É. Apor (ed.): A Scheiber-könyvtár katalógusa / Catalogue of the Scheiber Library.

Menahem Schmelzer: Scheiber professzor szeretett könyvei

Scheiber's Beloved Books* Alexander Scheiber had three loves: books, people and learning. This combination is not as common as it seems. Many scholars are recluses, and many bibliophiles are familiar only with the externals of their prized books. Scheiber had the rare talent of combining his various loves into one harmonious bland. He was thoroughly familiar with the contents of his books; his memory of what was contained in them was phenomenal and legendary. Not only did he know exactly what books were in his library and where they were located (often the books were shelved in double rows), he was able to quote references by heart, giving page and even footnote numbers. He also possessed a tremendous storehouse of oral lore concerning Gelehrtengeschichte, biographies of scholars, their masters, colleagues or disciples, their bibliographies and countless anecdotes about them. And what a gifted recounter he was! The mixture of exact and encyclopedic knowledge, an almost total recall of even the tiniest details, the many humorous, lively and sometimes spicy tidbit kept his audience spellbound. For Scheiber, these feats of memory and the entertaining telling of stories served to promote and spread learning and knowledge. The pursuit of scholarship and research by themselves, were not, however, the ultimate goals of his activity. Although it is true that his scholarship was as objective, critical and without prejudice as is humanly possible, his was also a deep and unwavering belief in the moral and ethical force of the great heritage of the past. He had an imperative inner need to help transmit the wisdom and tradition of the ages to generations to come. He knew that only through the values preserved in the teachings of the traditions of the past could the community and the individual be sustained and guided. In the most difficult of times, Scheiber worked hard, and in a very subtle and clever way, sometimes even at considerable danger to himself, to keep these messages alive and to convey them to his listeners and students. At a time when one-sided indoctrination was the order of the day, Scheiber managed to keep the doors open a crack for a fresh and revitalizing breeze from different ideologies and philosophies. One of the ways in which this was achieved was by Scheiber's ongoing effort to obtain and discuss books and articles that were published abroad. The arcane and abstract nature of many of these publications served Scheiber's purpose excellently; as these works were not suspected of being subversive, he could talk and write about them innocently. The result was that he succeeded in keeping alive the awareness of interconnectedness with the outside world, despite sharp and hostile political divisions in order to fulfil these goals, Scheiber pursued with uncommon avidity and alacrity the expansion of his li*My grateful thanks to Evelyn Cohen for her most helpful stylistic suggestions.