Similar to its predecessor, the Katalog der Brasilien Bibliothek der Robert Bosch GmbH [Catalog of Robert Bosch Incorporated’s Brazilian Library] (Stuttgart, 1986), Deutschprachige Brasilienliteratur catalogs the collections of Herman H. Wever and Hans-Peter Huss, both of whom amassed substantial collections over several decades. In all, there are a total of 905 entries—mostly monographs—covering the history and culture of Brazil from its origins to 1900. An introduction by Franz Obermeier (Kiel) covers the early colonial period, Jesuitica (see, for example, Jesuiten aus Zentraleuropa in Portugiesisch- und Spanisch-Amerika—RREA 14:72), the border conflicts with Spanish South America, history of publishing in South America, German presses in Brazil, and many other topics. References are provided with abbreviations, and paratexts are reproduced in German and Portuguese. The majority of the entries are for children’s literature, books about explorers, emigration, geography, and memoirs, with each entry including both German and Portuguese keywords, justifying the bilingual keyword index (p. 263-79).

The columnar format for the keywords makes it difficult to look up items, especially where more general keywords are used, e.g., colonization, geography, and travel literature, which apply to close to a third of the entries. It would have been useful to have arranged the entries chronologically by year of publication to better facilitate ease of use. Two gaps were found: the first relates to the translated editions of historical novels by the author José de Alencar, in which earlier editions for three novels—Der Guarany (#13), Ubirajara (#14), and Iracema (#15)—appear in other bibliographies. The fact that novels were often serialized in newspapers over a span of time might explain this discrepancy. The exclusion of the writer and world-traveler Heinrich von Langsdorff is the second gap, but the only reason his work is missing is that he did not write in German. In such cases, it would have been beneficial to expand the selection criteria to include all German authors, no matter the language in which they wrote. Because an online version of this bibliography is planned, meaningful enhancements could be easily incorporated, and these gaps addressed. [sh/jmw]

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