Edge Rewrite
restyle Source code View original
// HTMLRewriter · presentation

This page was redesigned at the edge.

Cloudflare fetched the original article and streamed it through HTMLRewriter to apply an entirely new visual system without rebuilding the source page.

Jump to content

Joseph Knebel

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Joseph Nikolaevich Knebel
Joseph Knebel in the 1900s
CitizenshipAustrian Empire → Russian Empire → Soviet Union
EducationUniversity of Vienna (1876); Vienna Academy of Commercial Sciences (1878)[1]
OccupationsPublisher, bookseller
Organization(s)Grossman and Knebel[2]
TitleCo-owner (1882–1890); owner (1890–1917)
SpouseSofia Markovna Knebel (née Brenner)[3]
ChildrenElena, Maria, and Nikolai Knebel[4]
Parent(s)Nikolai Knebel[5] and Lotti Knebel (née Wechsler)[6]

Joseph (Osip) Nikolaevich Knebel (21 September 1854, Buchach, Galicia, Austrian Empire – 14 August 1926, Moscow, Soviet Union) was a Russian publisher and bookseller. Knebel was born into a Jewish merchant family and received an education in philology and commerce in Vienna.

In 1880, he moved to Moscow, where he initially worked in the book trade before entering publishing. Between 1894 and 1918, his publishing house produced approximately 700 books, albums, brochures, visual materials, and teaching aids. He specialized in art books, popular science works, textbooks, and children's literature. Knebel's largest projects included the multivolume History of Russian Art, the Russian Artists series, and Pictures from Russian History. In the aftermath of the October Revolution, he worked with newly established Soviet publishing and cultural institutions.

Knebel participated in Moscow's artistic and literary associations and supported various cultural initiatives in the late imperial period. His contemporaries and later scholars praised his contribution to the popularization of art and the development of art-book publishing. They described the books issued by his firm as outstanding examples of Russian book art.

Knebel is commemorated by a memorial plaque in Moscow and a museum exhibition in Buchach. Exhibitions and scholarly studies have been devoted to his publishing legacy, and several of the books issued by his firm have been republished in facsimile editions.

Biography

[edit]

Knebel was born into a family of Austrian Jews in Galicia. Little information is available about his family. His father, Nikolai Knebel, was a merchant who had three children and was known for his volatile temper. At the age of thirteen, following his bar mitzvah, Joseph Knebel left the family home after a conflict with his father and moved to Vienna, where, according to Leonid Yuniverg, he may have lived with distant relatives.[7]

Knebel faced considerable hardship as a teenager in Vienna. According to the recollections of his daughter, Maria Knebel, he supported himself by selling newspapers and polishing shoes.[8] He completed the gymnasium curriculum as an external student and enrolled in the philology faculty of the University of Vienna. During his studies, he developed an interest in books, languages, and the visual arts.[9]

His daughter later recalled that, by the end of his life, Knebel could speak fourteen languages.[10] After graduating from the university in 1876, he entered the Vienna Academy of Commercial Sciences, graduating in 1878.[1] He then spent two years studying bookselling and publishing practices in several European countries.[11]

In 1880, Knebel moved to Russia and settled in Moscow. He initially worked at the Moscow branch of the Riga-based bookselling and publishing firm I. Deubner and soon became the branch's manager.[12] From late 1882, he and a friend and business partner operated an independent bookselling business under the name Grossman and Knebel.[13] The firm expanded into publishing in the mid-1890s.[14] Between 1894 and 1918, Joseph Knebel's publishing house issued approximately 700 books, albums, brochures, printed illustrations, and teaching aids.[15]

Knebel died of a heart attack in Moscow on 14 August 1926. A notice of his death appeared the following day in the Soviet press. He was buried at Vvedenskoye Cemetery in Moscow. At the request of the board of the Tretyakov Gallery, the State Publishing House, and Soviet cultural figures, including Igor Grabar, Vladimir Nevsky, Konstantin Stanislavski, Otto Schmidt, and Alexey Shchusev—the People's Commissariat for Education granted his widow, Sofia Knebel, a personal pension for life.[16]

Publishing and bookselling activities

[edit]

In November 1882, Knebel and his friend Pavel Grossman, a Baltic German, opened the Grossman and Knebel bookshop in Moscow. It was located in a building belonging to the Petrovsky Trading Lines Partnership apartment buildings [ru]. The shop specialized in literature and publications on art in Russian and foreign languages, with German-language books and periodicals accounting for a significant portion of its stock. In 1885, a subscription library for books and periodicals was established at the shop. After Grossman died of tuberculosis in 1890, Knebel became the firm's sole proprietor but retained its original name in memory of his business partner.[17]

The firm began issuing catalogues of the bookshop’s available stock in 1883[18] and, from the early 1900s, also published catalogues devoted specifically to its own publications.[19] Knebel entered the publishing business in 1894–1895,[14] while continuing to sell books and periodicals. Among the earliest works published under his direction were writings by Henrik Ibsen, Hermann Sudermann, and Grigory Machtet.[20]

[edit]

In 1895, a group of young Moscow scholars approached Knebel and asked him to publish their popular science works. He agreed, and from 1896 to 1900 published the popular science series Questions of Science, Art, Literature and Life, which comprised 23 installments.[21] Its contributors included Ivan Zabelin, Mikhail Menzbier, and Kliment Timiryazev.[22]

From the late 1890s, the publication of textbooks and visual teaching aids became one of the principal areas of Knebel's work. A "School Museum" was established at the publishing house and its warehouse. Over the course of his career, Knebel issued more than 120 visual aids. The best known was the series Pictures from Russian History (1908–1913), compiled by the educator and historian Sergey Knyazkov [ru], who also wrote its explanatory texts. The series comprised 50 scenes from Russian history. Its illustrations were created by artists including Alexandre Benois, Ivan Bilibin, Apollinary Vasnetsov, Dmitry Kardovsky, Sergey Ivanov, Boris Kustodiev, Yevgeny Lanceray, Nicholas Roerich, and Valentin Serov.[1][23] From 1907 to 1910, Knebel also published the educational journals Visual Instruction and Natural Science and Visual Instruction.[24]

Fine art publications

[edit]

One of Knebel's principal achievements as a publisher was his production of publications on the visual arts. He recruited the artist and art historian Igor Grabar to oversee this area of his publishing program. Knebel's largest publishing project was the multivolume History of Russian Art, edited by Grabar and published between 1910 and 1916. Its contributors included Ivan Bilibin, Apollinary Vasnetsov, Nikolai Wrangel, Ivan Fomin, Alexey Shchusev, and other authors. The original publication plan was never fully completed, as production was interrupted by World War I, the Russian Revolution, and the Russian Civil War.[25]

Grabar also edited the illustrated monograph series Russian Artists, which included books on Valentin Serov, Mikhail Vrubel, Isaac Levitan, Andrei Ryabushkin, and Mikhail Nesterov. Although conceived as an extensive series, it was discontinued after its first five volumes because of the war and revolutionary events.[26] The series Russian Cities—Cradles of Art was likewise not continued: its only volume, Boris Eding [ru]'s Rostov Veliky and Uglich, was published in 1913.[27]

Albums containing reproductions of paintings from the collections of the Tretyakov Gallery, the Rumyantsev Museum, and the Russian Museum occupied a special place in Knebel's publishing programme. These publications were accompanied by texts by Ilya Ostroukhov, Sergey Glagol [ru], Nikolai Romanov [ru], Alexandre Benois, and other authors. The reproductions were printed in Vienna using the photogravure process and distributed in separate installments.[28]

Children's books

[edit]

Knebel's books for young children, intended to introduce them to the world of high art, became a significant phenomenon in the artistic life of pre-revolutionary Russia. The publisher believed that, even if a child quickly forgot a book's text, its colours and pictures would remain in memory for a lifetime.[30] The illustrators of these books were, for the most part, well-known Moscow and Saint Petersburg graphic artists associated with the Mir Iskusstva movement, including Dmitry Mitrokhin, Georgy Narbut, Elena Polenova, Nikolai Ulyanov, Mstislav Dobuzhinsky, and Aleksei Kravchenko. The publisher grouped these books into a "Gift Series", which was highly praised by contemporaries, including Benois. In order to devote substantial resources to these artistically produced editions, he also issued a large number of books in a simpler, more conventional format typical of the time. In total, Knebel published about 400 editions for younger and middle-grade children.[31][32]

Guidebooks

[edit]

The publication of guidebooks became another important area of Knebel's activities. In collaboration with the A. A. Levenson Printing Partnership [ru], he published the detailed 600-page guidebook Western Europe: A Tourist's Companion (1900), modelled on the internationally renowned travel guides issued by Baedeker. Edited by Sergey Filippov, it went through six editions and contained information on 800 cities, towns, and resorts, as well as maps, plans, and tables.[33]

Knebel subsequently published two specialized series. The first, Cosmopolitan (1902–1912), comprised six booklet-length volumes, including The Russian in England, The Russian in Italy, and The Russian in Finland. The second, Guidebooks to Western Europe (1911–1912), included separate volumes on Germany, France, and Belgium. They were compiled by Alexey Nenashev from his personal observations, information provided by acquaintances, and Russian and foreign publications.[34]

Expansion of activities and the Leipzig exhibition

[edit]

In 1906, at the invitation of the management of the A. A. Levenson Printing Partnership [ru], Knebel, who was a major shareholder in the company, began overseeing its publishing activities. In collaboration with the Levenson printing house, he published an edition of Alexander Pushkin's The Song of the Wise Oleg, illustrated by Viktor Vasnetsov.[34]

In 1914, Knebel's publications were exhibited at the International Exhibition of Printing and Graphic Arts in Leipzig. In the Russian section entitled "The Modern Illustrated Book", 31 of the 214 publications on display had been issued by Knebel. The section "Drawings for the Modern Book" featured original illustrations by Narbut and Mitrokhin for four of his children's books.[35]

Anti-German pogrom and reorganization of the firm

[edit]

During the anti-German pogrom in Moscow on 28 May 1915, Knebel's bookshop, publishing house, and warehouse were severely damaged. According to his own calculations, the losses exceeded 500,000 rubles. He described the destruction of original paintings and illustrations, as well as manuscripts, as the most serious and irreparable loss. In 1917, the Moscow Special Committee for Assessing Losses Caused by the Disturbances of 27–29 May 1915 granted Knebel only partial compensation, amounting to approximately 40 per cent of the sum he had claimed.[36]

Faced with a shortage of funds and seeking to restore his publishing operations to their former scale, Knebel reorganized the firm in early 1917 as the joint-stock company "I. Knebel Publishing and Printing Partnership in Moscow". He owned 80 per cent of its shares, while his close associate Vladimir Altshuler and the art historian Bernhardt Buchheim served as co-founders.[37]

Early years of Soviet rule

[edit]

In 1918, Knebel was invited to the Council of People's Commissars for a meeting with Vladimir Lenin, during which he was instructed to organize the nationalization of his company. Its stock of books and visual teaching aids was transferred to the People's Commissariat for Education, while its printing and lithographic works were transferred to the printing department of the Moscow Council of National Economy.[citation needed]

From 1919 to 1926, Knebel collaborated with Soviet cultural and educational institutions, including the State Publishing House of the RSFSR, the publishing house of the People's Commissariat for Posts and Telegraphs, and the People's Commissariat for Education. In 1920, the new authorities invited him to manage the printing and lithographic works that had formerly belonged to him.[1][38] In 1923, he participated in the establishment of the joint-stock company "Visual Aids".[39] In 1925–1926, he established and headed the publishing department of the Tretyakov Gallery.[40]

Public activities

[edit]

Knebel participated in Moscow's artistic and literary public life. From 1888, he was an amateur member of the Moscow Society of Art Lovers and took part in its principal activities until 1912.[41]

In 1901, Knebel became a contributing member of the Moscow Literary and Artistic Circle [ru], an association of writers, artists, actors, and other cultural figures. Although he initially had no voting rights, he was admitted as a full member of the circle in 1907. He helped develop its library, to which he also donated publications issued by his firm.[42]

Knebel supported artistic and cultural initiatives in Moscow. In 1896, he participated in an exhibition commemorating Dmitry Rovinsky, lending rare publications from his collection. In 1899, he supplied materials for an exhibition marking the anniversary of Alexander Pushkin, including watercolours by Vardges Sureniants for an edition of The Fountain of Bakhchisaray, as well as copies of the edition itself.[43]

Assessments

[edit]

The architect and academician Alexey Shchusev noted Knebel's "undeniable achievements" in popularizing art and scientific publications and described him as an "outstanding figure" in the field.[16] The art historian and artist Igor Grabar called Knebel a "shining exception" among publishers, stating that he did not pursue commercial interests alone and often acted contrary to them in the service of an ideal, particularly the popularization of art.[44]

The art historian Alla Rosenfeld noted the high quality of the printing and illustrations in Knebel's children's books. In her assessment, he was the first Russian publisher to recognize the particular importance of artistic book design for young children and enlisted the leading graphic artists of his time for this purpose.[30] The literary scholar Yuly Kagarlitsky recalled that he had learned about the history of art through Knebel's publications. According to Kagarlitsky, Knebel knew how to take pleasure in art and sought to share that pleasure with others. The art historian and professor at the Moscow Polygraphic Institute Yefim Adamov stated that the traditions established by Knebel proved fruitful and that his publication series and formats laid a foundation for modern books. The literary and art historian Ilya Zilberstein emphasized Knebel's major contribution to the promotion of Russian artistic culture, describing the books he published as "masterpieces of Russian book art".[45] The literary scholar Irakly Andronikov recalled using many of Knebel's publications from childhood and learning from them how to examine paintings by great artists. He described Knebel as a "major figure" in his roles as publisher, editor, initiator, and advocate of Russian art.[46]

Family

[edit]
Knebel with his wife and son in the 1920s

Knebel's wife was Sofia Markovna Knebel (née Brenner; 1870–1942), who came from a Moscow Jewish family that had converted to Lutheranism. Her father was killed in a fire at a factory owned by the family, and she helped raise her younger brothers and sisters. She met Knebel in 1892, and he proposed marriage during the first year of their acquaintance, but she initially refused. Three years later, she agreed to marry him on the condition that Knebel also convert to Lutheranism. He accepted the conversion as a necessary formality.[47]

The couple had three children. Their elder daughter, Elena Osipovna Knebel (1896–1980), worked for Soviet publishing houses. Their younger daughter, Maria Osipovna Knebel (1898–1985), became an actress, theatre director, drama teacher, Doctor of Arts, and People's Artist of the RSFSR. Her memoir An Entire Life includes recollections of her father. Their son, Nikolai Osipovich Knebel (1900–1946), worked as a graphic designer and art editor for several Moscow publishing houses. He was wrongfully arrested in 1940 and rehabilitated in 1943. Shortly afterward, he began working for the Iskusstvo publishing house; he died while on a work assignment in Germany.[48]

Legacy

[edit]
Leonid Yuniverg, The Publishing World of Joseph Knebel (Jerusalem: Philobiblon, 1997), cover

Two exhibitions devoted to Knebel's publications were held in Moscow. The first, marking the 120th anniversary of his birth, took place from December 1974 to January 1975 at the House of Children's Books of the Detskaya Literatura publishing house. The second, commemorating the 125th anniversary of his birth, was held from January to February 1980 in the premises of his former bookshop. Catalogues were issued to accompany both exhibitions.[49] On 14 January 1980, a memorial plaque dedicated to Knebel was also unveiled at the former bookshop; it was designed by the architect Yuri Voskresensky.[49] In the early 1980s, an exhibition devoted to Knebel was established at the local history museum in Buchach, the city of his birth.[50]

Knebel's legacy has been studied by bibliographers and historians of publishing. In 1982, Leonid Yuniverg defended a dissertation entitled The Publishing and Bookselling Activities of I. N. Knebel at the Moscow Polygraphic Institute. In 1997, he published the monograph The Publishing World of Joseph Knebel.[51]

In 1989, twelve children's books originally issued by Knebel's publishing house were reproduced in facsimile and collected in the volume Children's Books of the I. N. Knebel Publishing House. That same year, the Izobrazitelnoye Iskusstvo publishing house issued a set of postcards entitled Pictures from Russian History: From the I. N. Knebel Edition, 1908–1913.[52]

Notes

[edit]

Explanatory notes

[edit]
  1. ↑ The cover of one of the first books on Russian fine art published by Knebel. The publication commemorated the 25th anniversary of the Society for Travelling Art Exhibitions and was the first monograph devoted to the work of the Peredvizhniki.[29]

Citations

[edit]
  1. 1 2 3 4 Юниверг. Кнебель 2009.
  2. ↑ Юниверг 1997, p. 26.
  3. ↑ Юниверг 1997, p. 240.
  4. ↑ Юниверг 1997, p. 251—254.
  5. ↑ Юниверг 1997, p. 10.
  6. ↑ Юниверг 1997, p. 12.
  7. ↑ Юниверг 1997, pp. 9–13.
  8. ↑ Кнебель 2021, p. 9.
  9. ↑ Юниверг 1997, pp. 14–15, 18.
  10. ↑ Кнебель 2021, p. 10.
  11. ↑ Юниверг 1997, pp. 15–16.
  12. ↑ Юниверг 1997, p. 18.
  13. ↑ Юниверг 1997, pp. 21–26.
  14. 1 2 Юниверг 1997, p. 31.
  15. ↑ Юниверг 1997, p. 6.
  16. 1 2 Юниверг 1997, p. 238.
  17. ↑ Юниверг 1997, pp. 18, 21–30.
  18. ↑ Юниверг 1997, p. 27.
  19. ↑ Юниверг 1997, p. 143.
  20. ↑ Юниверг 1997, pp. 31–36.
  21. ↑ Юниверг 1997, p. 38.
  22. ↑ Юниверг 1997, pp. 38–39.
  23. ↑ Юниверг 1997, pp. 144–164, 352–354.
  24. ↑ Юниверг 1997, p. 146.
  25. ↑ Юниверг 1997, pp. 286–287.
  26. ↑ Юниверг 1997, pp. 97–112, 323–324.
  27. ↑ Юниверг 1997, pp. 93–94, 323.
  28. ↑ Юниверг 1997, pp. 52–72.
  29. ↑ Юниверг 1997, p. 50.
  30. 1 2 Rosenfeld 2014, p. 173.
  31. ↑ Юниверг 1997, pp. 113–142.
  32. ↑ Власов 1996.
  33. ↑ Юниверг 1997, pp. 45–46.
  34. 1 2 Юниверг 1997, pp. 40–48.
  35. ↑ Юниверг 1997, pp. 172–186.
  36. ↑ Юниверг 1997, pp. 202–204.
  37. ↑ Юниверг 1997, pp. 207–208.
  38. ↑ Юниверг 1997, pp. 214–220.
  39. ↑ Юниверг 1997, pp. 221–232.
  40. ↑ Юниверг 1997, pp. 234–238.
  41. ↑ Юниверг 1997, p. 248.
  42. ↑ Юниверг 1997, pp. 248–249.
  43. ↑ Юниверг 1997, p. 249.
  44. ↑ Экштут 2015.
  45. ↑ Юниверг 1997, p. 258.
  46. ↑ Юниверг 1997, p. 260.
  47. ↑ Юниверг 1997, p. 242.
  48. ↑ Юниверг 1997, pp. 251–254.
  49. 1 2 Юниверг 1997, pp. 255–268.
  50. ↑ Юниверг 1997, pp. 255–266.
  51. ↑ Юниверг 1997, Summary.
  52. ↑ Юниверг 1997, pp. 266–268.

Bibliography

[edit]
  • Rosenfeld, Alla (2014), "Between East and West: The Search for National Identity in Russian Illustrated Children's Books, 1800–1917", in Blakesley, Rosalind P.; Samu, Margaret (eds.), From Realism to the Silver Age: New Studies in Russian Artistic Culture, DeKalb, Illinois: Northern Illinois University Press, pp. 168–188, ISBN 978-0-87580-703-4{{citation}}: CS1 maint: ref duplicates default (link)
  • Vlasov, Viktor G. [in Russian] (1996), "Кнебель Иосиф Николаевич" [Joseph Nikolaevich Knebel], Стили в искусстве: Архитектура, графика. Декоративно-прикладное искусство. Живопись, скульптура: словарь: в 3 т. [Styles in Art: Architecture and Graphic Arts, Decorative and Applied Arts, Painting and Sculpture: A Dictionary in Three Volumes] (in Russian), vol. 2: Словарь имён: А—Л (Dictionary of Names: A–L), Saint Petersburg: Kolna, p. 424, ISBN 5-88737-005-X, OCLC 605179863
  • Knebel, Maria O. (2021), Вся жизнь: учебное пособие для СПО [An Entire Life: A Textbook for Secondary Vocational Education] (in Russian), Saint Petersburg: Lan; Planeta Muzyki, ISBN 978-5-8114-6130-1; ISBN 978-5-4495-0930-7
  • Yuniverg, Leonid I. [in Russian] (2009), "Кнебель Иосиф (Осип) Николаевич" [Knebel, Joseph (Osip) Nikolaevich], Большая российская энциклопедия [Great Russian Encyclopedia] (in Russian), vol. 14, Moscow: Great Russian Encyclopedia, p. 331, ISBN 978-5-85270-345-3, archived from the original on 22 February 2023
  • Yuniverg, Leonid I. (1997), Издательский мир Иосифа Кнебеля [The Publishing World of Joseph Knebel] (in Russian), Jerusalem: Philobiblon, ISBN 965-222-809-5
  • Ekshtut, Semyon A. [in Russian] (8 September 2015), "Пётр настоящий" [The Real Peter], Rodina (in Russian)
[edit]

Wikimedia Commons logo Media related to Iosif Knebel at Wikimedia Commons

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Joseph_Knebel&oldid=1366212270"