporary, albeit romanticized, Austria and displays strong English influences; it has been described as \"popular literature.\"</p> <p>Pseudonyms used by Berta Katscher, many of them shared with her husband, include Berta Kellner, Ludwig Ungar, Ludmilla Koelle, Ludwig Koelle, Albert Kellner, and Bela Keleti; possibly also L. Katscher.</p> <p>Berta Katscher published the serial <span class=\"title\">Novellette</span>, between 1887-1889 in conjunction with Paul Victor Wichmann, and from 1889 alone.</p> <p>Berta Katscher died in Budapest on September 16, 1903.</p> <p>Her writings include:</p> <p><span class=\"title\">Die Kunst, Mensch zu sein</span> (1888) <span class=\"title\">Aus jungen Ehen</span> (1889) <span class=\"title\">Weihnachtsgeschichten</span> (1890) <span class=\"title\">Aus Bädern und Sommerfrischen</span> (1890) <span class=\"title\">Vamberys Leben und Abenteuer</span> (1892) <span class=\"title\">Die beiden Toten</span> (1892) <span class=\"title\">Soldatenkinder</span> (1897) <span class=\"title\">Die Studentin</span> (1900) <span class=\"title\">Fremdartige Geschichten</span> (1902) <span class=\"title\">Die Stychows</span> (1903) <span class=\"title\">Das grosse Los</span> (posthumous, 1912).</p>"}
- custodhist
-
{"value"=>"<p>The Leopold and Berta Katscher Papers were initially donated to the New York Public Library and processed as part of Series R of the Schwimmer-Lloyd Collection. In 2006 they were reprocessed and now constitute a separate collection, while remaining administratively within the Schwimmer-Lloyd Collection.</p> <p>Ten bound volumes were inadvertently left out of the shipment of Katscher's papers to the Schwimmer-Lloyd Collection. In 1949, the Hungarian Government refused to let the papers leave the country, claiming that they constituted Hungarian 'national cultural property.' The volumes were subsequently sent to the Széchenyi Library in Budapest.</p>"}
- scopecontent
-
{"value"=>"<p>The Leopold and Berta Katscher papers consist of correspondence divided into general, publisher, and family correspondence; some diary entries; case files of lawsuits and related correspondence; manuscripts including book manuscripts and journal proposals; scrapbooks of published articles and publisher advertisements, papers of societies and associations; and personal documents such as insurance policies, grade reports, and professional references.</p> <p>The collection is largely in German, with significant portions in Hungarian and English, and individual documents in French, Italian, Yiddish, and Hebrew. While most of the handwritten papers are in old German longhand, a number of them, particularly many of the outgoing letters and most of the diary entries, are in shorthand. Spelling variants of the name Katscher found in the collection are Kacser, Kácser, Kácer, and Kácsa.</p> <p>The papers were collected by Leopold Katscher, who had most of them bound into volumes, and they consequently contain a significantly higher proportion of his writings than his wife Berta's. With the exception of the scrapbooks of published articles, all volumes have previously been disbound and, in most cases, disassembled. Leopold Katscher numbered the items in each volume successively; skipped numbers in the correspondence folders thus indicate letters that have been removed or re-filed. In some cases, those numbers may provide clues for the dating of undated letters.</p> <p>The bulk of the collection consists of correspondence and published works. The correspondence is particularly strong in documenting Leopold Katscher's publishing activities as an author, editor, and translator. Katscher's articles were published in some one hundred serials in Europe and North America; the collection, which includes rejection letters, allows a thorough insight into the publishing landscape of the time and Leopold Katscher's aspirations as a journalist. The correspondence is mostly complete up to 1901 (with some years missing) and includes transcripts in Hungarian from Leopold Katscher's teenage years. The collection contains correspondence by Berta Katscher, including family and publisher letters; her correspondence is particularly strongly represented in select years.</p> <p>The collection contains Leopold Katscher's extensive correspondence with Baroness Bertha von Suttner, who was the first woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize and was a strong influence on Alfred Nobel's decision to establish the prize. The correspondence documents Katscher and von Suttner's joint efforts to establish peace societies throughout Europe and their work on peace talks and publications such as the serial Die Waffen Nieder!</p> <p>Other prominent correspondents include: P.T. Barnum, Victor Bluethgen, John Ingram, Sigmar Mehring, Max Nordau, Rosika Schwimmer (Katscher's niece), Leopold Spitzer, Hippolyte Taine, and Edward Westermark.</p> <p>The collection of Leopold Katscher's printed articles up to 1901 is believed to be complete. Katscher collected his printed works meticulously, and the volumes of his collected articles are intact. Only a fraction of Berta Katscher's published work is present in the collection.</p> <p>While the biographical literature on Leopold Katscher has stressed his involvement in the peace and women's rights movements, his impact on the literary profession has not been noted. The collection contains a number of case files that document Katscher's fierce battles for copyright protection of his and Berta's works, and his calls for professional standards. They show Katscher to have been a vigorous advocate for the protection of intellectual property, for financial security for artists in the form of mandatory license fees and pension funds and for the need for professional organizations of writers and artists.</p> <p>Supplemental sources of information on the Leopold and Berta Katscher papers can be found in the Schwimmer-Lloyd Collection Morgue File (Series N) which contains biographical information about the extended Katscher family, and in the card file index of correspondents, publications, and businesses referenced in the collection.</p>"}
{"value"=>"<p class='list-head'>The Leopold and Berta Katscher papers are arranged in five series:</p>\n<ul class='arrangement series-descriptions'>\n<li><div class='series-title'><a href='/mss/6318#c195510'>Series I. Correspondence</a></div>\n<div class='series-date'>1866-1914</div>\n<div class='series-description'><p>The correspondence consists almost exclusively of incoming letters, with the exception of one box of copies of outgoing letters. Incoming correspondence is subdivided into general correspondence, publisher correspondence, and family correspondence.</p></div></li><li><div class='series-title'><a href='/mss/6318#c196265'>Series II. Writings</a></div>\n<div class='series-date'>1868-1939</div>\n<div class='series-description'><p>Include published and unpublished works by Leopold and Berta Katscher.</p></div></li><li><div class='series-title'><a href='/mss/6318#c196315'>Series III. Case files</a></div>\n<div class='series-date'>1873-1901</div>\n<div class='series-description'><p>The case files include court documents and legal correspondence. They document Leopold Katscher's miscellaneous lawsuits, mostly for slander or copyright violations. Also documented are his activities as the founding director of the Society for Prosecuting Copyright Violations and the Lennertsfonds, and his extensive brokering projects in real estate, development projects, art funding, invention marketing, and as an inheritance solicitor.</p></div></li><li><div class='series-title'><a href='/mss/6318#c196381'>Series IV. Societies</a></div>\n<div class='series-date'>1869-1901</div>\n<div class='series-description'><p>Papers including event announcements, membership documents, and solicitations for talks documenting Leopold Katscher's and, to a lesser degree, Berta Katscher's involvement in various professional and non-professional organizations. Includes those in which they were active, held membership or office, and those which Leopold Katscher founded or proposed. Societies include peace societies, literary and artistic societies, feminist societies, social reform societies, Jewish societies, and others.</p></div></li><li><div class='series-title'><a href='/mss/6318#c196444'>Series V. Personal documents</a></div>\n<div class='series-date'>1868-1895</div>\n</li></ul>\n", "type"=>"arrangement"}
- arrangement
-
{"value"=>"<p>The Leopold and Berta Katscher Papers are organized in the following series:</p> <ul> <li>Series I. Correspondence, 1866-1914</li> <li>Series II. Writings, 1868-1939</li> <li>Series III. Case files, 1873-1901</li> <li>Series IV. Societies, 1869-1901</li> <li>Series V. Personal documents, 1868-1895</li></ul>", "supress_display"=>true}
- acqinfo
-
{"value"=>"<p>Donated by Rosika Schwimmer as part of the Schwimmer-Lloyd Collection.</p>"}
- accessrestrict
-
{"value"=>"<p>Original letters of Bertha von Suttner are available only by written permission of the Curator of Manuscripts. Transcripts and photocopies of her letters are provided in box 20 of the collection.</p>"}
- relatedmaterial
-
{"value"=>"<ul> <li> <span class=\"archref\">Ten volumes of Katscher Archives. Széchenyi Library, Budapest, Hungary.</span></li> <li> <span class=\"archref\">Nachlass Margarethe Faas-Hardegger. Zentralbibliothek Zürich (Contains correspondence between Margarethe Faas-Hardegger and Leopold Katscher).</span></li> <li> <span class=\"archref\">Kohlbach-Bickel Papers. Manuscripts and Archives Division, The New York Public Library (Contains photographs of the Katscher family.).</span></li> <li> <span class=\"archref\">Schwimmer-Lloyd Collection. Manuscripts and Archives Division, The New York Public Library (Contains the papers of related families.).</span></li></ul>"}
- note
-
{"value"=>"<p>Forms part of the Schwimmer-Lloyd Collection</p>", "encodinganalog"=>"500"}
- langmaterial_code
-
ger
hun
eng
- langmaterial
-
{"value"=>"The collection is largely in German, with significant portions in Hungarian and English"}
- processinfo
-
{"value"=>"<p>Processed by Regine Heberlein; machine readable finding aid created by FAKER.</p>"}
- extent_statement
-
16 linear feet (43 boxes)
- date_start
-
1866
- date_end
-
1939
- date_bulk_start
-
1873
- date_bulk_end
-
1914