A condensed version of the following interview, conducted by Abhishek Bhuwalka, was first published in the Second Quarter Philatelic Literature Review.

In Frankfurt am Main, Germany’s international hub and one of the most important of all European cities, sits the small shop (in his own words) of Burkhard Schneider who exclusively deals in philatelic literature of the world with a special emphasis on European titles. European literature, especially in German, French and Italian, is very rich; English-speaking philatelists will be surprised at the breadth and depth of publications in these languages that can be found by visiting Burkhard’s website, philabooks.com. It is no exaggeration to say that Burkhard is the most “international” of all philatelic literature dealers; he is also perhaps the biggest dealer in the world in terms of the number of titles that he has on sale at any one point in time. I eagerly await his weekly listings of new material in the hope that I can snare something on my want list before anyone else! (Figure 1)

Last year when I purchased a couple of Burkhard’s old philatelic literature price lists, I became curious about the history of his business. He told me that he will reveal all if I interview him. I had a feeling that he had a lot of stories to share and I readily agreed. I sent him a questionnaire and in return received the first part of his biography (Note 1). Later, we communicated over WhatsApp and Burkhard answered many of my remaining questions over voice chats.

The reader will notice that the most interesting parts of the interview are firstly Burkhard’s own personal reminiscences and secondly his stories about his important library purchases from some of the greatest European philatelists. His memories are fascinating and never-ending; unfortunately, I had to set limits lest the interview intended for this journal turn into a book!

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Burkhard, please tell me about yourself.

I was born in 1957 in Freiburg in South Baden. My parents had a large carpentry workshop, which took on factory dimensions during the boom of the 1960s and also due to the early automation that my father introduced.

I have two daughters: Hanna, who is 19, and Elisabeth, who is 15. Hanna is at the University and Elisabeth is finishing high school. They both help me from time to time at the office. Hanna is interested in history and is very good in English; she also speaks a bit of French, Italian and Swedish. At my shop she can do almost everything I can apart from describing the books. Elisabeth helps me with packing and is an expert in all forms of modern communications!

Were you interested in stamps and stamp collecting before you started dealing?

I began to collect stamps when I was about seven years old; my two older siblings had small collections which they gradually gave to me. My parents rented rooms in our big house to two Norwegian students who soon became the best suppliers for my stamp collection. Letters were the only way to keep in touch with home in the mid-1960s and so several letters came from Norway every week. Oddly enough, when I visited them in Norway 30 years later, the two former students still collected stamps and gave me a bag of stamps in their old tradition!

When I was ten years old my mother drove once a week into the city and I received packets of stamps from all countries. I had five albums, neatly separated into continents. At the age of 10, I bought my own first stamps. By the age of 11 or 12, I knew all the countries of the world by heart.

We visited my grandmother in Basel, Switzerland regularly every four weeks until she died when I was 14; at that time, I often went to the Spalenberg where several stamp shops and art galleries were situated. There was an old-style shop with a very friendly older lady, Frau Watzlawick, who kindly did not show this 10-year-old lad the door. There I bought my first secondhand catalogue, the three-year-old 1964 edition Zumstein Catalogue of Switzerland, for only CHF 4 (Figure 2). 

In the meantime, I had already discovered two stamp shops in Freiburg. I became a regular customer of Frey’s shop in the Bursegang. I also had some exchange partners; sometimes stamp exchanges would be held on Fridays after work in my father’s company. This is how I acquired my first British colonial stamp. At the age of about 13 I stopped collecting stamps and, together with two of my best friends, started collecting science fiction books.

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Figure 1. Burkhard Schneider on a Carinthia ‘Alm’ (alpine pasture) in Austria. Photo taken by an Austrian friend.

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Figure 2. Burkhard's first stamp catalogue. Courtesy of Muenchner Philatelistische Bibliothek.

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Figure 3. Booth card for the IBRA ‘99 World Stamp Exhibition.

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Figure 4. Price list of ‘world-wide stamps’ from 1986. Note Burkhard’s affiliations of various stamp organisation like APHV, ASDA, PTS, etc.

So how did you get back into stamps?

While studying economics in Frankfurt am Main, I got back into collecting stamps through a fellow student. She had taken out her old collection at Christmas and it was a big “spark,” and not only with the stamps. During the college holidays I had a lot of time and I spent a total of five months in Southern Africa on two longer trips. In Johannesburg I got to know Lutz Heffermann, an Austrian who at that time published his South African Stamp Colour Catalogue, the first color catalogue for the South African countries. I sent him many, many stamps once I was back in Germany and my stamp business began at the age of 21.

You once told me that you used to visit many philatelic shows when you were younger. How many of your contacts were made at such shows?

The very first exhibition that I visited was Naposta 1978 in Frankfurt. My enthusiasm grew and I would go next to the exhibition at Earls Court in London in 1980. I was able to make contacts on longer journeys through the U.S. and Canada, and later through East Asia and Australia. At the Internationale Briefmarken Ausstellung (IBRA) in 1999, I got to know Manfred Amrhein (Note 2) from Costa Rica and John Taylor, an American specialist in German philately who took over the distribution of my books in the United States for a while (Figure 3). I made many interesting contacts thanks to my friend and colleague Fred Muche of Frankfurt. Through him I was also able to access the circle of leading international postal historians such as James Van der Linden, Leo de Clercq, Dick (Richard) Winter, Paolo Vollmeier and many others. I was a regular in stamp shows until about 10-15 years back. 

Via the internet I’ve made countless interesting contacts worldwide. Among them are two Englishmen: Philip Robinson, who kindly helps me translate text into English and John Jackson, who lets me know all of the interesting books published in the U.K.

Tell us more about your stamp dealing business.

The early 1980s were the boom years in the stamp trade and at the age of 26 I opened a large stamp shop in downtown Frankfurt. There were then still about 35 stamp shops, some of them in the best locations. At that time, I probably had about 400 stock books and hundreds of new issue subscribers (Figure 4). Apart from material of the British colonies, a lot of People’s Republic of China material passed through my hands; as far as I know, in the early 1980s, hardly anybody but me seriously acquired those in Germany. Through a customer who bought Saudi Arabia material from me, I expanded my material on offer to the entire Middle East and I began to receive visitors from this region. Furthermore, many thematic collectors were interested in my large overseas stock. 

But the boom didn’t last much longer; I sold everything in 1987 at good prices and went back to the university to study education and history for another four years.

I read somewhere that you used to work with dyslexic children.

I worked for about 15 years in the afternoons as a learning therapist with a focus on dyslexia. This left me with a lot of free time and I started buying some larger collections again in 1993 and my first library in 1996. Various office locations followed until I settled in 2004 in the Luisenplatz, where I still am today (Figure 5).

How did you move to dealing in philatelic literature?

I was collecting British Commonwealth and the United States and I needed specialized literature for myself. I realized that other collectors had the same difficulty in getting books pertaining to their interests; this was in the 1980s when one needed to write to publishers or authors by letter to request books, which used to take a lot of time, then pay by bank transfer, which was very expensive.

I published my first offering of literature in the 1980s: literature from Vera Trinder in my special field of interest, the British colonies. In 1995, my first real literature list was published. This was followed by a total of 25 printed catalogues and numerous supplementary lists up through May 2003. In the beginning I was also regularly present with my stock of literature, stamps and covers at shows.

When did you start dealing on the internet? What was your experience in the initial days? How did you come across the domain name philabooks.com since you used to deal under your own name earlier?

In 1997, I started making a database of information so that I could have all the special sections on my website that I have now. I always wanted an English name for my web domain, since I wanted it to sound “international” and appeal to people from across the world. The name philabooks.com was available at that time and I took it. My website went online in 1998.

Around 15 years ago I hired a computer engineer named Michael Lenke to do the programming for my website. He is a philatelist specializing in Poland’s 1919 Krakow overprint issues and has recently published a book on that subject. He understands philately, which many internet programmers do not.

Your website says that you have almost 15,000 titles in stock. Is all of your stock on the internet? If not, what percentage do you think is not? What kind of titles are these?

Almost my entire stock is on the internet. When I buy surplus stock I often sell them in bulk to other dealers and get rid of it. I do not want too much lying around because I have a nice little shop (60 square meters of floor area and 3.5 meters high) in a nice area and space is a problem. So I always focus on what is important and what is not. Of course, when I make large purchases I rent extra space (Figure 6).

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Burkhard’s storefront, Luisenplatz.

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Figure 6. Inside the shop which measures 60 sq. meters (around 650 sq. ft.) with books arranged neatly.

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Figure 6. Inside the shop.

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Figure 6. Inside the shop.

Further, from my experience in stamp dealing, I list everything that I think may be important or useful to a collector, not just items which are top sellers or which have sold quickly in the past. Sometimes I have sold books after 10 or 20 years of listing! 

What is the language breakdown of your stock? What percentage is in German, English, other European languages, etc.?

Quite a bit of my book stock is in German. I have a lot of books in English and then some other European languages. I have customers from all over the world, perhaps as many as 90 countries.

Do you fulfill want lists when you do not have certain titles in stock?

Yes, I accept want lists from my regular customers. I put the names in my database so that the books they want are on my buying list.

What is your typical day like? Do you have any employees in your business? Many times when I have written to you, you have mentioned that you have “immer viel zu tun!” (always much to do).

On a typical day I start between eight and nine in the morning. I check my emails for orders. There is always too much work and hence I need to split it with my helpers. Either my helpers (Note 3) or I get the ordered books out and write the invoices (I used to have three or four helpers but now I have two; due to Covid-19 I am currently working alone). Meanwhile, I may be answering telephone calls or sorting books. I describe the new books added to my stock so that my helpers can photograph and scan them and upload them on my website when they are available.

Some 15-20 years ago, I used to work on Saturdays listing books on eBay, but I do not do that anymore. I mostly stopped selling on eBay in 2002 or thereabouts, though I did occasionally list bulk items for a few more years.

You not only stock secondhand out-of-print books but also some of the latest titles from across the world. Why do you do this when most of your contemporaries do not? Is it possibly because the margins are not that great? The only other dealer I can think of who does so is Leonard Hartmann.

I believe that the most important person to me is my customer and his collecting interests and what he needs for his collection. Hence I buy any important new books that I think may be useful. The margins are, of course, not so large most of the time.

I personally like books and am interested in seeing them; if I find them good, I order more. I’m still interested in philately and I like to read about the latest research.

You also stock titles from other European countries. How do you manage to describe them? How many languages do you know?

Apart from my native German, I speak English and I have knowledge of French and Italian. I see the contents of a book and its printing before stocking it. My database of 35,000 titles also helps. One needs to have a good knowledge of stamps of the world, which I do because I am a collector and have had many earlier dealings in stamps and postal history.

I see that most literature dealers do not stock long runs of journals. Do you? Why or why not?

Buying journals is a problem since space is limited in Europe and it becomes costly to stock them. Further, they are time-consuming to sort through. When I started, there were collectors who wanted to buy long runs of certain journals. This kind of collector does not exist anymore. From a supply perspective, there are not many libraries which have long journal runs in them. The one library that I purchased with many journals was the “Taunus” library in 2000-01. Just last week I sold 18 volumes of the German magazine Der Philatelist; it had gone unsold for almost 20 years and I had to offer the lot at a reduced price of €300 just to make some space!

So you would prefer not to buy journals?

I would buy specialized journals as well as journals pre-1950 or so. I prefer bound runs; they not only look nicer but sell for better rates because binding is expensive. I would buy unbound journals only if they are complete runs or if they are interesting enough.

You must have a list of your own favorite philatelic literature titles. Which are those?

My favorite titles include many of the limited bibliophile hardbound works. I like the Crawford catalogue [Catalogue of the Philatelic Library of the Earl of Crawford, K.T. and subsequent editions by the British Library and Global Philatelic Library] as it is the key for philatelic literature. Another is Katalog der Bücherei des Reichs-Postamt, Band 1: Bücher [Catalogue of the Reich Post Office library, Volume 1: Books], published in Berlin in 1899. The German post office did much research on worldwide postal matters and had an immense library; this book helps me with early postal history items.

Your website has a page with details about the philatelic libraries you have purchased. You seem to buy a few libraries every year! Do the sellers come to you or do you know them well enough to ask them if they would be willing to sell?

As of March 2020 I have purchased 87 notable libraries! Many of the important philatelic literature collectors are my customers and I am in close contact with them. They give my name to their family or friends and many times after they pass away, I get a call to pick up their libraries. I also work in close cooperation with several auction houses in Europe and the U.K. (Figure 7). 

The important thing is that I am in the middle of Europe. I can drive to Switzerland, Italy, Austria, Denmark, Netherland, Belgium, France, Lichtenstein, or Luxembourg to collect the libraries. Of course, if they are far away, they will have to ship them to me.

Tell me about some of your important and memorable library purchases.

In 1995 I made my first price list for secondhand philatelic literature.

Through my contacts I got access to the Garratt-Adams library (Note 4). I went to his castle in Wales in the spring of 1997 and met the young owner of the castle, Adams’ grandson (Note 5). They still had a lot of books there (Note 6). Some were stored in the garden house and some in places which were not so good for the books. Many had rusty staples or stitching – that’s typical for many of the books in Adams’ library. I purchased handbooks and auction catalogues that I was interested in. 

In 1999 I bought the journals of the Berliner Philatelisten-Club, which was one of the most famous early philatelic societies in Germany.

In 2000 I bought the Wolfgang Diesner library. Diesner is almost forgotten today but played an important role in organizing the postal history symposium at Internationale Briefmarkenbörse in Sindelfingen. He did a lot of postal history research, especially on transit mail. Diesner was one of the most international of all German philatelists at that time and had a lot of English literature from all over the world.

In the same year I was involved with the sale of a big Latin America estate and I got the “La Plata” library. This library was of a Swiss collector who had made around 40 trips to all countries and islands of Latin America to collect philatelic material including books. There were a lot of Spanish and English books in it.

One of my most important purchases was the “Taunus” library in 2000-01. The owner of this library was Hans-Herrmann Mette. Mette was probably the most important philatelic literature collector of his time in Germany and he had one of the largest private libraries. He was a book binder with very good craftsmanship. He bound all his journals personally; it was like a hobby for him. Not only that, but he also did the binding work of many other philatelists and hence was well-known in the community. I got in contact with him when I started dealing in philatelic literature and we became friends quickly. He used to sell his surplus books to me and in turn bought what he did not have. He died suddenly when he was about 60. I bought his library, which is my largest purchase to date. It occupied three vans and included about 10,000 different titles as well as duplicates and long runs of journals. It also had rare postal publications as well as auction catalogues: for example, those of Gilbert & Köhler sales in Paris, including the G. Koch German States auction catalogues in three parts which sold in 1908. I have handled that catalogue only once!

In 2002 came a purchase from a Swiss postal library of duplicate philatelic journals from 1875 onwards. During World War II, Switzerland was neutral and hence they had received almost all journals from abroad which are very difficult to find otherwise. Especially interesting was the Asia Stamp Journal published in 1939/40. This journal was brought out by refugees from Vienna, Austria, after the Anschluss (Note 7) in 1938, who settled in Shanghai. At that time, there were only three cities open to Jewish refugees without passports and one of them was Shanghai.

In 2006, I bought the “Raketen” (rocket) library of Alfred Klein. Apart from books, the collection contained two rockets! The first was one of the six rockets made by Dr. Gerald Zucker, who experimented with sending mail through that medium. The other rocket was used to send propaganda leaflets from East to West Germany (Figure 8).

An interesting purchase in 2007 was the Prof. Dr. Juergen Settgast library. Settgast was a well-known Egyptian expert and his library contained many rare auction catalogues from about 1930 onwards. I think he took his catalogues with him to his archaeological excavations. To prevent insect infestation in his books, he used to put moth powder on them, which brought about an unpleasant odor. However, the material was too interesting to throw away. One of my customers with knowledge about chemicals said that I should put it in the oven at 50 degrees Celsius but I did not do that for fear of getting divorced! I eventually put them in a room with an open window for almost two years until the odor left.

In 2009, I purchased most of the library of Paolo Vollmeier, RDP. Vollmeier is one of the giants in postal history research and one of the big names in philately. I visited him in Lugano in southern Switzerland, near Italy. He had a lot of Italian and French books and worldwide postal history books. He was an international philatelic judge and had a lot of exhibition catalogues as well. He was interested in forgeries and was the editor of the first six issues of Fakes Forgeries Experts, the annual journal on forgeries. He used to do a lot of research in archives on the postal history of Italy and Switzerland; his wife told me how once when they were on a holiday he spent the entire day in that city’s archives!

Besides the Taunus library, the other big library I purchased was the “Ried” library. In 2011, I received a call from a gentleman who had moved abroad and liked his new home so much that he did not want to return to Germany. He had some philatelic literature stored in an old barn about 50 kilometres from Frankfurt. Since the owners wanted the barn space back, he asked me to go and check the books out. When I arrived, I realized that it was an immense collection; later I counted 330 banana cartons (Note 8). There was a lot of cheap stuff but there were some interesting items too. I sold most of them to another collector but retained 50 cartons containing the better titles (Figure 9).

How do you break down libraries? Do you sell only the important titles and sell the balance in auctions or collections?

Sometimes I know the buyer for particular items since I have his want list in my database. For certain books, in the case that I already have enough copies or I am just not interested, I know a few people to whom I can sell in bulk.

Do you maintain contacts with other literature dealers?

I have had contacts with most major philatelic literature dealers in the world. Generally, we are not competitors but rather friends since there are so few of us in this part of the philatelic world as compared to others (Figure 10).

How do you compare philatelic literature now, against, say, 15-20 years back?

I would say that the focus on philatelic literature has grown. You have the internet which has dropped the price of books, and some say digitization has, too. In my opinion, digitization does not play a big role in philately because collectors have grown up with books and do not want to sit on the computer the whole day. They like to have the book in front of them to study and then put back on the shelf.

Yes, the internet has caused a drop in book prices, but not so much for philatelic books as general ones. These are under pressure mainly because of the high printing numbers. Furthermore, a friend of mine who is in the general book trade told me that details of all books are now online. Collectors compare prices on the internet and sellers are encouraged to keep the prices down, even for books which have very limited availability. As far as philatelic literature is concerned, you have limited printing numbers, say, 150 copies or less; maybe the English ones print more but not the German ones. Hence prices will stay stable and even go up; just compare prices of modern stamps with literature!

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Figure 7. Enclosures laid in ex-libris books purchased by customers.

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Figure 8. Damaged propaganda mail rocket from the Alfred Klein collection.

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Figure 9. Banana cartons containing the “Ried” library.

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Figure 10. Dr. Manfred Amrhein during a 2007 visit.

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Figure 11. First part of a rare publication in eight parts.

Which titles in the recent years have been the most popular? 

We have two types of collectors. One is a book collector who wants all unusual, good-condition, numbered, and limited edition books in his collection. This person buys his books by the Crawford catalogue. The other collector is someone who wants books to improve his knowledge, and is often an exhibitor or advanced postal history collector.  Very often they want to have all important books pertaining to their collecting area. 

Some of the books which have been most popular in recent years are British Letter Mail to Overseas Destinations 1840-1875 by Jane and Michael Moubray (1992, with a revised edition in 2017), Understanding Transatlantic Mails by Richard Winter (in two volumes, published 2006 and 2009), Marques de Passage by James Van der Linden (1993), and The Postal History of Mongolia by Wolfgang Hellrigl (2011).

Some German titles that I have sold many copies of are Privatpostkarten-Katalog Band I, Deutsches Reich von 1873 bis 1945 by Hanspeter Frech (3rd edition, 2003), Österreich Handbuch und Spezialkatalog by Dr. Ulrich Ferchenbauer  (7th edition, 2008), Chronik der Post in Frankfurt am Main by Karl Heinz Kremer (2008) of which I am the sole distributor, and Zusammenstellung der Portosätze für die Correspondenz mit dem Ausland, Taler-Währung 1846-1875 by Werner Steven (1985) which was published by me (Note 9).

Which title have you wished you handled but never managed to?

I never got to handle all of Die Postwertzeichen der Russischen Landschaftsaemter by Carl Schmidt (Figure 11). The book is about the Russian Zemstovs and was published in eight parts. It is very rare. Only some parts have passed through my hands but never all of them.

How long do you wish to continue dealing in literature?

I am 63 now and have no plans of retiring at present. But if in the years to come someone comes around who likes books and is prepared to take over my business and do a good job of it, I would be willing to sell and retire.

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Acknowledgments: I would like to thank Burkhard for patiently answering my questions. Any feedback or information can be shared to my email at abbh@hotmail.com or on my twitter handle @abhuwalka.

The full list of Burkhard's philatelic library purchases is below.

Notes: 

1. Burkhard’s “biography” is actually his autobiography, written in German and then translated into English by the U.K. philatelist, Philip E. Robinson. A guest blog by Robinson on his love of translating German texts can be found on my website at philaliterature.com.
2. Dr. Manfred Amrhein is one of the world’s foremost experts on philatelic literature. His magnus opus, the four-volume Philatelic Literature, is the best source of information on philatelic literature of all countries of the world up until their publication. Due to his reclusive nature, we are not sure but think that the fifth and last volume has not yet come out; it was intended to cover the United States, Great Britain, and the former British Colonies including India (Author’s email correspondence with Dr. Amrhein, February 2014).
3. Burkhard’s word for his part-time employees.
4. A detailed article by Robert Danzig on the Garratt-Adams library can be found in “The Story of the H. Garratt-Adams Philatelic Library” published in The Philatelic Literature Review (Vol. 43 no. 3, 3rd Quarter 1994).
5. Danzig records the name of Garratt-Adams’ grandson as Caius Hawkins.
6. The Garratt-Adams library was so large that it was sold in three auctions by Huys-Berlingin of Liechtenstein between 1994 and 1997. Some parts were also sold by the auction house Schwanke & Sohn in 1999 and 2002.
7. The Anschluss refers to the annexation of Austria into Nazi Germany on March 12, 1938.
8. Each of these banana cartons measured 24 x 54 x 39 centimeters.
9. The English equivalent titles of these four German books are, respectively, “Private Postcard Catalog Volume I, German Empire from 1873 to 1945,” “Austria Manual and Special Catalog,” “Chronicle of the Post in Frankfurt am Main,” and “Compilation of Postage Rates for Correspondence with Foreign Countries, Taler Currency 1846-1875."

Libraries purchased by Burkhard Schneider over the last 25 years

While this list is on Burkhard’s website, it is being reproduced here (with some corrections) to ensure that it is preserved.