Discussion of Legal Issues with collecting, collectors, and dealers

[VtwinVince]

Here's another personal anecdote which seems appropriate to this thread: I wear my grandfather's wedding ring, which he was wearing when, as Wachtmeister der Landespolizei, he was captured by the Russians when the garrison at Koenigsberg, East Prusssia surrendered on April 9, 1945. A Russian soldier noticed my grandfather's ring, and told him to take it off. A passing Russian officer noticed this, took the ring away from the soldier and gave it back to my grandfather. He then had the soldier put up against a wall and shot. My grandfather put the ring inside his mouth, where he hid it until his release from a death camp months later. He felt that the ring was bad luck, and never wore it again afterwards. Apparently these sort of extreme incidents were not that uncommon, with front line officers trying to keep looting to a minimum, often with dire consequences for the looter

[Gerd Becker]

Les and all,

interesting discussion. This is an issue, i have thought about before. I cannot comment to the german laws to this, as i am not a lawyer and the german laws are extremly complicated. Additionally to the question, if its legal, there is also a moral Issue. If you have an award in your collection and you know for sure, the family of the former owner lost it or it was stolen, would you return it? I would for sure, but i also assume, some would not.

I collect Soviet awards and they are also tracable to the person, who it was awareded to. I thought about to try to find the relatives, but my russian is very bad.

I know about one Soviet-Collector, who actually did this and returned a Soviet Hero-Star to the family of the former owner.Here is a link to that story:

http://www.soviet-awards.com/digest/...returned_1.htm

Look foward to hear more opinions about this topic.


all the best,
Gerd