Open Writing

Yohannes Gebregeorgis may not come to mind when you think “librarian,” but he’s the epitome of the profession’s ideals. In 1981 Gebregeorgis emigrated from Ethiopia to the U.S. as a political refugee, worked his way through school, got a library degree and landed a job at the San Francisco Children’s Library. There, according to a CCN.com article from last January, Gebregeorgis “realized the impact children’s books could make on a child’s sense of wonder and vision.”

His new employer had children’s books in 70 languages, but none in Amharic, Ethiopia’s language. Gebregeorgis won a $1,200 grant to purchase some, but none existed due to Ethiopia’s political and business climates. So he wrote one, “Silly Mammo,” and its profits led to founding Ethiopia Reads, a nonprofit devoted to establishing children’s libraries in Ehtiopia. Gebregeorgis then quit his job, moved back to Ethiopia with 15,000 children’s books, and started opening children’s libraries all across the country. Ethiopia Reads collects new and “gently used” children’s books here and ships 40,000 of them to Gebregeorgis twice a year.

General Rush Hawkins was a different sort of book collector. He was a New York lawyer who organized one of the fashionable Zouave militia units that fought in the Civil War. The original Zouaves were French troops in North Africa, and several Yankee units adopted their dashing outfits, complete with cute little jackets, baggy pantaloons, and fezzes. Despite their get-up, Hawkins’ 9th New York Infantry fought valiantly, losing 63% of their number at the Battle of Antietam alone.

After the war Hawkins prospered practicing law and married Annmary Brown, an art fancier and descendent of the founder of Brown University. Hawkins dabbled in politics and art, but his real passion was collecting books, and not ordinary ones. His goal was to acquire the first two books printed by every printer working before 1501. These books are known as “incunabula,” from the Latin “cunabula,” meaning “cradle, infancy.” 238 printers are known to have worked before 1501, and Hawkins obtained 130 of their first books, now owned by Brown University’s library.

Adolph Hitler was another unusually devoted lover of books. A middling artist when young, the mature Hitler collected a 16,000-volume personal library of all his favorites, like “Don Quixote,” “Robinson Crusoe,” “Gulliver’s Travels,” and “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” Timothy Ryback’s “Hitler’s Private Library: The Books That Shaped His Life” describes the Fuehrer’s literary tastes. And as pointed out by Joseph Stalin, another bibliophile who amassed 20,000 books of his own, “If you want to know about the people around you, find out what they read.”

Ryback outlines the reading program undertaken by the self-educated dictator. The NY Times Book Review of Ryback’s book says that “in the early 1920s, Hitler not only plowed through hundreds of historical and racist books to shore up his ideological bona fides as the leader of the fledgling Nazi Party, but also went to great lengths to construct a canon for it,” ordering big press runs and distributing them to the party faithful.

Interestingly, Hitler’s favorite author was Karl May, perhaps the best selling German author ever. In the late 1800s May wrote adventure novels often set in the western U.S., and his German fans were legion, including eminences like Albert Einstein, Herman Hesse, and Albert Schwietzer. May, a teacher, lost that job after being accused of stealing a pocket watch. This led to the onset of dissociative personality disorder, AKA multiple personalities, one of whom liked minor crimes, which landed May in jail where he began writing, using pseudonyms like Prinz Muhamel Lautreamont, Emma Pollmer, and D. Jam.

Hitler’s pal, Albert Speer, wrote that the dictator often turned to May’s books when stressed. Speer said “they gave him courage like works of philosophy for others or the Bible.” Hitler even had special editions of May’s novels printed and distributed to his troops. Ironically, May’s adventurous protagonists avoided killing, and the underlying message of many of his books is that mankind should live together peacefully. Hitler failed there, but even he would have understood Gebregeorgis’ sentiment when he says people can “imagine everything from books … connections to other cultures, to other people … and to the universe.”