Posters, part of a collection of more than 4,300 pre-World War II posters, looted by the Gestapo during the WWII, are on display prior to be auctioned at the National Bohemian Hall in New York, January 16, 2013. A German court ordered the German Historical Museum, where the posters were kept, to return the collection, gathered by Hans Sachs, a Jewish dentist who fled Nazi Germany, to Hans’ son Peter Sachs. The collection will be auctioned on January 18, 2013 with an estimated value at more than 5.8 million dollar. AFP PHOTO/EMMANUEL DUNAND.
|
NEW YORK (AP).- A poster collection seized from a Jewish collector by the Nazis and only returned to his descendants in recent years has brought in approximately $2.5 million at a New York auction.
Born in 1881, Hans Sachs started collecting posters as a teen and became Germany's leading private collector with 12,500 posters. The Nazis seized the collection in 1938, and the posters were held behind the Iron Curtain in East Berlin.
His grandson Peter Sachs went through a legal battle for several years to get back what was left of the collection.
Just over 1,200 posters were sold by Guernsey's over the weekend in the first of three sales.
A poster called "Kunstsalon Aktuaryus" dating to around 1900 sold for $57,950.
Copyright 2013 The Associated Press.
|
