Today, we want to talk about one of our project's three men who collected Icelandic books and manuscripts. We promise: all three of them were extraordinary characters.
A merchant from Cologne, Heinrich Erkes (1864-1932) took an interest in Iceland around 1900. He started to learn Icelandic, and made progress very fast. In fact, he became so fluent that he was able to publish the first German teaching book in modern Icelandic. During his lifetime, he went several times to Iceland, where he made a lot of friends and traveled the country.
Although he was no learned geographer, he published scientific geographical articles, and he indeed became so respected in this field that he was made a Corresponding Member of the Geographical Society in London. He also was a founding member of the German Society of the Friends of Iceland (Gesellschaft der Freunde Islands). Furthermore, Icelandic literature was a subject he burnt for, and thus, he started to collect Icelandic books, both old and new. - You will hear more about that, soon.
Further reading:
Erkes, Heinrich: Kurzer deutsch-neuisländischer Sprachführer. Dortmund: Ruhfus, 1906 (read it here: https://archive.org/details/kurzerdeutschne00erkegoog).
For a list of all the various publications by Heinrich Erkes, see https://www.ub.uni-koeln.de/e7902/e13460/e13736/e24807/erkesbibliographie_ger.pdf
Jucknies, Regina. Heinrich Erkes (1864-1932): Kölner Kaufmann, Kenner Islands und kluger Bibliothekar. Vorträge in der Universitäts- und Stadtbibliothek Köln 1. Cologne: Universitäts- und Stadtbibliothek, 2010.
