The Cold Storage Club

Abstract

Only amateurs collect books in order to read them. The professionals wrap their investments in archival plastic and put them away in the safe. Idea: a syndicate of pros, old friends and rivals, buy a defunct meat-processing plant and use its refrigeration rooms to store their books. Reconstruct the minutes of the Cold Storage Club (2005).

On 10 May 1933, the day of the book-burning in Berlin, it poured with rain. It is tempting to read this chance event as divine disapproval, but worse conflagrations have passed without the heavens shedding a tear. In any event, the wood that stood ready to fuel the fire on Opernplatz was damp and had to be doused with petrol before it would catch.