QUESTIONS SURROUND MOMMSEN NOBEL PRIZE MEDAL

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V20 2017 INDEX E-SYLUM ARCHIVE

The E-Sylum: Volume 20, Number 52, December 17, 2017, Article 9

I was puzzled last week. I saw a couple articles referencing the upcoming Heritage sale of a Nobel Prize medal. Had I been in a rush I might have just published an excerpt, but preferring to go to the source I went to the Heritage web site to look for the lot. But I came up empty. I checked my email for a press release, then looked on the web site for an article or press release. Still nothing. I moved on to other topics and eventually published the issue without the medal.

I'd almost forgotten about it already when this submission arrived from John Kleeberg. Thanks! -Editor

Here is my English translation of an article that appeared in the German newspaper Suedkurier.

Suspicion of Forgery: New York Auction House Puts on Ice the Sale of a Nobel Prize Medal for Literature

A few days ago the Berlin Tagesspiegel announced: “Theodor Mommsen’s Medal for the Nobel Prize for Literature will be sold at auction.” “A Nobel Prize for Literature will be auctioned,” one could hear from the Deutschlandfunk. And even the SÜDKURIER ran the headline: “Mommsen’s Nobel Prize will be auctioned.” But for now nothing will come of that. On Wednesday morning the auction house Heritage Auctions in New York put the sale on ice. The suspicion: It is possible that the medal is not at all genuine.

Last Thursday the auction house estimated the value at 400,000 dollars (336,000 euros). In the final analysis the medal is a rarity in many respects. The great historian Theodor Mommsen (1817-1903) is one of the few nonfiction authors in the long list of winners of the Nobel Prize for Literature. Moreover his award (for his multivolume chief work Roman History) is one of the earliest in the history of the prize: Mommsen received it as the second person, the only previous prize holder was the French poet Sully Prudhomme. The high estimate is thus well founded.

But if one studies the piece on exhibit in the Internet, one becomes puzzled. The medal depicted there shows two graces in the Art Nouveau style, one is just lifting the veil of the other. On the left one reads “Natura,” on the right “Scientia”: Nature and Knowledge. This does not look at all like the depiction that is depicted in Stefan Rebenich’s 2002 Mommsen biography. There one sees a youth with paper and pencil, accompanied by a beauty who is playing the lyre or the cithara. Pencil, paper, musical instrument: wouldn’t that have been a more suitable motif for an award which is intended for creative writing?

In any case, one can find another in the German Literature Archive in Marbach – and is also puzzled there. Because up till now one thought that the Nobel Prize Medal of Theodor Mommsen was kept safely there in its own holdings. And actually it is still there today, gleaming golden as always. On it one can see the motif with the youth, pencil, and lyre. To prove it the coworker Susanna Brogi has even sent a photo to the worried descendants of Theodor Mommsen. The medal that is depicted at Heritage Auctions, on the other hand, according to the research results, on the basis of its motif but also because of its inscription “Natura” and “Scientia,” was in any case intended for a physicist or a chemist – if it’s not a total forgery.

About that the descendants of Theodor Mommsen scarcely have any doubts. “This whole story is unbelievable,” Peter Mommsen, Theodor Mommsen’s great-grandson and the family archivist, said to SÜDKURIER. “The Mommsen family is shocked by the impudence of this attempt to bring a clearly forged medal to market, on of all occasions the 200th anniversary of Theodor Mommsen’s birth.” The original medal was bequeathed by a daughter of Theodor Mommsen, who lived in Weingarten, to her son. He, in his turn, gave it to Peter Mommsen. “I, however, was of the opinion that I did not want to keep the Nobel medal in my modest household – because of that we transferred it to Marbach. The Literature Archive was very happy about that.

The Mommsen great-grandson speaks of an “insult” and expects that the matter will be “corrected as quickly as possible.” He also puts clear demands to the German Literature Archive: The institution should make it clear that it is “not going to flog off the assets that are entrusted to it.”

There remains the question: How can something like this happen at all? Has Heritage Auctions really been defrauded? Or is there an even more bizarre explanation for this case? It must be a really unbelievable story: a misstrike done in error, first handed out to Mommsen, then replaced by a medal with the correct motif, then lost after that and only popping up again after a hundred years in a remarkable fashion.

At the time of going to press we have not received any responses from the New York auction house about this state of affairs. The Swedish Academy in Stockholm, which chooses the person who gets the Nobel Prize for Literature each year, reached a firm decision within a few minutes. One look at the photographic depiction of the example intended for auction was sufficient for an expert to unmask it as “a copy of a modern medal.” Someone simply added Mommsen’s name, press spokesperson Jonna Petterson said to the SÜDKURIER. In any case one wants to investigate the dodgy case further.

About the Person
Theodor Mommsen (1817-1903) was a descendant of a family of pastors and grew up in Oldesloe (Schleswig-Holstein). After studying law and writing a dissertation about Roman law he received a stipendium to study ancient civilization in Italy. As a journalist in 1848 he supported liberal reforms and a unified German state. In the same year he became professor of law at Leipzig. In 1852 he transferred to Zurich, where he specialized in Roman law. He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1902 for his main work, the Roman History –“as the greatest living master of the art of historical narrative,” as it was then described. No other historian has received this honor since. Mommsen died in 1903 in Charlottenburg.

I've often toyed with the idea of writing a book about achievement award medals such as the Nobel. As noted in earlier issues of The E-Sylum they are NOT all the same - there are different designs for different award categories. A handy reference book would make that clear. -Editor

I reached out to E-Sylum reader Jim Halperin of Heritage, who provided this follow-up. Thanks. -Editor

Although we still believe this piece is a real Nobel Prize gold medal, Heritage Auctions has determined the award is not the one bestowed to Theodor Mommsen.

Unlike most auction houses, Heritage Auctions routinely posts each lot in our online previews sections at www.HA.com prior to finalizing our auction catalogs, usually as soon as the objects are photographed and cataloged. This policy allows the collecting and dealer community extra time to review and even help us vet upcoming items for auction. In this case, thanks to the vigilance of our clientele and others, we were able to remove the medal in question from our auction before the auction catalog was even published.

We vet hundreds of thousands of items a year and it’s not unusual for us to determine that some are not exactly what they are purported to be. Once we find something to be misrepresented, we act to correct the record. In this instance, Heritage Auctions immediately removed the lot from the upcoming auction. We continue to research this medal, but we expect to eventually return it to the current owner, a reputable coin dealer, who no doubt consigned it to us in good faith. We hope he is able to recover any money he paid for it as well.

Björn Schöpe published an updated article on CoinsWeekly December 12, 2017. -Editor

The incident illustrates two things: it is possible that particularly a huge amount of material consigned includes an object which will then be removed for good reasons. And, secondly: Heritage is acting in exemplary fashion because it makes the lots publicly known at an early stage and responds swiftly to information.

It remains to be seen whether the medal is a deliberate counterfeit, as Peter Mommsen suspects, or whether the background is more complex. It is clear, though, that sound provenance research is important, even if that may take some time.

Although collectors should not set their hope on getting Mommsen’s medal, there could be an exciting story behind this piece. We can be curious then.

The CoinsWeekly article reminded me of the 2001 catalog of Nobel Prize medals by Lars O. Lagerquist, which I do not currently have in my library. Does anyone have one for sale?

Kudos to Heritage both for withdrawing this lot, and for openly publishing information on consignments still in the cataloging queue. The open internet has proven the wisdom of crowds again and again; no one cataloguer (or cataloging team) can ever have complete and perfect knowledge of the material under review (or enough time to research all its facets). But with a little help from our friends we can do the best job possible of vetting and researching numismatic material. -Editor