A Brill Calendar: June 22

Few men embody transition in Brill’s past as strikingly as Johannes Tiberius Bodel Nijenhuis.

In 1821 Bodel entered the firm he inherited from his mother, Magdalena Henriëtta Luchtmans’s side. The male Luchtmans dynasty had already become extinct upon the death of Samuel III Luchtmans in 1812. Bodel’s education prepared him adequately for this task in the 18th century manner: his paternal grandfather earmarked Johannes for it. After attending Leyden’s Latin school, Bodel matriculated as a Law student at its university, receiving a Doctoral degree for his thesis on the history of legal rights of printers and book-sellers.

The gentleman-scholar, steeped in love for books, maps & prints, left the technical running of the enterprise to Jan Brill, the factotum of the Luchtmans Empire during its last decade. Bodel saw no reason to change that prestigious brand-name in European academia into his own.

Whilst the master of the print-shop was teaching one of his sons (Evert Jan) the trade, Bodel, (who had married twice), remained childless. After leading the enterprise as owner for some 17 years – showing a fine sense for acquisitioning interesting and important titles – he sold the Firm in 1848 to Evert Jan Brill. It promoted a trusted employee to an employer self-assured enough to bid farewell to the 17th century Luchtmans imprint.

In this changing-of-the-guard, the vast Luchtmans archives, ranging from 1683 to 1848, started a life of their own as resource for scholarly study of the history of the bookish trade during that era. It is seldom that the books of a mercantile enterprise have been kept so meticulously over so long a time. Leyden alumnus Bodel Nijenhuis willed his private collection of maps & prints to his Alma Mater, survived Evert Jan Brill by some six weeks, and died on January 8 1872.