Book Thefts. Girolamini - Zisska List

Dear Fellow-Presidents,

Following our strategy to bringing as much light as possible in the Girolamini thefts, the Committee had asked the Munich based auction house Zisska & Lacher (formerly Zisska & Schauer) to provide us with a list of the books which had been confiscated or withdrawn from their auction No 59 in May of 2012 (the books from the Girolamini library). The auction house had agreed to sending us such a list, but, unfortunately, they could provide us only with a hard paper copy. The reason for this is that the PC of the then responsible manager – Herbert Schauer – had been confiscated by the Bavarian Police as well, and no other electronic copy of this list was available.

We have, however, managed to create a SEARCHABLE pdf-document after we had scanned some 80 pages we had received from the auction house. The list starts with the few books which were confiscated by the authorities before the auction had started. The next part of the list – some 50 to 60 items – had not been included to auction 59 out of unknown reasons. The last and most extensive part of the document covers all the withdrawn items of auction 59.

Zisska & Lacher have provided us also with a huge file of illustrations of the first 450 lots of auction 59. It is simply impossible to pick out the illustrations of the withdrawn items from this file, and add these to the catalogue descriptions. This would cost a lot of time, energy, and money. The Committee will, however, not hesitate to forward this file of images to anybody who might be interested in receiving it.

The Committee believes it to be important that with providing our affiliates with this pdf-document unforeseeable difficulties like the ones our member Christian Westergaard had to face, can be avoided. If any of our affiliates has another copy of one the books which were withdrawn by Zisska & Schauer in 2012 in his/her stock, he/she should immediately add relevant information – when had this copy been purchased, who was the seller, etc. – to this item.

We would be extremely glad if you, dear Fellow-Presidents, would forward this message to your members.

On behalf of the Committee I would like to express my sincere thanks in advance!

Kind regards,

Norbert Donhofer – President of ILAB (on behalf of the ILAB Committee) – September 2014