|
current offerings: ART AND ENTERTAINMENT AVIATION AND SPACE BASEBALL BUSINESS CABINET MEMBERS CIVIL WAR CONGRESS INVENTION AND SCIENCE law POLITICS RELIGION REVOLUTIONARY WAR WORLD WAR I WORLD WAR II ROYALTY WORLD LEADERS WORLD MILITARY MISCELLANEOUS FIELDS • a - M • N - Z
We are proud to be a member of
We accept
|
What I’m Thinking Rick Schnake |
|
Remembering the Holocaust. February 26, 2010 This week I talked with a local man who, as a German child in southern Poland, lived much of the Holocaust experience that I discussed in my last article.
He choked with emotion as he recounted Nazi horrors that he had experienced. His parents were not Jewish, but both opposed the Nazi regime. His mother was executed in Plötzensee Prison, and his father died at the Mauthausen concentration camp. He recalled that he was 4 years old when an SS detachment came to arrest his mother. The soldiers picked her up in a convertible Mercedes-Benz. One of them leaned down to him and said that she would return in two hours. She never came back. He has a letter from Heinrich Himmler, the Nazi Reichsführer-SS, refusing permission to see his mother. He also has a postcard that his mother wrote to his aunt, who was caring for him and his sister, saying that she would no longer be alive by the time that the children and their aunt read the card. Finally, he has a card from the prison authorities simply informing the family that his mother was no longer there. His home in Poland was next to the railroad track. He told me of sitting on a high wall as a 7-year-old child and watching SS soldiers herd Poles, Czechs, and Jews like cattle into boxcars on trains bound for the gas chambers at Auschwitz. When a car was full, he said, the soldiers slammed the doors shut. A child separated from the parents was unceremoniously herded into the next car. The Nazi atrocities were indeed beyond words. Some may wonder, then, why I handle Nazi autograph material. One reason is that the historical impact of the Third Reich is undeniable, for the immense world war that Adolf Hitler spawned set the stage for the Cold War that shaped the military and economic history of the second half of the 20th Century. One does not have to agree with Nazism to recognize the significance of its historical role. But there is another reason, one that I believe is more compelling: We must never forget what happened, because we never allow it to happen again. President Harry S. Truman rightly insisted on holding the war crimes trials in order to document Nazi atrocities systematically and publicly so that no one could ever convincingly claim that they did not happen, were minor, or occurred without the authority of the German government. The evidence from the Nuremburg War Crimes Trials overwhelmingly debunks the claims of modern revisionists who deny the Holocaust. While I respect the sentiments of dealers who decline to handle Nazi autograph material, as a matter of conscience I would view my own refusal to do so as aiding those who want to sweep the Third Reich under the rug. I could not do that before—and, after talking with this man earlier this week, I certainly could never do it now.
Unknowns. January 8, 2010 I often say that given the option of spending a few thousand dollars on a signature of George Washington or Abraham Lincoln or spending the same amount of money on a good-content letter, I would take the letter every time. With few exceptions, as seasoned collectors know and new ones quickly learn, it is the message that gives real historical value to the signature. Even many seasoned collectors, though, ignore those whose names themselves mean nothing. Yet there are many unknown people whose letters are every bit as fascinating and as much a part of history as those of leaders of the time. For example, letters of Civil War soldiers on both sides, describing the battles in which they participated and conditions under which they lived, provide historical insight that a study of those in power cannot. This comes to mind as I am preparing to list a group of Holocaust and related letters that come to us from a noted author. Most are family letters from no one of historical significance. Yet the history that the letters reflect makes owning them worthwhile. They include letters from prisoners in the Nazi concentration camps at Auschwitz, Sachsenhausen, and Dachau—people who could say little, and whose mail the Nazis heavily censored, yet who managed to convey the difficulty of their existence in the few words they were allowed to write on officially-issued paper. Consider, for example, the Sachsenhausen prisoner who asked his wife, with obvious pain, “Please let me know how you meant it in your letter before the last with the greatest humiliation of a woman through a man. I do not understand that well.” He added, “In reading your letter I walked with you through our entire place. I thought of each little place which reminded me of any happy, content, and beautiful experience. I do not think about the discontented ones.” Then there is the Auschwitz prisoner, who—perhaps knowing, but perhaps not, that the Nazis likely blocked communication from his family—wrote to his wife, “I am really glad to have received a letter from you but am curious why you haven’t written for such a long time. . . . Please write to me often, and please answer every one of my letters.” As I held and read these letters, images flashed through my mind of Jewish men lined up to be shot at the edge of a mass grave and of women, with looks of knowing fear, clutching and comforting their children in line for the gas chambers. The Nazi atrocities were beyond words. The people who wrote these letters lived experiences such as those and likely died as a result. Their names mean nothing autographically, but their letters bring history alive. As such they are well worth collecting.
Fairness and Trust. December 7, 2009 A few evenings ago, I had a nice visit with a client. The topic turned to fairness in autograph prices. There is a fairly well established range of value for most material. Prices vary based on a number of factors, which famed autograph dealer Mary A. Benjamin cogently explained in her book Autographs: A Key to Collecting. Generally speaking, those variations establish a range of values for a given item. Prices that fall within the established range are reasonable, while prices that greatly exceed it, absent a reasonable explanation for doing so, are not. I recalled a gallery that I saw while on vacation a few years ago. In the window was a beautifully framed Abraham Lincoln piece. It was an autograph endorsement, signed A. Lincoln as President, on the back of a letter. Lincoln wrote lots of those, referring letters to cabinet officers or directing that a petitioner be discharged upon taking a loyalty oath, and consequently they are among the most common Lincoln autograph pieces. Because of Lincoln’s status as one of the great Presidents, though, and because of his role in maintaining the Union, his autograph material is uniformly expensive. Most dealers offer endorsements such as that in the range of $6,500 to $7,500. Only endorsements with independent historical significance or an excellent association command higher prices. The framed endorsement that I saw in that window, though, was priced at $19,900. The exquisite framing added value, to be sure. But it struck me that I was looking at some $13,000 worth of framing—and that the price was aimed at buyers who might want a piece of history for display but who would have no concept of the true value of the autograph piece itself. Some would say that such a price is fair if a buyer is willing to pay it. I have a different view. Since my clients look to me for knowledge, advice, and effort, I have a responsibility to treat them in a way that creates and reinforces trust. Lasting relationships, and indeed friendships, rest on candor and fairness. The collector whom I might be tempted to overcharge today will assuredly never be a client who asks my help to build a collection tomorrow. Hence I cannot be a mere purveyor of paper—and professionalism, with all that the term implies, cannot be a mere shibboleth.
Hidden Treasures. November 6, 2009 After more than 20 years of working with historical autographs, I am still amazed at where people find some of the most wonderful pieces. I spent some time tonight with an auction catalog. One of the items listed was an 1858 Abraham Lincoln letter that someone found a few years ago inside a book at a flea market. That reminded me of a piece in my own collection. About 10 years ago I bought a World War I soldier’s pay book issued to a sergeant in Battery D, 129th Field Artillery Regiment, 35th Division, a National Guard unit composed of soldiers from Missouri and Kansas. It is dated November 1, 1918, just ten days before the armistice that ended the Great War. The captain of that artillery battery, which came under fire in the Battle of the Argonne Forest, was my fellow Missourian, Harry S. Truman, whose autograph material forms the centerpiece of my private collection. Truman had signed the pay book in blue fountain pen as the commanding officer and added his rank below his signature. The piece is in extra fine condition—as though it were issued yesterday. At the time, it was the earliest Truman piece that I had ever seen on the market. The seller was from Independence, Missouri, where Truman lived most of his life. He told me that his mother had bought a used book at—you guessed it—a local flea market and had later discovered the sergeant’s pay book underneath the fly leaf, which had been glued down around it. Apparently whoever owned the book had put the pay book beneath the fly leaf for safekeeping. There is no telling how long it had been there. So things like that really do happen. Be sure to check twice before you sell something at a garage sale or throw it away.
Simple Math. October 29, 2009 Sometimes all it takes to determine that an autograph could not possibly be genuine is a little math. Over the past few months we have been offered a couple of autographs that themselves proved that they could not possibly have been genuinely signed. One was a signature of J. Edgar Hoover, the first director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the other was a signed engraving of famed British Africa explorer David Livingstone. The Hoover signature was on the back of a post card from a Miami, Florida, hotel. The card bore a 1975 copyright date. But that was the problem—Hoover died in 1972. Since the card was printed at least three years after his death, Hoover could not possibly have signed it. The card itself disproved the autograph. The Livingstone engraving was on book weight paper with water stains at the bottom. The owner speculated that it had been removed from the front of a book that was discarded after it became wet and speculated that Livingstone had signed the book. Our first thought was that the signature was probably preprinted. Books by and about notable people, with printed facsimile signatures below their photographs, were common in Livingstone’s time. Yet the scan we received did not suggest a printed facsimile signature. There appeared to be depth of ink where the strokes crossed, all in the right places. At the bottom, though, the engraving bore a small printed legend stating that it was published in London in 1880. Since Livingstone died in Africa in 1873, this piece likewise disproved itself. So there was no need to examine the signature further. Even if it was hand signed, assuredly David Livingstone did not hold the pen. Sometimes autograph authentication is difficult. Sometimes, though, all it takes is a little math. |
