The Catalogue, an addendum to The Autograph Collection, is an analysis of the set of autograph books collected by Karl Buchberger.

Karl opened his bookshop in the Hotel Imperial in 1926 in Vienna

and maintained a well-respected establishment until 1938, when his tenure was terminated. Hitler’s racial laws impacted Karl’s family because of his wife’s Jewish ancestry and when Hitler made the Hotel Imperial his headquarters in Vienna, Karl understood that he and his family would have to leave Europe.

The autographs that he collected from the guests and visitors to his bookshop were his prized possession, and the four books that remain contain over three hundred signatures. The anecdotes about the signees that were gathered by using ANNO, the electronic newspaper archive at the Austrian National Library, broadened both Karl’s and Vienna’s stories.

During this research process, the author uncovered and highlighted other intriguing stories, including Thomas Mann’s feud with his ex-publisher, Marion Anderson’s boycotted concerts and the navigational intrigues of conductor Wilhelm Furtwangler as a Nazi cultural icon.