The Art of Collection Reduction

What do you get if you multiply a second generation professor emeritus with a bookworm?

The answer is, of course, a posthumous legacy of a few well-sorted libraries' worth of books in all relevant locations. If the heirs, the colleagues, the assistants, the friends and the friends of the friends have already adopted the main library at home and can't find enough space for all the books in the office ... then distant relations of all the parties mentioned get to feast on the remains.

Amongst the annals of clinical physiology, toxicology, thesis papers of students and countless works about snakes (arguably a subgroup of the toxicology section), we all found more than enough works of interest - lots of Strindberg (fortunately in German), Hesse, Grass, Döblin, Kästner (nothing new but good to have), ... and the odd Third Reich anatomical atlas (2nd ed 1943) as a sad curiosity for the family collection, only to be (insufficiently?) balanced by quite a few French novels (now to take the time and brush up on that language), many published in those same years.

By restraining ourselves with all our might we managed to stay within the bounds of one taxi trunk, and all four vultures still comfortably squeezed in.