On 4 September 2023, Murray G. Hall passed away in Vienna at the age of 76 following a brief but serious illness. Murray G. Hall served as president of our Society from 2002 to 2022 and, from 1999, was editor of the *Mitteilungen der Gesellschaft für Buchforschung* and the “Buchforschung” series. Hall was born in Winnipeg, Canada. After studying German language and literature in Canada, Freiburg im Breisgau and Vienna, he was awarded his doctorate in Vienna in 1975 on the subject of ‘Animals and Animal Motifs in Robert Musil’s Prose Works’. From 1973, Hall worked as a member of Adolf Frisé’s Musil Edition. In 1978, his book “Der Fall Bettauer” was published by the newly founded Löcker Verlag, sparking a lasting interest in the murdered novelist and sexual reformer Hugo Bettauer.
His two-volume “Österreichische Verlagsgeschichte 1918 bis 1938” (History of Austrian Publishing 1918 to 1938), published in 1985, became a standard work, as did his “Geschichte des Zsolnay-Verlags” (History of the Zsolnay Publishing House, 1994). The fact that Murray G. Hall also examined the ‘Aryanisation’ of the industry earned him considerable hostility. Given his focus on the history of publishing during the Nazi era, it was only natural that Murray G. Hall should also become a pioneer in provenance research and lead an FWF project examining the history of the Austrian National Library during the Nazi era. Together with Christina Köstner, he authored the comprehensive monograph ‘allerlei für die Nationalbibliothek zu ergattern…’: An Austrian Institution during the Nazi Era (2006). A work that proved particularly forward-looking, not least for the development of the Austrian Literary Archive, was the “Handbook of the Estates and Collections of Austrian Authors” (1st ed. 1992, 2nd expanded ed. 1995), co-authored with Gerhard Renner.
In recent years, Murray G. Hall’s particular interest lay in the history of German-language publishing houses in Bohemia between 1918 and 1945. His final publication, “Der Volk und Reich Verlag, Prague: On the History of the Book Trade and Publishing in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia 1939–1945”, published in 2021, was also devoted to this largely unexplored topic.
Alongside his academic work, Murray G. Hall worked initially as a freelancer and then as a permanent member of staff at Radio Österreich International. Although he was denied a post at the Institute of German Studies at the University of Vienna, as a highly popular external associate professor he supervised numerous doctoral theses and dissertations on the subject of book studies. Since his retirement, a gap in research has emerged in this area, as it appears that no one at the University of Vienna’s Department of German Studies now feels responsible for this field.
All too often, people are described as irreplaceable. Yet in the case of Murray G. Hall, this statement is entirely justified. His comprehensive knowledge of 20th-century Austrian literary and publishing history, his expertise in source material, and his research—conducted with a critical mind, impressive diligence and a detective’s intuition, and grounded in vast experience—will not be easily matched, and will be sorely missed by the Austrian academic community. The Society for Book Research in Austria, too, owes an immeasurable debt of gratitude to Murray G. Hall, its tireless and imaginative chairman, author and editor. The ceremony to confer honorary membership upon him, which had been planned for the autumn, has now been cancelled. Yet Murray will forever hold a place of honour in the history of our Society.
Johannes Frimmel