Posted on 05/27/2009 11:23:05 AM PDT by nickcarraway
Alexander Autographs A bottle of wine from Adolf Hitlers personal wine cellar at his mountain retreat, the Berghof.
It was supposed to be a straightforward news story: an auction house was finding that items believed to have belonged to Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun were in high demand, even in a recession. But a coincidence along the way led to a mystery.
It all began when the auctioneer, Alexander Autographs, in Stamford, Conn., announced the sale of possessions from the respected collector John K. Lattimer. Building on connections made during his time working at the Nuremburg war tribunals, Dr. Lattimer had collected a vast trove of memorabilia before his death in 2007, including a matchbox with Hitlers initials, a powder compact with Eva Brauns initials and a 1934 bottle of Bordeaux believed to from Hitlers wine cellar at his mountain residence, the Berghof.
In a catalog of auctioned items, the bottles label stated that the wine was from St.-Émilion in France, and it featured the villages church. But there was a problem: On the label, St.-Émilion was presented as a flat village with a Stalinist-style structure towering over the church. Having been married there just last October, I did not recall any structure that looked like that. That night, my husband and I pored through our wedding photos, but we found nothing of that scale near the church. Alexander Autographs said it had proof that the bottle was authentic: Mohawk Arms, an established auctioneer in Bouckville, N.Y, had vetted the bottle when it was sold to Dr. Lattimer in 1975, and it had the 1975 letter and invoice. Alexander Autographs also had the catalog from the 1975 auction, stating:
(Excerpt) Read more at cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com ...
I prefer Den Freiheits Wein
Jeeze, who cares?
The label looks correct to me. At to whether ol' Adolf actually owned that bottle, who knows?
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Thanks nickcarraway. |
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