he presented to his father on his birthday. This
tendency developed into a visual acuity organized
with Bachian precision that later served as the basis
for Bettmann’s career as the well-tempered conduc-
tor of a repository of imagery.
At the age of 20 Bettmann enrolled in Leipzig
University and majored in cultural history and art.
In Germany at that time it was accepted practice to
travel from university to university to study under
important professors. With this intent, Bettmann
travelled to Freiberg where he studied palaeontol-
ogy, history and philosophy under Edmund Hus-
serl, the famous theorist and proponent of
phenomenology; the study of the psychic aware-
ness that accompanies experience and that is the
source of all meaning for the individual. Bettmann
would admit to never understanding Husserl’s
teachings then or later.
Bettmann received his Ph.D. in 1927 at the age of
24 from the University of Leipzig for his disserta-
tionThe Development of Professional Ideals in the
Book Trade of the Eighteenth Century(1927). After
travelling to England, France, and Italy to pursue
his post-doctoral work, he was offered employment
with the music publisher C.F. Peters, still in busi-
ness today. At C.F. Peters he was in charge of
maintaining the music archive that, to Bettmann’s
delight, held many original scores and manuscripts
by some of Europe’s greatest composers.
He traveled to Berlin, which was then at the
height of the modernist movement. Enthralled
with the city and its flourishing cultural life, Bett-
mann was determined to return there to live. In
1932 after receiving a diploma in Library Sciences
from the University of Leipzig, he was offered and
accepted the post of Rare-Book Librarian at the
Prussian State Art Library in Berlin. Once there, he
mounted a popular exhibit entitledThe Book in Art
(1933). Organizing and mounting the exhibition
gave him the idea of a picture archive organized
by subject. He soon began taking 35 mm photo-
graphs of the paintings, prints, and illustrations
from the rare books that were part of the Library’s
extensive collection.
In 1934, with Hitler’s rise to power, all Jews that
held state jobs were relieved of their posts. At the
instigation of relatives in Cincinnati who offered to
sponsor him, Bettmann decided to immigrate to
America. He left Germany with two steamer trunks
of the images he had been collecting and a vague
idea of being able to do something with such a
collection. On November 8, 1935 Bettmann, with
his background in the arts and his Ph.D., was
welcomed by the immigration authorities in New
York City.
With $200.00 from his Ohio relatives, Bettmann
rented a one-bedroom apartment and began seeking
and acquiring more images. He was very impressed
with the accessibility of the New York Public Library
system and began searching through the various
libraries’ holdings throughout the city in search of
more imagery. His arrival in the United States had
coincided with the rise of the picture magazines such
asLifeandLook. Although an academic by training,
his enthusiasm for collecting images and disseminat-
ing them gave him the impetus to become an imagery
entrepreneur. By literally ‘pounding the pavement’
with the images he had brought with him and col-
lected since his arrival he began peddling his wares
door-to-door. He soon received his first commission
to supply 300 photographs for a book titledThe
HistoryoftheWorldinPictures(circa 1937). Bett-
mann continued to add images to his archive by
photographing old copies of Harper’s and other
magazines and by salvaging images from street ven-
dors, flea markets, and used booksellers.
Bettmann had a ‘grand plan’ that gave shape to
the archive as it was growing. He needed, above all,
to develop a retrieval system for the images that he
had,andtobeabletoeditpicturesbeforehecol-
lected them, rather than after. His discerning eye, his
acquaintance with the past, his awareness of the
present, his thoughts on the future, and his Bach-
like sense of organization allowed him to analyze
images and place them within a context that could
be easily accessed. Bettmann gathered a myriad of
images, and not only straight photographs, but
photographs of graphics from printed sources. He
developed a multiple cross-referencing system so that
they could be quickly retrieved for different uses
when the occasions arose. By being aware of the
present and the developing fads of the future, Bett-
mann was able to anticipate what images would be
called for and have them in the archive ready to be
extrapolated. His aim was to provide needed ima-
gery to his clients within 24 hours of their request
and charged a sliding fee-scale. His business flour-
ished because he filled a niche even as the niche was
developing. Using his uncanny sense of what was
needed in the commercial world of visuals, his
archive developed the niche as much as the niche
developed his archive.
In 1936 he met his soon-to-be wife Anne Gray, a
widow with three children, who complemented his
professorial aura with her all-American forthright-
ness and practicality. They remained happily mar-
ried until her death, just short of their fiftieth
wedding anniversary in 1988.
Once the archive was on its feet and Bettmann
had staff that understood its complexities andCORBIS/BETTMANN