Karl Edward Först von Lutz

(???? – ????)

Karl Edward Först von Lutz was a fan in Beverly Hills in the late 1930s. He was a member of the UK's Science Fiction Association (SFA), joining in July 1937 with most other Los Angeles fans, and LASFL, likely from a similar or earlier date.

T. Bruce Yerke in Memoirs of a Superfluous Fan (1944) wrote that "the minutes for the meeting of August 19, 1937" include von Lutz "and wife" but Yerke says no more about him. His (and Bruce Pelz's) 1992 edition transcribes out the umlaut as Karl Edward Foerst von Lutz, likely because it was not readily available in their word processor / DTP. Strangely, a reissue of Memoirs in Shangri-LA 12 (Commemorative Reprint Issue, June 1949), shortened the name (or left out the title) to "Karl Edwars [sic] von Lutz".

In "Fancestral memories", Shangri-LA 18 (Feb. 1950), Forry Ackerman waxed:

And tales to be told of Paul Freehafer, and the club’s first feminine director, Helen Finn, and Baron Karl Edward Forst von Lütz, and Franklyn Brady, and Jimmy Kepner, and Mel Brown... oh, on and on.

The umlaut was clearly misplaced, but sadly not a single such tale seems to have been told anywhere (Finn is another member mysteriously neglected in contemporary materials, let alone memoirs). Still, this would suggest some level of fanac beyond a single attendance and formal admission. The same form, now without any umlaut whatsoever (but it could easily get lost in transcription online) appears in Forry's listing of people he had known made "circa 2001". Alas, even the catalogue of Ackerman Papers at the University of Syracuse does not include any Lutz in correspondence etc.

The name looks decidedly German, so we are tempted to speculate if it can't somehow be a misspelling of wikipedia:Fürst, i. e. nobility title of a Prince, commonly given thus as a kind of middle name before the "of" domicile. However there are no traces (discovered yet) of anybody named/titled even similarly, either in Europe or America. (Also, there is no place called Lutz in German-speaking countries, though there is a village of wikipedia:Lütz; but this does not need to mean anything, there definitely was a line of von Lutzes, though the proper title apparently was Freiherr.) – But then our man might well have been in the US for a short time, and left again after or before the War started, so would not be captured by census-based materials. It remains to check phone directories.

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