News: German court decision about the Hans Sachs poster collection

1897, postery by Thomas Theodor Heine

Hans Sachs (1881 - 1974) was a german dentist of jewish origin, and a pioneer in poster collecting and poster publishing. His international collection counted about 12'00 posters, and his magazine "Das Plakat" run from 1910 to 1921. For me, Hans Sachs has been a role model, both as collector and publisher, and I see "Das Plakat" as a direct predecessor of Posterpage. He had a tragic fate: His collection was confiscated by the Nazi government, and he had to flee to New York in 1938 to avoid death in a concentration camp. After the war, there were rumors that his collection was not lost, as he feared, but was actually in East Germany. The East German government however refused any contact with Sachs, and he died without having seen his collection again. After the german reunification in 1990, it turned out that the Deutsches Historisches Museum in Berlin had about 8000 posters from the collection. Today only 4000 are left, the rest has "disappeared mysteriously", as the Museum tries to explain. A long and bitter legal fight then started between Hans Sachs's son Peter Sachs and the Museum, about who owns the collection, now valued at about 4 Million Euro. The highest german court, the Bundesgerichtshof has published it's final judgement on March 16, 2012: The collection belongs to the Hans Sachs family. Technically, the courts verdict applies to just one poster, shown at left, but is a precedent for all others posters in the collection. Moreover, it may have far reaching consequences for other works of art confiscated by the Nazis. Links: Biography of Hans Sachs, by Rene Grohnert Tagesschaumeldung über das Urteil des Bundesgerichtshofes Pressemitteilung des DHM vom 16. Maerz 2012 Article in "Die Zeit" 2009.01.15, about Hans Sachs, Peter Sachs, the Deutsches Historisches Museum, with many interesting comments.