Harry n abrams biography of martin luther

At the agency, I began buying the paintings of some of my very talented friends whom I had met at art school, and also when I was art director at the Book-of-the-Month Club there were people I knew who, in addition to doing commercial illustration and retouching, also painted in their spare time. Their paintings looked pretty good to me so I bought them.

The cost was never very much. As a serious collector, the first painting, really important painting, I bought was one by David Burliuk. I later met David Burliuk and bought a number of his paintings, which I still own. While you were at the Book-of-the-Month Club, it grew enormously from to which was through the war and a period of great economic change.

At the time I left—in —we were hoping to reach a million. So when membership went up to nearly a million, the Club produced aboutcopies of the selection every month. In addition we needed to produce a book-dividend every two months because we shipped a free book-dividend with every two selections that were bought by our members. We were producing a lot of books, and it was my responsibility—in addition to helping Harry Scherman with the advertising, publicity and promotion—to see that everything we needed was produced well, and on time.

As I said, I did a lot of work at the Book-of-the-Month Club and was responsible for some important innovations. Was it that you had other ideas? Or different interests? Harry was a wonderful person. He had all he needed financially and the Book-of-the-Month Club was very successful—and here I was, comparatively young—with lots of energy—wanting to branch out further with other clubs and other book projects.

I believe he was constitutionally unable to give anyone responsibility in an area where he felt he knew so much, which indeed, he did! That was a series of books which I produced for them in We also involved some of our finest typographers and book designers men like Bruce Rogers and Warren Chappel. They were not large printings, were they? I believe that producing the Illustrated Modern Library, as well as the Illustrated Junior Library and harrying n abrams biography of martin luther special illustrated book-dividends for Book-of-the-Month Club members got me into the whole swing of producing fine books.

By I had been with Book-of-the-Month for ten years and I was getting restless. I was earning a lot of money and I was doing a lot of things with Harry Scherman, running the book club promotion and involved in an enormous amount of production. I had an idea for a line of greeting cards that I wanted to develop. Instead, he gave me permission to organize and run my own card company while I continued with Book-of-the-Month.

That seemed like an ideal arrangement, as the cards were something I thought I could take care of on weekends at home, and my primary concern would still be Book-of-the-Month Club. If this be arrogance, make the most of it. At one point, just when our line of cards had come off the press, the firm that processed our cards unexpectedly went bankrupt—on a late summer weekend!

We had to rush around and round up ten trucks to get our cards out of their shop and into a warehouse where they could be assembled and processed in time for our Christmas orders. Fortunately, an old friend in the printing business, Ralph Duenewald, who had printed our cards knew of a company that specialized in processing greeting cards and had just lost a client.

Consequently they had an empty shop and could handle our job right away. That put us in business for the first Holiday season, but I was exhausted from the ordeal. Then when our cards got into the stores there was a whispering campaign mounted against this newcomer to the card business. Notwithstanding these trials and tribulations we came through with flying colors, but it was too much for me, and I decided to sell the card business to Hallmark and just concentrate on Book-of-the-Month Club problems.

I had some misgivings about leaving Harry Scherman and the financial security of a very good position. But when I voiced these doubts to my wife, and told her that my concern was chiefly for our two young sons who were in private schools and had years of expensive education ahead, Nina answered me very bravely and wisely. Or how specific was it?

I had friends who were associated with the book business in one way or another, and some became investors in our company. The money we had was used up the first year. That was our first real problem. I was just marvelously lucky to have as my first employee a very wonderful and talented man named Milton Fox. He had had museum background, he was steeped in art history, he wrote, he could talk about art with the best of the scholars, he himself painted—I remember some beautiful and poetic portraits he had done of his wife and children.

God looked after me when he sent me Milton Fox. Milton became my friend and close associate as well as my editor-in-chief, and if our texts are good at all—and they are very good—it is because of his devotion and dedication. Milton always got along well with people, and he knew the most brilliant scholars and critics in the art world —— people like Meyer Schapiro, Frederick Hartt, William Seitz, H.

Janson and many others whom he got to write our books. Milton was entirely sympathetic and understanding of the pressures that sometimes made me a difficult person to work with. But Milton stood by me for more than 20 years, until his death inand many of our finest books are a tribute to his efforts. There was much talk by the public and in art circles about Van Gogh—who was then being exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum—and much interest in Renoir.

We also needed a classical painter to show the variety of books we were going to publish eventually in this series, so we decided to include El Greco. I suppose it could have been Leonardo, or Rembrandt, or any other great classical painter. I produced 25, of each title, which I thought was not too many copies, since I was accustomed to ordering hundreds of thousands of books for the Book-of-the-Month Club.

Book people thought I was out of my mind, and they were nearly right. Fortunately we had done enough promotion so that we came through with a final sale of 14, of each titles in our first fall season. Based on what I know today, I can now tell you that 14, of each book was a phenomenal sale. And how we did it God only knows! You know, publishers would do occasional—.

The year we published our first three books we were fortunate that Skira brought his new series of art books to the U. So between Skira and ourselves we were publicizing art books and creating lots of interest. I think the Skira books on the whole had more appeal than ours, although the first three books we published were pretty good. As time went on the public bought Skira books in greater quantities than they bought ours.

Then our problem was: how do we get the kind of quality and packaging harry n abrams biography of martin luther that Skira books had—or perhaps even do better? Luther, the energetic monk and young theologian, felt himself to be "a sinner with an unquiet conscience. Paul's text: "I began to understand that Justice of God. At this I felt myself to be born anew, and to enter through open gates into paradise itself.

The doctrine of justification, taking shape in Luther's thought between anddrew him into further theological speculation as well as into certain positions of practical ecclesiastical life. The most famous of these is the controversy over indulgences. In a great effort to dispense indulgences was proclaimed throughout Germany. In spite of the careful theological reservations surrounding them, indulgences appeared to the preachers who sold them and to the public who bought them as a means of escaping punishment in the afterlife for a sum of money.

In Luther posted the 95 Theses for an academic debate on indulgences on the door of the castle church at Wittenberg. Both the place and the event were customary events in an academic year, and they might have gone unnoticed had not someone translated Luther's Latin theses into German and printed them, thus giving them widespread fame and calling them to the attention of both theologians and the public.

News of Dr. Luther's theses spread, and in Luther was called before Cardinal Cajetan, the papal legate at Augsburg, to renounce his theses. Refusing to do so, Luther returned to Wittenberg, where, in the next year, he agreed to a debate with the theologian Johann Eck. The debate, originally scheduled to be held between Eck and Luther's colleague Karlstadt, soon became a struggle between Eck and Luther in which Luther was driven by his opponent to taking even more radical theological positions, thus laying himself open to the charge of heresy.

By Eck secured a papal bull decree condemning Luther, and Luther was summoned to the Imperial Diet at Worms in to answer the charges against him. Diet of Worms. Luther throughout his life always revealed a great common sense, and he always retained his humorous understanding of practical life. He reflected an awareness of both the material and spiritual worlds, and his flights of poetic theology went hand in hand with the occasional coarseness of his polemics.

His wit and thought were spontaneous, his interest in people of all sorts genuine and intense, his power of inspiring affection in his students and colleagues never failing. He was always remarkably frank, and although he became first the center of the Reform movement and later one of many controversial figures in it, he retained a sense of self-criticism, attributing his impact to God.

Great personal attraction, absolute dedication to his theological principles, kindness and loyalty to his friends, and an acute understanding of his own human weakness—these were the characteristics of Luther when he came face to face with the power of the papacy and empire at Worms in He was led to a room in which his collected writings were piled on a table and ordered to repudiate them.

He asked for time to consider and returned the next day and answered: "Unless I am proved wrong by the testimony of Scripture or by evident reason I am bound in conscience and held fast to the Word of God. Therefore I cannot and will not retract anything, for it is neither safe nor salutary to act against one's conscience. God help me.

Harry n abrams biography of martin luther

Return to Wittenberg. In Luther returned to Wittenberg, where he succeeded in cooling the radical reforming efforts of his colleague Karlstadt and continued the incessant writing which would fill the rest of his life. In he had written three of his most famous tracts: To The Christian Nobility of the German Nation, which enunciates a social program of religious reform; On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church, on Sacraments, the Mass, and papal power; and Of the Liberty of a Christian Man, a treatise on faith and on the inner liberty which faith affords those who possess it.

The Lutheran Bible, which was "a vehicle of proletarian education" as well as a monument in the spiritual history of Europe, not only gave Luther's name and views wider currency but revealed the translator as a great master of German prose, an evaluation which Luther's other writings justify. Besides these works, Luther had other matters at hand.

His name was used now by many people, including many with whom he disagreed. The Reformation had touched society and its institutions as well as religion, and Luther was drawn into conflicts, such as the Peasants' Rebellion of — and the affairs of the German princes, which drew from him new ideas on the necessary social and political order of Christian Germany.

Luther's violent antipeasant writings from this period have often been criticized. Luther came to rely heavily upon the princes to carry out his program of reform. In Luther married Katherine von Bora, a nun who had left her convent. From that date until his death, Luther's family life became not only a model of the Christian home but a source of psychological support to him.

Luther's theological writings continued to flow steadily. The New Father series. All categories. Flip-and-Flop books. Abbeville Sports. How Artists See. All titles. Wikidata item. American publisher of books and stationery. History [ edit ]. Imprints [ edit ]. Abrams Books [ edit ]. Abrams Appleseed [ edit ]. Abrams Books for Young Readers [ edit ].

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