Auctions and their history
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Legendary heroes and famous generals, splendid victories and crushing defeats — all these come to life when you touch an antique blade or hold antique orders. Throughout its 40-year history, auction house Hermann Historica, Munich, has helped collectors of armour and weapons to revive history. |
The ancestors of Hermann Historica auction house were auctions of objects of military history and faleristics established by Count Erich Klenau of Klenova, Baron of Janowitz, about forty years ago. At that time the count was already holding quite large auctions of antique coins, and he only had to widen the range of auctioned objects. In 1970, antique armour and weapons auctions were initiated by Wolfgang Hermann, now a co-owner of Hermann Historica. Thanks to the great number of interesting subjects and excellent catalogues, the young company quickly found its place among major international auction houses. Collectors from all over the world started coming to Munich. That was the beginning of Hermann Historica. But the company got its present name later — in 1982, when it was taken over by Wolfgang Herman and Ernst Ludwig Wagner. On March 6, 1982, the new owners held the first auction at Hermann Historica auction house.
Twenty years have passed, and nowadays Hermann Historica holds at least two big auctions a year — in spring and in autumn. Objects of military history, orders and decorations, hunting objects, and antique armour and weapons are auctioned. Among the former owners of the offered lots, there are the royal families of Germany and Austria, museums, and well-known collectors. For example, in 1996 Hermann Historica sold hunting treasures from Fuschl Castle near Salzburg; the following year it attracted collectors’ from the whole world by selling out the collection of the Numbrecht Museum of Historical Technology. Five years later, in 2002, Hermann Historica held a sensational sale of Axel Guttmann’s collection of antique armour and weapons. So it is not surprising that great museums and collectors famous in the antiques world are among the 20,000 clients of Hermann Historica.
Today Hermann Historica keeps its reputation of an auction house offering very interesting lots. Therefore, medieval swords, Russian shashqas, dirks, daggers, sabers, stilettos, pistols, orders, seals, traveling table settings, hunting horns, helmets, shields, and other things related to military history are sold at prices often many times higher than the original estimates. The sensation of the spring auction 2005 was the sale of a Central European/Nordic sword of the IX–X centuries. The almost illegible inscription on the blade of the excavated sword was deciphered by the experts of Hermann Historica as "GERFRIK". Originally the sword had been estimated at 7,500 euro, but during the auction the price grew almost ten times higher — the sword was sold for 73,000 euro! An officer’s shashqa from Russia earned almost five times more than its pre-sale estimate. As the inscription on its blade says, this shashqa was given by the Emperor Alexander III to Lieutenant Klembovsky, officer of Izmailovsky Regiment, as a prize for participating in a fencing competition in 1885.
Still, the activities of Hermann Historica are not confined to military objects. For instance, the auction house gained unexpectedly big profit — 550,000 euro — by the sale of… children’s pedal cars, held in the spring of spring 2005. Before the auction the collection had been exhibited at the "World’s First Pedal Car Museum", a part of the Centre for Unconventional Museums. The founder of the Centre and the Museum and the creator of pedal cars collection was Manfred Klauda, a famous German collector. But, unfortunately, his death in 2001 put an end to the development the Centre and the Museums.
Some pedal cars, which might have been the first vehicles of five-year-old aristocrats and rich men’s children, were sold many times more expensive than it had been expected. For example, "Jaguar XK 120", 1950, estimated at 900 euro, was sold for 15,500 euro! It is interesting that nearly 70% of the 166 exhibited lots were bought by an Italian collector — so deeply was he impressed by "Childhood Dreams on Wheels"!
The next auction in Hermann Historica will take place this year in October. The experts of the auction house promise to offer some interesting Russian objects.