July 28, 2000
CONTENTS:
- Re: Museum Security questions (palazzo forti)
- Re: Museum Security questions (Adalberto Biasiotti)
- Silberberg claiming a looted Van Gogh Bert Eifer)
- Spokane collector victimized
- new distributor for Fauser security windows from German
- Titanic Address Book Stolen
- A 19th-century antiquities merchant, whose outrageous forgeries fooled most of the people most of the time, gets another viewing
From: "palazzo forti" pforti.info@palazzoforti.com
To: securma@xs4all.nl
Subject: Re: Museum Security questions
Date: Wed, 26 Jul 2000 14:08:39 +0200
I have an experience with something similar, not in a Museum, but in a security CED.
We had no probe it was working or not, but we had a lot of problem with it, so we preferred to use more traditional sistems
From: "Adalberto Biasiotti" securcomp@mclink.it To: securma@xs4all.nl Subject: Re: Museum Security questions
Date: Thu, 27 Jul 2000 05:50:24 +0200
re steve keller question on wireless systems there is an european wide frequency band, and such systems may travel Europa wide without restriction, provided the sytem is fully certified by at least one national authority
best regards from
Adalberto Biasiotti
From: Eifer1923@aol.com Date: Wed, 26 Jul 2000 17:37:58 EDT
Subject: Silberberg claiming a looted Van Gogh
To: securma@xs4all.nl
I recently found a June 3, 1999 article from the Times of London re: Gerta Silberberg claiming a looted Van Gogh. Is there a follow up? Is there more information on looted Jewish Art during 1933-1938? Museum-security.org has nothing beyond the June 3 article. Also, I have been researching the Ullstein family of Berlin and this article was the first that made reference to the Ullstein art collection. Have you further information on the family and its collection?
Your help will be appreciated.
Bert Eifer Eifer1923@aol.com
please do check:
http://www.museum-security.org/ww2/articles.html
and
http://www.museum-security.org/ww2 (for related links)
best regards
Ton Cremers
Spokane collector victimized
Stolen painting may be work of Hitler
The Spokesman-Review
Mike Roarke - Staff writer
Spokane _ In Jim Red's home, there is a wooden box made from parts of the Red Baron's fighter plane. There's a faded newspaper account of Abraham Lincoln's assassination. And there are several paintings Red and his wife say are Adolf Hitler originals. Their Spokane home has so many antiques, though, that Red, 79, was long unaware that some had been taken and hawked on eBay, an Internet auction site. Two medals commemorating the sinking of the Lusitania fetched $180.50, according to court documents. A West Point yearbook, signed by Dwight D. Eisenhower, sold for $26 on eBay in May 1999. A Confederate States of America $500 bill brought in $292.77. In all, at least 15 of Red's possessions have been trafficked on eBay without his knowledge -- generating about $1,600 in the last two years. Eleven other collector's items, including one of Red's Hitler paintings, remain unaccounted for. Spokane police have been investigating Red's case since June. The suspect in the thefts is a man Red once considered a friend. He has not been charged with a crime and did not return a reporter's phone call. Detective Kirk Kimberly said the case is likely to be handed to the Spokane County prosecuting attorney's office this week. Red learned of the missing collectibles when he received a call from the suspect's brother, who had been given a Hitler painting to keep. He decided to give it back. Red then discovered that other items were missing from his house and contacted police. According to court documents, the suspect's ex-wife said she observed him selling items on eBay. Red acquired the rare Hitler paintings after his brother died in 1988. Four hang on a wall inside Red's house. He calls them "the work of the devil." "We want to sell them," he said. One of the Hitler paintings depicts Old Vienna. The others are of a mansion, bridge and courtyard. Another unframed picture is missing. Red said his brother, John, was a U.S. Air Force sergeant in Germany during World War II. When the war was over, he went back to Germany to explore the emerging black market, Red said. He made friends with art dealers who furnished him with the Hitler paintings and other memorabilia from the fallen Third Reich, Red said. Red has a letter written to his brother from a German art collector about the Hitler paintings. Red offers it as proof that the paintings on the wall are originals. According to a 1998 article in Military Trader, Hitler used dozens of different signatures while he was an aspiring artist during the early 1900s. Red's paintings bear the signatures "A.H." and "Adolf." The authenticity of Hitler's art can be hard to determine, said Charles Snyder Jr., who wrote the Military Trader article. He said that even in the 1930s, forgeries were circulating. Many originals were looted at the end of the war. Detective Kimberly did not say whether Red's missing Hitler painting is genuine, or if police had tried to determine authenticity. Red said he has not had them evaluated by an art specialist, but believes his brother, who said they are originals. The man believed to have taken Red's property showed up at his home about five years ago and presented himself as a collector, Red said. "It was so easy to get taken in by him," said Red, who added that the man helped with chores around the house. He said the man paid for many antiques. But he also had access to storage boxes and sorted through them without supervision, court papers say. Red admits that he gave the man a Hitler painting to sell on the Internet. But he said, "We were amazed at the stuff he had sold." Kimberly said eBay has provided sales records and contact information for those who bought Red's items. Kevin Pursglove, a spokesman for eBay, which is based in San Jose, said 13 million customers have taken part in the company's auctions. User agreements say that sellers must be the rightful owners of their merchandise. However, Pursglove said, because some don't play by the rules, eBay employs a stable of investigators who help police look into shady deals. He points out that eBay is not the best place to fence stolen property because transactions create an electronic trail. The challenge typically is recovering stolen property, Pursglove said. Arrangements for delivery are made between buyer and seller and do not involve eBay's participation. Red said he just wants the ordeal to end. He also feels that he's been duped by a friend. "I liked him," he said of the suspect. "Otherwise he could not have gotten to me like this."
From: "Franz Brun" franz.brun@gte.net
To: securma@museum-security.org
Date sent: Thu, 27 Jul 2000 07:04:13 -0700
To whom It May Concern:
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Titanic Address Book Stolen
CHICAGO (AP) - A ``priceless'' address book from the Titanic has been stolen from an exhibit at the Museum of Science and Industry, police said Thursday. Museum officials reported the theft about 8 p.m. Wednesday, said Officer Joseph Bourgoyne, a Chicago police spokesman. The black, leather-bound address book - about 51/2 by 23/4 inches in size with the words ``Maryland Club Rye'' - had been in a glass display case that was secured by two screws. The booklet also contained a satin purple bookmark that says ``BPO Elks,'' Bourgoyne said.
Museum spokeswoman Elizabeth Keating described the booklet as priceless because ``it has been recovered two miles below the ocean's surface.'' Officials noticed the book was missing on Wednesday morning, Keating said. Investigators were still trying to determine Thursday how the thief or thieves might have gotten into the case. However, Bourgoyne would not say whether the case was open or damaged when investigators arrived. He said no other artifacts in the case were taken. He also said the room the case is in does not have security cameras. Officials at RMS Titanic Inc., the Florida company that owns the rights to objects recovered from the ship, declined to comment. It is part of an exhibit called ``Titanic: The Exhibition,'' which includes more than 300 relics recovered from the site of the sunken ship.
The exhibit opened in February and runs through Sept. 4.
Moses' Dealer
Shoshana London Sappir
http://www.jrep.com/Arts/Article-0.html
THEY DON'T MAKE FAKES LIKE THIS ANYMORE: Archaeology was a young science when Shapira began turning out forgeries with Al-Kari (Courtesy Israel Museum) A 19th-century antiquities merchant, whose outrageous forgeries fooled most of the people most of the time, gets another viewing Jerusalem antiquities dealer and manufacturer Wilhelm Moses Shapira would be disconcerted to know that his work is being displayed by the city's leading museum. In fact, he was so embarrassed when he was exposed 116 years ago that he shot himself.
The Israel Museum exhibit "Truly Fake," on display at Ticho House in downtown Jerusalem, documents in detail the career of Shapira, the master swindler who had the world fooled for a brief moment. It presents dozens of stone heads, figurines, dishes, pottery shards, coins and manuscripts that Shapira turned out and sold from his antiquities shop in Jerusalem's Old City to tourists, as well as the world's great museums, until his exposure as a fraud in 1884 led to his suicide a few months later.
"The late 19th century was the beginning of modern tourism, following the invention of steamships, and it was also the beginning of archaeology," says Ticho House curator Irit Salmon. "Shapira was the first to recognize that archaeology could be a profitable business." The public controversy surrounding Shapira - culminating in his attempt to sell the British Museum what he claimed to be ancient Torah scrolls, exposed as forgeries before the deal was concluded - reached such a fevered pitch that dozens of articles were written about him in his lifetime, and dozens more after his death. The physical objects displayed in this exhibit were collected from monasteries, churches, museums and private collections; the documents are from the archives of the Prussian and French Embassies that investigated Shapira at the time, the Palestine Exploration Fund, the Israeli State Archives, the British Library and more.
A Russian Jew who converted to Christianity en route to Palestine, where he arrived in 1856 - having added "Wilhelm" to his original name - Shapira opened his shop in the Christian Quarter in 1861 with Christian Arab tour guide Salim Al-Kari as his partner. "Salim told him: 'I will bring the tourists by day and we will replenish our supply of antiques by night,'" Salmon says.
read on at: http://www.jrep.com/Arts/Article-0.html