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An important addition to Exilmuseum’s library: the collection of the son of the legendary exiled publisher Fritz Landshoff. Before his death in 2021, his son Andreas Landshoff bequeathed the library with over 600 books to Stiftung Exilmuseum, including first editions by exile publishers Querido, Allert de Lange and Bermann-Fischer.

Until 1933, Fritz Landshoff was co-owner of Gustav Kiepenheuer Verlag. After fleeing to Amsterdam from the Nazis, he was invited by Emanuel Querido to establish an exile division at his publishing house, which soon published the most important German exile authors: including Klaus and Thomas Mann, Anna Seghers, Lion Feuchtwanger, Oskar Maria Graf, Hermann Kesten, and Irmgard Keun. After the German invasion in 1940, Fritz Landshoff was able to flee via London and Mexico to the United States, where he founded a new publishing house together with Gottfried Bermann Fischer. Exile publishers provided many writers whose books were banned in Germany with a modest income in often precarious circumstances.

His son Andreas Landshoff grew up with his mother in Germany and only learned about his father after the war. Andreas Landshoff also became a publisher, working at Fischer-Taschenbuchverlag, Kiepenheuer and the most important American art publisher Abrams Books. As of the 1960s, he lived in Amsterdam, and had an encyclopedic knowledge of the history of exile and kept the memory of his father alive.

His own words about Exilmuseum: “Such good news that soon (and it’s high time) finally a museum about exile is being built in Berlin, indeed THE museum about exile!”