Himmler's School Booklet

[ErichS]

Bill
Simple question
In your opinion is this booklet of the period circa ie: Imperial German? If yes, shredding it is a ludicrous suggestion or even marking it.
I believe Mr Gottlieb and others initial concerns were over the signature and whether it may of belonged to Heinrich Himmler.
Either way, you must return it to the present owner, Craig.

Eric

I agree, it's Craigs property after all!

[Tora_Tora_Tora!]

I am following this thread as a real romance....very interesting all and I hope that there will be solution to this dilema but, I ask to myself, why don't we consider the possibility that this notebook simply belonged to another boy called Heinrich Himmler? In this case we would be in front of a simple homonymy case....Just my two cent...

[V.I.D.]

I agree, it's Craigs property after all!

Same here, I thought that insisting on shredding it is rather bizarre. Unless of course it has something to do with legal binding of the parties, in which case, admittedly, I have no clue whatsoever.

[Arran]

Personally, I hope it turns out to be authentic so that all this shredding business will be moot!

[alexanderautogr]

Happy Valentine's Day. Dinner is finished..abruptly, so that I may stick to my word and address the issue at hand.

Once again, please allow me to remind you all that the conditions set upon the authentication of this piece were set down long ago. For the uninitiated, please refer to my earlier posts today, and to the posts made from mid-January, on. I think that my offer to Mr. Gottlieb, and his responses at that time, were very clear...at least in my mind.

As I see it, if me and my colleagues in the autograph trade found the piece to be authentic, I would back the booklet with my standard lifetime guarantee of authenticity, despite the fact that I have no monetary interest in this item. This would be the first time I have ever done so. If we believed the piece to be a forgery or otherwise not authentic...I would be authorized to shred it, and post the evidence of that destruction on this site. I have no dog in this fight - I just got tired of all the fighting on this site over whether this piece was "wrong" or "right", so I put the cards on the table...and backed them with my money.

I also said that I would simply declare the piece "good" or "bad". In light of Mr. Gottlieb's desire to retain ownership of this item, unaltered in any way, I feel it my professional obligation to set forth the following opinions which I and my colleagues have rendered, which were not in all cases unanimous:

1.) The cover, pages within, and binding are contemporary to the first half of the twentieth century.

2.) The writing on the cover of the school text is problematic. The class subject is written in the same hand as the text within the book. The signature "Himmler" appears to be in a different hand, while "Heinrich" and "6 kl. A" may be written in even yet a third hand, with all three entries written possibly at three different times. In any event, the class subject is in a totally different hand than the signature "Himmler Heinrich" and the class level.

3.) We have been unable to find any source to provide us with any proof that the class level indicated (ie: 6 kl. A) corresponds with anything other than a student of the age of 12 or so. The pages within the book are dated 1916, and the handwriting of those dates exactly matches the handwriting of the text on the same pages in which they appear. Records show that Himmler was born in 1900. Therefore, one must deduce that: a.) Himmler was 16 years old in the German equivalent of sixth grade, or; b.) he was "held back" three or more times, or: c.) he "recycled this notebook, explaining the first seven pages excised from the book, or; d.) the book is a not authentic.

4.) We used exemplars of Himmler's handwriting from multiple dealers' files, collectors' records, on-line resources, auction resources, and holdings of various institutions, including the Hoover Institute which possesses some of Himmler's early diaries. We were especially surprised to find a previous catalog listing - Stargardt, Basel, Switzerland, Oct. 21-22, 2011, Lot 919. This lot, from 1915 (a year earlier that the Gottlieb piece), was also described as bearing a notation "6 kl. A.". but using the same logic as above, implies that Himmler would have been 15 years old at the time of writing. The handwriting in the Stargardt example was similar in some respects to the Gottlieb example, but differed in many significant areas. Further, the Stargardt example we examined was largely blurred but for the first eight or ten lines of text. This sample was sufficient for us to conclude that there were some distinct differences in the handwriting. The Stargardt page samples we saw were undated.

5.) We also examined a 1919 handwritten diary from the collection of the Hoover institute. It varied from both the Stargardt and Gottlieb examples in almost every respect: slant, letter formation, baseline alignment, letter spacing, word spacing, etc.

CONCLUSION:

It is MY OPINION, based on the data supplied by five of my colleagues with perhaps over one hundred years' experience in our trade, with complete objectivity and with their having no knowledge of the ownership of this item:

a.) Both the Stargardt and Gottlieb workbooks were indeed accomplished in contemporary hands ca. 1915. The handwriting within each does not match the other with any certainty.

b.) The Gottlieb workbook bears a cover which shows two different hands, potentially three. The signature on the cover of the Gottlieb book: "Himmler Heinrich" does not compare with the handwriting within the book.

c.) The class "6 kl. A" corresponds with a class attended by a 12 year-old. This, combined with the hand-written date of "1916" in the text of the Gottlieb book does not correspond with the historical record of Himmler's education.

d.) In light of the above, the Stargardt exemplar must be discarded as a legitimate exemplar.

e.) As the above has been discounted, the 1919 Hoover Institute diary handwriting is not in any way similar to that seen in the Stargardt and Gottlieb examples. A 1922 example is much more different from both the Gottlieb ad Hoover examples.

THEREFORE: The preponderance of professional opinions of the Gottlieb book is that the cover has been embellished with a forgery of Himmler's name, and in any event the handwriting within is not that of the future Reichsfuhrer of the SS.

My hope is that Mr. Gottlieb will allow me to either destroy or make unsaleable this item, per our posts on this site, with copies of the original available for his files.

[alexanderautogr]

I should add that the item allegedly came to Mr. Gottlieb's hands after it originated in a grouping of other early (but not contemporary) material. Although this fact is worth minor consideration, every piece must of course stand on its own two legs.

[Badto666]

If not destroyed one can only wonder where it will resurface next.......

My thoughts too...Maybe not in the near future, but who will remember this thread in about 10 years or more?


/Mike

[Michael Fay]

"...This booklet has caused so much controversy, a veritable firestorm, that I offered to settle the issue once and for all by offering to guarantee the piece (in which I have no stake) if proven authentic, or destroying it if it were proven bogus. .."
.

As an aside, this really is not that big a firestorm of controversy for us militaria collectors. Sure it is rather memorable-in part because you have added a exotic flourish to the proceedings (no disrespect meant at all), but this type of angst and anomie happens with alacrity around here. I get the impression you may not normally have been exposed to this recurrent theme of web-facillitated righteous indignation ( justified and unjustified), conspiracy theories and witch hunts.
I posit to you (with a twinge of sadness ): this is business as usual around here.

[Hoss]

Well
I've been doing some searching since this thread closed. A lot of his sigs look different to me, particularly when he's using a pencil.
I also believe a young teen experiments with his mark I don't see because its a different time period it should be any different when a man is latter in a position of great authority it tends to have a distinct style.
Whatever, its early century and that in itself makes it of historical interest. I think Craig should hang onto it, who knows what might turn up its early writing and not enough is known so far.

Regards
Eric

[Thorsten B.]

Bill,

Many thanks for your great service.

You are a true asset to the forum!!

[Don D.]

If it is not Himmlers but has had his name added then it has no more historic value then the underwear I wore in basic training. Seriously, who collects early 20th century school work from an unknown nobody?

[Thorsten B.]

"...then it has no more historic value then the underwear I wore in basic training."

Who knows?

There´s a market for everything.

[Craig Gottlieb]

Some thoughts on a Wednesday morning. First, Bill, thank you for all of the work you did. From the outset, I thank you for the interest you've taken in this piece. I'm sure it's been educational for you, as I know it has been for us. I'm personally sad that it's fake, as it's one of the pieces I really enjoyed personally, and finding out it was bad is a disappointment.

I agree with most here that destroying it is a bit dramatic. I do see back in this thread that you stated you would want to destroy it if it was fake, but frankly, I believed that "shredding it" was more of a euphemism. Your analysis has accomplished what a store-bought shredder would accomplish, it just took a little longer.

There's no need to buy it from me either: you don't need to waste more money than I have already wasted on it. Furthermore, there is always the chance that somehow, it will be proved in the future to be authentic (not likely) and if that happens, then having shredded or defaced it would destroy a legitimate piece of history. Sending it back, especially in light of the fact that most people here see that as an option, is the same as it never being on the market again. Although being forced to burn it at a public display at SOS is not beyond my sense of the dramatic.

It's amazing that some faker from the 1960s would "salt" a group of out-of-the-woodwork Himmler artifacts with a school-book from the very school Himmler attended, and then take the time to draft something so complex and so obscure. And take the time to anticipate the fact that we would ID different inks, and conveniently position the book as "recycled" by ripping out several pages in the front, to hide his tracks. All for what at the time was a couple hundred bucks. I can imagine them now ... "Hehe, I am really going to stick it to those school book collectors. I'm not going to make any money off of this, but boy, will I have fun, and yes, I love math."

Send it back, let me pay you for your time, and I will post on the forum what I am going to do with this book. It's what I do with all of the mistakes I buy, and the fakes I receive in collections. I think you all will enjoy it.

[Dietrich Maerz]

Furthermore, there is always the chance that somehow, it will be proved in the future to be authentic ...

Well, maybe the moon is made of green cheese and maybe the Eifel Tower can be sold again. There is an idiot waking up every morning and with enough talk it might be possible!

I certainly hope I will not see that fake again ..... too bad that a deal is not always a deal ...

[Thorsten B.]

"...there is always the chance that somehow, it will be proved in the future to be authentic (not likely) and if that happens, then having shredded or defaced it would destroy a legitimate piece of history."




I say according to Bill´s and Craig´s gentlemen´s agreement:


Shred it!