Yu Yuen Road’s Book Mart – Where Nazis Bought Books in Wartime Shanghai

This is now really one of a series of posts about the old bookstores of Shanghai. I’ve blogged before about the Japanese-run Uchiyama Bookstore on North Szechuen Road, the French Bookshop on Szechuen Road, and also the Zeitgeist Bookshop on North Soochow Road, a favoured meeting place of Shanghailanders of a communist persuasion. Among others there was also the Book Mart, a favoured bookstore for those of a Nazi persuasion. It operated from around the time of Pearl Harbor through to around 1948 from premises at 286 Yu Yuen Road (and for the really keen – their telephone number was Shanghai: 22924 and their P.O. Box address was 1084).

The Book Mart was run by a woman who claimed to be a Hungarian “Countess” and was handily close by the Hungaria nightclub and restaurant (sorry, I don’t have a picture of the Book Mart but do have an old ad for the Hungaria) which after 1941 became a favourite night time hangout for Nazi officials in Shanghai. The shop specialised in “Antiquariat Bücher und Zeitschriften aus den Gebieten der Geschichte, Soziologie“. A major figure at literary and book events there (of which they apparently had many in the evenings was Baron von Puttkamer, the Nazi’s propaganda chief in Shanghai, as well as pro-Nazi journalist Karl von Wiegand and Nazi magazine publisher Klaus Menhert (of whom more soon). Lectures would be held there – in March 1943 a bunch of Nazis gathered to hear Dr. R. Neumann give a talk of the latest research in the field of racial physiognomy.

Wouldn’t have been my choice for a literary night, or as a handy local bookshop…but there it was all the same. Needless to say, if anyone has a photo????