Bernstein, Bernsztejn, Karol, *8 January 1820, †19 April 1890 Warsaw, Polish bookseller and music publisher. He trained as a bookseller in Vilnius under K.T. Glücksberg. In 1850, he took over the publishing bookstore founded in Warsaw in 1848 by his brother Józef Bernstein. His name appeared in print only in 1854. Bernstein published books on agriculture and nature, as well as the series “Klejnoty poezji polskiej” [“Jewels of Polish Poetry”] and music prints. He operated a music typesetting service and a lending library at the bookstore. Not owning his own printing house, he used the services of various lithographic workshops and music engraving studios. The company existed until 1873 and played a secondary role in the production of music prints. From 1848 to 1865, Bernstein published 228 of them (most between 1849 and 1857), which accounted for only 7-14 percent of his annual publishing output. In 1865, as a result of the monopolization of the publishing market by the companies Gebethner and Wolff and J. Kaufmann, Bernstein withdrew from music publishing.
Bernstein published, among other things, a series of piano transcriptions from operas by various composers in the monthly magazine “Bouquet des melodies” (12 issues between 1849 and 1851), Skarbiec salonowych śpiewów (10 issues between 1855 and 1857), a piano score of J. Stefani’s ballet Wesele w Ojcowie (1856), and R. Zientarski’s Nowa szkoła na fortepian (1861, 2nd edition 1863). He also published two catalogs: Catalogue des nouvelles compositions pour le piano publicies par B. Libraire-Editeur a Varsovie, 1854, and Katalog dzieł nakładowych księgarni Karola Bernsteina (1857).
Bernstein’s music prints were available in bookstores in Kalisz, Kielce, Lublin, and Płock.
Literature: W. Tomaszewski Warszawskie edytorstwo muzyczne w latach 1772–1865, Warsaw 1992.
