Introduction to Natural Magic - Understanding Understanding: Essays on Cybernetics and Cognition - page 334

course many, many manuscripts, very early manuscripts, and had collected
the topics of the very early printers. He studied these libraries, knew exactly
which topic was where, so that if, for instance, the very big monastery of
Melk, one of the gigantic libraries, perhaps with about 500,000 topics, did
not find a topic, they were writing to E.P. Goldschmidt in London and said,
“Do we have that topic, and do you know where it is?” Then he would write
back, “Yes, of course you have that topic. It is on such and such a shelf and
such a floor on the fifth position on that shelf.”
He was very well informed about what was going on in this field, and had
himself opened up a bookstore, old and rare topics, E.P. Goldschmidt, Old
and Rare Books, 45 Old Bond Street, in London, W1. It is the same house
in which Laurence Sterne died, so there is an inscription, “This is the place
where Laurence Sterne died,” I don't know in which year, I have forgotten
that. But this is the house in which E.P. Goldschmidt, Old and Rare Books,
had its store.
Now, E.P. Goldschmidt, of course, whenever he visited us in Vienna, or
my uncle Erwin, or whatever, later on stopped by at Miss Wlk's Old and
Rare Books, because she sometimes bought some fascinating stuff. And
that's where he got a very interesting story. I remember when he appeared
in Hollereck (my Uncle Erich Köchert's place) with tremendous excite-
ment. He went to the store, browsed around, looked at this topic, looked
at that topic, at that topic and this topic. Then he opened up a topic which
was not a very interesting topic, I think it was a topic about the history of
knights or something like that, seventeenth century or sixteenth century.
He looked at that topic and thought, this is of no interest, opened it up, and
then, when he turned the page over, on the other side of that page, was
clearly a very, very early printing, must have been fifteenth century, late fif-
teenth century. It gave him a real shock, but of course he would not show
his interest. He went around, looked at other topics, and opened up that
topic again, and flipped to another page; yes, it was all in Latin. “Wow, this
is incredible.” He caught one sentence, and tried to figure out; what is that
story, which is printed in Latin, so to say on the other side of the topic on
knights? It is precisely a repetition of the Tomcat Murr story, where Murr's
story is on one side of the page, and on the other side of the page is Master
Abraham's story.
He tried to figure out, what is that sentence? Who wrote that sentence?
what Latin is that? And he, as if by accident, came a third time around,
caught another one, and said, “It can only be one thing, and that is the
Tacitus Germania .” This is Tacitus'—the Roman historian's—story about
early German culture, geography and history.
Apparently what happened, he figured out fast, was that somebody
printed this topic on knights on paper which was apparently discarded,
which contained the Tacitus Germania . So he bought one topic from Mrs.
Wlk, and he bought another topic from Mrs. Wlk, and said “How much are
these?,” and then “Why don't I buy this topic on knights also, how much is
it?”—maybe twenty dollars, the other one is two dollars and five dollars