Publishing history

We are pleased to offer for sale Adalbert Seitz’s complete work on the Macrolepidoptera of the world, in both the English and German edition. Single volumes are also available.

Dieter Schierenberg BV and Antiquariaat Junk BV are happy to announce that they jointly acquired the remaining stock of Seitz’s works, published by Kernen in Stuttgart. We have a small number of complete sets of the English and German edition as well as a varying number of the single volumes of both editions, including unbound volumes.

It is an extraordinary event that this important publication, which was out of print since the second half of last century, has become available again. For librairies as well as entomologists this is a unique occasion to fill in gaps in their sets or to acquire a complete set.
The English edition especially, was poorly distributed due to 2 World Wars.
The 4 supplement volumes of the German as well as the English edition are great rarities in entomological literature.

The first volume of the German edition was published by Lehmann Verlag in Stuttgart. After publication of this first volume Lehmann sold the project to Alfred Kernen.
Three language editions appeared, German, English and French, of which the last one remained very incomplete and was independantly published by Le Moult in Paris.

During World War I publication stopped and it took several years to resume publication. Alfred Kernen died in 1924 and his son Otto took over the publishing house.
In order to reduce costs Otto established his own lithograph press. By this time chromolithography had become something of an anachronism, incredibly expensive and labour intensive.

During World War II publication stopped. The stock was moved to a church-attic and 2 barns in the Black Forest. In 1944 the publishing house was bombed and destroyed.
Finally in 1954 volume IV of the German edition was completed and published, after this publication was abandoned.

After almost 50 years this immense project came to an end. It remains the largest published work to describe the butterflies of the world.