Heinrich Köhler (philatelist)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Heinrich Köhler (born March 24, 1881 in Darmstadt ; † June 21, 1945 ) was a German philatelist , juror and auctioneer; he founded the first German stamp auction house.

Life

As the son of the opera singer Bernhard Köhler and his wife Ida, he grew up first in Darmstadt, and later from 1883 to 1892 in Leipzig. He attended school in Leipzig and was a member of the St. Thomas Choir .

Later in Cologne he attended a grammar school until around 1896. In 1897 he began an apprenticeship with the Cologne stamp dealer August Wilhelm Drahn.

After completing his apprenticeship, Köhler went on a trip to Nicaragua with his cousin Josef Rener. After returning in April 1901, he worked as a stamp dealer in Cologne for three years.

With Gérard Gilbert he founded the company Gilbert & Köhler in Paris at the end of 1903. Heinrich Köhler married Anna Rener on October 7, 1904. They had two children together: daughter Renée, b. on November 26, 1907, and another daughter named Henriette, geb. on October 17, 1909, both in Paris. In the 1920s, Heinrich Köhler had a relationship with his secretary Lina Bereiter. A daughter also emerged from this.

Both owners started auctioning in 1908. Up until the beginning of 1913 they carried out 40 auctions together, then they separated. Heinrich Köhler made a new start in Berlin, where he held his first auction on April 13, 1913, and founded the Heinrich Köhler stamp auction house. By the end of the Second World War there should be a total of 116.

Famous collectors of their time such as Philipp von Ferrary , Baron Rothschild and House of Fabergé Agathon Fabergé, the court jeweler of the Russian tsar, visit him in Berlin. Other well-known collectors are his friends, such as Gaston Nehrlich, Alfred Lichtenstein, Konsul Weinberger and Oberländer. King Georg V and Carol II of Romania , as well as Simon Wiesenthal are guests and customers of the Heinrich Köhler auction house.

Heinrich Köhler has dealt intensively with forgeries and forgeries . In 1925 he opened an official test center after having issued reports for brands acquired from his company years earlier. In 1925/1926 he succeeded in convicting Rudolf Siegel, a well-known Berlin auctioneer, who was responsible for the distribution and manufacture of (falsifications). In 1926 he developed a "test stamp system". In the 1930s he was a member of the supervisory board of the associations.

His house was the official auctioneer of IPOSTA Berlin 1930. In addition, from 1934 he was a sworn expert on the “Berlin Courts” (regional courts I, II and III) and as a publicly appointed expert at the Berlin Chamber of Commerce . He owned a large collection of forgeries, in which the forgeries of Goegg-Mercier, Hirschburger, the predecessor and successor of Fournier, and many "Ferrarities", but also Fouré forgeries were documented. The well-known examiner Fritz Starauschek, who later became the head of the supervisory authority in the GDR, was one of his employees. Heinrich Köhler has been a juror a. a. in Paris, Monaco 1928, Berlin - IPOSTA 1930, WIPA 1933, OSTROPA 1935).

He tried to stay out of politics during the Third Reich. His daughter Renée had married a Jewish-Russian emigrant. The last time he saw her was at PEXIP in Paris. Köhler's business at Friedrichstrasse 166, which was badly damaged before the end of the war, was continued after his death by his wife Anna together with their younger daughter Henriette and their son-in-law Hans Schmidt from 1948.

Publications

  • Publisher Catalog Illustré des Timbres Fiscaux de Grand Bretagne
  • Editor and author of Köhler's Philatelic Magazine (11 issues between 1925 and 1936 published in Berlin)
  • The German colonial forerunners and related sea postmarks. Verlag Heinrich Köhler, 1932

Exhibits

  • Awards in Strasbourg and New York (1926)

Honors

  • The portrait of a Philatelists Day card on the occasion of the 33rd Philatelists Day 1927 Berlin is dedicated to Heinrich Köhler.
  • January 19, 1929 (DdS: 1930) Appointment to the corresponding member of the Academie de Philatelie in Paris.
  • 1932 Roll of Distinguished Philatelists London (at the award ceremony in Brighton, he emphasized the great honor for German philately, since the English Congress had appointed two German philatelists, in addition to him, Herbert Munk, to register in 1931).

literature

  • Wolfgang Maassen : Heinrich Köhler and his successors , publisher: Phil * Creativ, Schwalmtal 2013, ISBN 978-3-932198-93-9
  • The German collector, March 1938, p. 51
  • DBZ 1913, p. 67
  • Wolfgang Maassen: "When the hammer fell for the first time" (3): Heinrich Köhler - philatelist and inspector. In: Philately No. 313 of July 2003, pp. 37–41
  • Wolfgang Maassen: Crises grow: 100 years of Heinrich Köhler auction house. In: APHV-Magazin, No. 10/2013, pp. 9–16 (with pictures)

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Rudolf Augstein in: Der Spiegel Volume 24, issues 41–44, 1970, p. 60.
  2. ↑ Mona Jaeger: Stamp auction house Koehler 320,000 euros for a small mistake. In: FAZ of July 8, 2010. Retrieved September 4, 2016 .
  3. ↑ Abridged version from the book by Wolfgang Maassen: "Who is who in philately? (Still unpublished)
  4. ↑ Catalog Illustré timbre Fiscaux de Grand Bretagne , Irlande, Écosse 1906-1907 , accessed on 12 September 2016th
  5. ↑ a b c Heinrich Köhler ( Memento of the original from September 13, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: Wolfgang Maassen (Ed.): Who is who of Philately. 2nd edition, 2005–2007 at the Bund Deutscher Philatelisten e. V., accessed on September 12, 2016. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.bdph.de
  6. ↑ BDPh Kompass: From the history of testing , accessed on September 13, 2016.
personal data
SURNAME Koehler, Heinrich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German philatelist and auctioneer
DATE OF BIRTH March 24, 1881
PLACE OF BIRTH Darmstadt
DATE OF DEATH June 21, 1945