BERLIN – Jeschke van Vliet Auctions will offer a huge collection of modern illustrated books, Pop Art, travel, historical photography, natural science and vintage prints on Friday, Dec. 6. Absentee and Internet live bidding is available through LiveAuctioneers.
The most important lot of the auction is the rare first edition of Karl Marx’s epochal work Das Kapital (lot 1285, estimated price €40,000) in the variant with the double printing location Hamburg and New York. Marx’s major work is the most important theoretical contribution to the critical analysis of the dynamics and developmental laws of capitalist society. The first book focuses on the production process and the concept of added value. Only this first volume was published during Marx’ lifetime, his friend and supporter Friedrich Engels published the second volume in 1885 and the third volume in 1894.
The manuscripts section of the auction includes letters by Ernst Barlach, Erich Heckel, Sven Hedin and Ludwig Mies von der Rohe, as well as a legacy of more than 600 letters from the estate of Carl Ebenau (1849-1898), General Plenipotentiary of the German East African Society (lot 91, estimate €7,000), flanked by the impressive photographic legacy in Syria and Palestine of the German nurse Elsbeth Tilebein from the World War I. After passing her nursing examination as a state-approved nurse in Leipzig in 1914, Tilebein served in the Imperial Royal Austrian Army during World War I. Between December 1915 and March 1916 she was employed as an epidemic nurse in the K.u.K. Epidemie-Barackenspital in Temesvár, where she mainly looked after cholera patients from the Serbian army. In 1916 she moved to the K. u. K. Sanitätsanstalten in Syria, where she worked in the desert and in the ambulance in Biserba. In mid-October she moved to Jerusalem, where she was awarded the Iron Crescent for her services in the Mobile Reserve Hospital. In 1917 she received the Red Crescent at the instigation of Djemal Pasha. (Lot 82, estimated price €6,000).
The extensive section of historical photography contains, among other things, 93 original photographs of the airship expedition America of the U.S. billionaire Walter Wellmann on Danskøya (Norway’s Danes Island) in 1907, which are also inscribed on the verso. After an unsuccessful attempt in 1906, Wellman managed a 24-kilometer voyage on his airship America on Spitsbergen in the summer of 1907. The America was an American airship built in France in 1906. It made the first powered flight in the Arctic, was reconstructed several times and achieved several aviation records. On Sept. 2,1907, America took off from Danskøya for the first voyage of an airship in the Arctic. After two hours she was forced to make an emergency landing on the Fuglepyntbreen Glacier on the main island of Spitsbergen due to a snowstorm. The airship was severely damaged. (Lot 405, estimated price €3,000)
At the top of the Russian avant-garde are four preserved Rosta windows were executed by a leading representative of the Russian branch of Futurism Vladimir Mayakovsky in powerful pochoir coloring, and deal with political, military and economic issues. (lot 1059, estimated price €6,000).
In addition to vintage prints, rare illustrated works from the fields of geography and travel and the natural sciences, Jeschke van Vliet will auction a collection of modern illustrated books and artist’s books. These include works by renowned artists of classical modernism and contemporary art, such as Hans Arp (lot 1256, estimated price €1,500), the rare special edition by George Grosz Ecce Homo (lot 1186, estimated price €4,500), Ossip Zadkine (lot 1156, estimated price €1,600), Friedrich Nietzsche’s special edition of Also sprach Zarathustra with book decoration of the Art Nouveau icon Henry van de Velde (lot 1212, estimated price €2,800) or Pablo Picasso’s posthumous encounter with Federico García Lorca enriched with 10 text lithographs after Picasso in black and white in the text, 4 embossed prints after Picasso by Guy Descouens and four full-page color lithographs after Picasso’s works (lot 1230, estimated price €1,600).
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