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Hans Sachs left this earth without knowing what happened to his beloved poster collection. In 1898, when Sachs was a teenager, he began collecting posters in Berlin of advertisements, political propaganda and rare pieces of famed artists such as Cheret, Kandinsky and Lucian Bernhard. His passion for graphic art was so serious he amassed 12,500 posters and a separate collection of 18,000 tins, postcards and theater programs reflective of this art form.
Peter Sachs's father, Hans, went to his grave wondering whether the Nazis had destroyed the renowned poster collection he'd devoted his life to building. Imagine, then, how Peter felt when -67 years after his father's collection was seized - he discovered that 4,344 posters had not only survived the Nazis, but the Soviets and the East Germans.
AP Interview: Posters seized by Nazis being sold. By David Rising/Associated Press 1.17.2013
After decades in limbo, the remnants of a unique, jewish-owned poster colelction are back in the public eye -- at least for a few days. The Times of Israel by Samantha Karlin January 17, 2013. New York city
Eye Magazine - A sale of 1250 prewar posters from Dr Hans Sachs's legendary collection will take place in New York on 18, 19 and 20 January 2013, writes Graham Twemlow. The Guernsey's auction catalogue states that "...many of the posters in the collection are believed to be the sole surviving examples of those particular images."
Galleristny.com by Zoe Lescaze: Though there have been a number of drawn-out legal battles over Nazi-looted art in recent years, few have been as involved as the saga of the enormous Hans Sachs poster collection. From the lowest German court to the highest, Peter Sachs pursued the return of his father's 4,344 surviving posters, which were being held by the German Historical Museum in Berlin.
A rare collection of turn-of-the-century posters by some of the biggest names in art are to go under the hammer in New York. The collection was amassed by a Jewish dentist from Germany but was seized by Nazi soldiers in 1938. Around a third of the posters - some 4,300 - have survived, and include works by Gustav Klimt, Edvard Munch and Toulouse Lautrec. The lot is valued at almost $6m (£3.7m), with some estimates suggesting it could reach double that amount at auction. James Kelly reports.
LENOX HILL — Thousands of rare posters that were stolen by Nazis more than 70 years ago will be auctioned next month to benefit the family of the Jewish man who originally owned them.
[Peter] Sachs, 69, of Sarasota, Fla., will testify Thursday at a government commission that will determine if the collection should be returned to him or stay at the museum, which inherited it from East Germany after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
“We like to say it went from being a ‘no man’s land’ in the literal sense to a ‘no man’s land’ in the legal sense,” said Gary M. Osen, a New Jersey lawyer who represents the Wertheim heirs. Legal nuances aside, he said, this land is also different because KarstadtQuelle sold it to Mr. Beisheim for a princely sum. The developer then spent hundreds of millions of dollars building the Ritz-Carlton, a Marriott hotel, luxury apartments and offices, calling the complex the Beisheim Center.