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HERMAN C. KOENIG

Herman Charles Koenig (November 28, 1893- July 6, 1959), an Electrical Engineer by profession and an avid collector of first editions and fantasy literature, was a friend of the fantasy writer H. P. Lovecraft (1890-1937), and a member of his literary circle, known as the Kalem Club (the last names of the early members started with the letters K, L or M).

Koenig was born in Hoboken, N.J., the last child in the family of Herman Koenig (listed as “Henry König” in the 1870 U. S. Federal Census) and Anna Poggenburg, German immigrants. He graduated magna cum laude from Cooper Union and worked as the laboratory manager at Electrical Testing Laboratories in New York City.

A lifelong fan of fantasy fiction, he contributed articles to early “fanzines” in this field and published his own fanzine The Reader and Collector, printing twenty issues from 1938 to 1946.

He collaborated with the writer August Derleth (1908-1971), one of Lovecraft’s many correspondents, who founded the publishing company Arkham House to print Lovecraft’s work after his death in 1937. Koenig was one of the few people who printed some of Lovecraft’s writings during the latter’s lifetime. Based on a long letter Lovecraft had written to Koenig in 1936, he privately printed in mimeograph form the essay,Charleston. It included photo copies of Lovecraft’s sketches of architectural highlights of the South Carolina city.

Koenig is also acknowledged for his efforts in fostering in the United States the writings of British author William Hope Hodgson (1877-1918), circulating copies of Hodgson’s books to Lovecraft and others. When Arkham House reprinted four of Hodgson’s novels (The House on the Borderland and Other Novels) in 1946, Derleth asked Koenig to write the Introduction.

REFERENCES:

Biancheri, Eugene J. (2004). Herman Charles Koenig: Reader and Collector:  A Biographical Sketch With an Annotated Bibliography. privately printed.

Joshi, S. T. and Schultz, David E. (2001). An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia. Westport, CT, Greenwood Press.