Otto Bettmann

[2] His parental home was across the road from the Thomaskirche, the church where Johann Sebastian Bach worked as cantor and music director from 1723 to 1750.

As a child of Jewish parents, he was unaware that going to a synagogue on Friday and singing the praises of Christ on Sunday was somewhat unusual and continued to participate until his voice changed.

His title, "The Emergence of Professional Ethics in the German Book Trade of the Eighteenth Century" addressed the issue of copyright legislation.

Looking forward to expanding his business, Hinrichsen planned to open an office in the United States and Otto thought he would manage that branch but was told that he was not aggressive enough to handle the work.

In 1935, he immigrated to the United States from Nazi-controlled Germany, "arriving with a few personal effects and two steamer trunks bursting with photographs, line drawings, engravings, and art reproductions.

debunking the wrongly nostalgic view of the Gilded Age, describing in vivid detail hazards of pollution, dangerous traffic, low-quality housing, rural hardships, serf-like labor conditions, rampant crime (police corruption endemic), unhealthy food or drink, lack of public health (helped by horrible sanitation problems), brutal education methods with grindingly difficult lessons, slow traveling and even perils in leisure activities which menaced people.