Archive: People and Markets

Joachim Stollhoff. Neben ihm, wie auf fast allen unseren Fotos, Claire Franklin-Werz. Foto: UK.

Joachim Stollhoff († 2 November 2024)

On 2 November 2024, Joachim Stollhoff, owner of Münzen und Medaillen GmbH, passed away after a short and serious illness. In him, we have lost a coin dealer of the old school. Ursula Kampmann remembers a companion.

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Tatort 1 und 2: Das Museum für Ostasiatische Kunst in Köln und das Römer- und Pelizaeus- Museum in Hildesheim: Fotos: Raimond Spekking / CC BY-SA 4.0 und Longbow4u / CC0, via WikiCommons.

German Museums Continue to be Hit by Wave of Burglaries

With no end in sight, German museums are still regularly targeted by burglars. Often, the general public is unaware of the break-ins as the cases only make headlines in local newspapers. What can museums do to deal with these crimes? We present two cases from autumn 2023.

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Brustplatte mit mythischem Wesen. Goldlegierung. Kolumbien, Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta (Nahuange-Tradition). The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Schenkung von Alfred C. Glassell, Jr. Okarina in Form eines sitzenden Anführers mit herausgestreckter Zunge. Keramik. Kolumbien, Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta (Tairona-Tradition). Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Muñoz Kramer Collection, Schenkung von Camilla Chandler Frost und Stephen und Claudia Muñoz-Kramer. Landschaftsbild: © Museum Associates/LACMA.

More than Gold – Splendour and Thought in Indigenous Colombia

A new exhibition at Zurich Museum Rietberg is dedicated to the diversity of artistic production in pre-Hispanic Colombia. On display are spectacular gold objects.

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One of the coins seized during the police’s Operation Fantail. (Courtesy of Durham Constabulary.) Next to it, a passage from the biography of Alfred the Great written by Asser. The coin presents the prominent 9th-century ruler in a whole new light.

How Two Fraudsters Almost Changed England’s History

Two English metal detectorists attempted to sell off some illegally excavated coins. In a police operation straight out of a movie, the pair were caught and have now been sentenced. The seized coins present England’s King Alfred the Great in a totally different light.

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Archive: Coins, Medals and more

Einer der Höhepunkte von Künker Auktion 395 ist eine spektakuläre Goldmedaille zu 110 Dukaten, die aus dem persönlichen Besitz von Fürst Ferdinand I. von Bulgarien stammt. Diese Medaille führt uns mitten hinein in eine Zeit, in der Bulgarien seine Wirtschaft modernisierte. Der Fürst packte dabei tatkräftig mit an. Und die Eisenbahn spielte dabei eine zentrale Rolle.

Bulgaria, Prince Ferdinand I and the Railroad

One of the highlights of Künker’s auction 395 is a spectacular gold medal with a weight of 110 ductats. It was the personal property of Prince Ferdinand I. of Bulgaria. This medal takes us back into a period when Bulgaria modernized its economy. And the railroad system played a major role in this.
Karl Ludwig von Bruck, the mastermind behind the Vienna Coinage Treaty. We chose not to depict Emperor Franz Josef I at this point, who is shown on the coins, but the liberal politician Karl Ludwig von Bruck. Born into the family of a bookbinder in Elberfeld (now Wuppertal, Germany), he worked his way up from a merchant’s position to become Austria’s finance minister. He could almost be described as a beacon of hope for Austrian economic policy. It was tragic – and not just for him personally – that Franz Josef “ungraciously” dismissed him in April 1860 on false suspicions. The then 61-year-old took his own life. This deprived Austria of an imaginative politician who might have prevented its economic marginalization by Prussia.

A War Fought with Unusual Weapons: How Prussia Used Finance and Politics to Force the Habsburg Hereditary Lands Out of the German Confederation

On 26 March 2024, the Künker auction house will offer the Tursky Collection with coins of Emperor Franz Joseph I. We use specimens from this collection to tell the story of how Prussia used its economic sway to become the sole hegemonic power in Germany.
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