Josephine Ver Brugge Zeitlin, 90; Sold Rare Books, Journals

Josephine Ver Brugge Zeitlin, who owned the Zeitlin & Ver Brugge rare books store in West Hollywood with her late husband, Jake, has died. She was 90.

The businesswoman died Feb. 16 of respiratory failure at Santa Monica-UCLA Medical Center.

From the late 1940s through the ‘80s, the Zeitlins operated one of the leading antiquarian bookstores in the country, housed in a barn-style building on La Cienega Boulevard. Jake Zeitlin was the name most often associated with the business, but it was Josephine who operated it.

She moved to Los Angeles from her native Kansas in the late 1930s, planning to work as a secretary and bookkeeper in a bookstore. She met Zeitlin on a job interview when he was a struggling dealer in rare books with a small storefront downtown.

Zeitlin didn’t give her a job right away, but they did start to date and married in 1939. Two years later, at her husband’s suggestion, Josephine began to sell science periodicals from a library collection he had acquired.

“It was Jake’s way of getting Jo into the book business,” said Jeff Weber, who worked at Zeitlin & Ver Brugge for 10 years and now owns a rare books shop in Glendale. A number of other young employees went on to open bookstores or art galleries of their own, he said.

Josephine Zeitlin rented a store west of downtown Los Angeles, filled it with shelves she’d made from apple crates and began to sell science journals in the evenings and on weekends. She also had a full-time job with the Haynes Foundation, a philanthropic organization in Los Angeles.

Jake Zeitlin soon closed his shop and joined his business with hers, which she called Ver Brugge Books. They changed the name to reflect their new partnership and moved the works to La Cienega in 1948, taking over what had been an antiques store in a Pennsylvania Dutch-style building. Customers referred to the shop as “the red barn.”

In feature articles about the Zeitlins’ career, which was full of firsts and innovations, Josephine was most often mentioned for her typing and bookkeeping skills and the dinners she made while her husband, the raconteur, talked for hours.

Jake Zeitlin had been a catalyst in Los Angeles’ literary community from the 1920s and was an early supporter of such writers as Aldous Huxley and Carey McWilliams. He also held one of the first exhibits of works by photographer Edward Weston, in 1928, and exhibited the art of Diego Rivera.

He had handled the estates of several leading authors, including D. H. Lawrence, and helped private collectors build prized personal libraries. One of the best known was the Elmer Belt collection of books and other materials about Leonardo da Vinci, which now belongs to UCLA’s Powell Library.

At his 80th birthday party in 1982, Jake Zeitlin was quick to make room for his wife in the limelight.

In all of his life, he said, “the most important event, in April 1937, [was] when Josephine Ver Brugge walked into my bookshop and into my life.”

Born in Emporia, Kan., she graduated from Park University in Parkville, Mo., and taught school for two years before she and a college friend moved to Los Angeles in 1937, looking for better jobs.

After she married Zeitlin -- her first marriage, his third -- the couple had two children, Joel and Adriana. Josephine Zeitlin is survived by them, her stepson David, 10 grandchildren and several great-grandchildren. Jake Zeitlin died in 1987.

“Jo was the steadying hand of the business,” Weber said this week. “She stayed in the background, but she made the firm stay afloat.”

For some years she operated a division within the bookstore, buying and selling textbooks for technical libraries. Passionate about art, she also built a personal collection of engravings by Pieter Brueghel and drawings by Kathe Kollwitz. Eventually she gave up the secretarial work but continued to open the mail.

“It was a morning ritual,” Weber said. “Jo opened all the mail and read the important things to Jake over the phone, before he came to work.”

Contributions in the name of Josephine Ver Brugge Zeitlin can be made to the library fund of the Center for Early Education, 563 N. Alfred St., Los Angeles, CA 90048, or the library at Balboa Boulevard Elementary School, care of Ann Zeitlin (Joel Zeitlin’s wife), 5011 Odessa Ave., Encino, CA 91436.