Description

Paris: Hachette 1880.

The author Benjamin Levy was an educator of Jewish origins, born on the territory of today’s Germany.

He married Euénie Bamberger from a wealthy Jewish family of bankers from Mainz. Her brothers were Rudolph Bamberger (1821 – 1900) and Ludwig Bamberger (1823 – 1899), one of the founders of the Deutsche Bank.

Levy authored several works on languages and literature in French language, mostly connected with German history.

The pamphlet was probably privately commissioned and is today rare. We could only find five examples in the libraries, listed on Worldcat (Kungliga biblioteket, Wissenschaftliche Stadtbibliothek – Mainz, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Bibliothèque interuniversitaire de la Sorbonne, The British Library).

Ernesta Stern

Ernesta Stern (née Maria Ernesta Hierschel de Minerbi, nom de plume Maria Star, 1854 – 1926) born to a Jewish family in Trieste, Austro-Hungary, became one of the central figures of a Parisian literary gatherings of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

In 1874, Ernesta married Louis Stern (1840-1900) from a wealthy and prominent Jewish family of bankers, originating from Frankfurt, after which she moved to Paris, where she started hosting a literary salon in their city palace on 68 rue du Faubourg-Saint-Honoré. Stern’s salons became one of the most prominent intellectual events in Paris, bringing together people, such as Filippo Tommaso Marinetti and Marcel Proust.

Ernesta Stern owed a large private library of works, written by the people visiting her salon and dedicated to her. The books were either bound in elegant Morocco bindings with Stern’s monogram or contained her bookplate. She authored about 20 works herself.

In 1904, Ernesta had commissioned a prominent villa named Villa Torre Clementina, located in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, on the French Riviera, east from Monaco. The villa became a new gathering place for literati and is today protected as a historical monument.

In 1920, Ernesta Stern was awarded the knighthood of the Legion of Honour.

The following three books origin from Stern’s library and were dedicated to her by the authors.

References: OCLC 457357095, 562321484, 186857277. Cf.: Isabelle Havelange, Françoise Huguet, Bernadette Lebedeff, LÉVY Benjamin [note biographique] Publications de l’Institut national de recherche pédagogique. Les inspecteurs généraux de l’Instruction publique. Dictionnaire biographique 1802-1914,1986, 11, pp. 472-473.