The Rosenkranz Printing House — Association of Jews of Vilna and vicinity in Israel

The Rosenkranz Printing House (formerly the Finn and Rosenkranz Printing House), sometimes known as the Finn Printing House, later known as Rosenkranz & Schriftsetzer which, in the Yiddish of those days, was called Razankrantz-Sriftzattzar (Latin transliteration):

Rosenkranz (or Rosenkranz & Schriftsetzer) was a printing house and publisher of Hebrew books in Vilna, a city in north-west Russia (Lithuania), operating from 1863 till the beginning of the 20^th century. The printing house published books on the Talmud, commentators, Aggadah (Folk tales) and midrash, essays by well-known rabbis, as well as literature on the Haskala (Enlightenment) and works of modern Hebrew literature (about 350 titles in total), as well as about 100 novels and practical books in Yiddish.  The owners and workers of this printing house had previously been employed by the Romm Publishing House. They were three brothers, Rosenkranz, Schriftsetzer and Zionsohn who went into partnership with the Maskil, Shmuel Joseph Finn. After a modest start, the printing house grew and became second only to the Romm Publishing as one of the most famous publishing houses in the Jewish world.

The brothers, Avraham Zvi (Hirsch) Rozenkranz (Razankrantz-Sriftzattzar) (1815 – 1901), Menahem Mendel (Mandil) Schriftsetzer (Sriftzattzar) (1819 – 1905/06), and Shaul Zionsohn  (Tziyonsahn) were the sons of Joseph Feder (Fadar), a writer for the people of Kletsk in the Minsk region of the Russian Empire (White Russia). In order to avoid serving in the Tsar’s army, the three sons changed their family name, and each one registered in a different village under a different name (this was quite a common practice by the Jews at that time, since sons who were only children were exempt from compulsory service in the Russian army).

Rozenkranz came to Vilna as a child with his brother, and since they were close to, or at least friendly with, the Romm family, they were hired as workers for the Romm Publishing House which, at the time, was still operating in Jeziory, a village near Grodno (later relocating to Vilna) – Rozenkranz and Schriftsetzer as typesetters and Zionsohn as a printing press operator.

After forty years or so, on 20^th April 1862, Tsar Alexander II canceled the monopoly on Hebrew printing in Russia (particularly in Russian-held Poland), following Tsar Nikolai’s decree of 1836 regarding two publishing houses – the Romm Publishing House in Vilna and the Shapira Brothers’ Publishing House in Zhytomyr, who had to pay 5,000 rubles annually for this right – thereby permitting anyone to print in Hebrew anywhere while paying a tax of 20 rubles per year when using a manual printing press, and 120 rubles for a high-speed steam-powered printing press (a popular machine invented by Friedrich Koenig a few decades earlier).

The brothers Avraham Zvi Rozenkrantz, Mendel Schriftsetzer and Shaul Zionsohn quickly quitted their jobs with Romm Publishing and opened their own printing house.

In order to open a Hebrew printing house in Russia, they needed a special government license which was very difficult to obtain. Therefore, the three brothers joined the well-known, experienced and wealthy maskil writer from Vilna, Shmuel Yosef Finn who served as a ‘learned Jew (an assistant for Jewish affairs), of the Vilna district governor and was in charge of Jewish studies on behalf of the regional Minister of Education (he was responsible for supervising Jewish studies as well as planning and editing Jewish educational books). In addition, he published a text book for teaching Russian to Jews and, since 1860, he edited and published, under license, the Hebrew magazine The Carmel. After a great deal of effort and because of his rights, Finn received a license to open a Hebrew publishing house with Rozenkrantz and his brothers. In the autumn of 1863, he opened the Finn-Rozenkrantz Publishing House in partnership with the brothers. (A different version relates that Finn had opened his own publishing house operating two manual printing presses, then a few months later the brothers established their own publishing house, working with one small high-speed printing press. After a short while, the two parties set up a partnership).

The contract drawn up between them determined that Finn would receive 25 percent of the profits, Rozenkrantz and Schriftsetzer 33 percent each and Zionsohn 9 percent. The publishing house operated one high-speed printing press and one manual printing press, and employed two proofreaders: Yehoshua Foilisher (Foilishar) and Yehiel Michal Gurland (Gurlaand).

Finn advised the brothers not to print books published by the Romm Publishing House – Holy books: sidurim, mishorim, chumashim etc, but to keep to educational books in order to avoid competing with Romm. Taking his advice, they published the book Maor Einayim by Rabbi Azaria of the Reds (written in the 16^th century) with comments by Leopold Zunz. It was finally published in 1863.  However, seeing that the buyers were not running to purchase the book, they acted in opposition of Finn’s advice to limit themselves to publishing educational and other books not related to the Romm Publishing House. The Romm family were infuriated and decided stamp out the publishing company even before it had taken root. The partners had published a book which had impacted the books of Romm Publishing who reduced their prices to cost; the partners published Sidur Keren Manheh with a translation into Yiddish (for women), which had been printed by Romm Publishing and had always been sold for 2.5 rubles, but now the Romm family reduced the price to 1.5 rubles. This is what they did whenever the partners published a book which affected them. In addition, they ‘rewarded’ them for their work in 1864-5 by printing Maor Einayim with comments and corrections by David Kassel. In doing so, according to Feigenzohn, the Romm family suffered losses for the sake of revenge. However, the partners did not back down but continued to publish the same books as Romm Publishing, which they were able to do since they were in a position to save and be frugal; they also had no problem in taking a salary similar to that which they had received from Romm Publishing, investing the rest of their profits back into the business.

With Rashi Finn’s death in 1891, the brothers immediately bought the share in the business that Finn’s son Benjamin had inherited.

Following WWI, in 1919 (given as 1918 in a different version), the big Warsaw publishers, Avraham Leib Shelkowitz (known as Ben Avigdor), and Yakov Lidski and their partners H. Berman and A. Kagan purchased the Rosenkranz & Schriftsetzer Publishing and Printing House from their heirs, in the hope of increasing their own publications. However, they both died a short time later, in 1921. the Rosenkranz & Schriftsetzer publishing house in Vilna continued operating until at least the end of the 1920s.

Source:  Wikipedia