transcript

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MARCO WERMAN: In Nazi Germany in the late 1930's, Hans Sachs stood out on a couple of counts. Sachs was Jewish, and the owner of a large collection of German posters that the Nazis coveted. The collection included some rare works advertising movies and cabaret shows, plus examples of political propaganda from that era. In 1938, Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels ordered the posters seized. Hans Sachs never saw his collection again. His son, Peter Sachs, is now trying to get them back. The Florida resident sued the German Historical Museum in Berlin, which now owns the collection. Peter Sachs says his father started collecting posters when he was about 18.

PETER SACHS: He collected posters between 1895 and 1938, and he was really the first to recognize and appreciate the value of art as it applied to commercial advertising, and it was a consuming passion for him – lifelong.

WERMAN: Mr. Sachs, have you ever seen the posters yourself?

SACHS: The only posters that I've seen are about 100 or so that the German Historical Museum arranged to have me view 2 years ago. Those are the only time that I've ever seen any of those posters, and the entire collection or what's left of the posters has been locked away from public view in the museum vault for the last 70 years. With the exception of a brief exhibition in 1992, they haven't seen the light of day.

WERMAN: How exactly did it come about that Joseph Goebbels, the propaganda minister for the Nazis, ordered the posters to be taken from your father? Do you know the story of how the posters were actually seized?

SACHS: Oh yes, yes. The Gestapo came to my father's home and they personally made him carry down all of the posters and all of the aluminum swing arms on which he had them all suspended, and the index catalogs, and just carted them off. And my father wrote in a book that he wrote in about 1957, he said, “Thus began the blackest day of my life.”

WERMAN: What happened to your father in '38? Did he leave Germany?

SACHS: He was one of about 30,000 Jews who were arrested on Kristallnacht. He was taken to the Sacsenhausen concentration camp just north of Berlin and he was imprisoned there for about three weeks. And it's a quite remarkable story about how my mother worked industriously to get him out. It's a very gripping story that would take way too much time for a short interview. But once he was out, we were out of Germany within about 24 hours.

WERMAN: So you've now sued in a test case for the return of two posters, and a German court ruled that one of these posters -- a poster for a German satirical magazine – featuring a red bulldog, was clearly your father's and should be returned to you. So I guess this opens the way for 4,000 posters, the rest of the collection to be returned to you, but I'm wondering if the museum is going to fight this?

SACHS: At this point, I have no idea. I've never been approached by the museum in any way. My position isn't carved in stone. I've always been willing to, you know, listen to any suggestion of cooperation, but none have been forthcoming.

WERMAN: For you, what is this case about? Is it about the posters? Is it about your father's memory? Righting a wrong?

SACHS: Well, it's absolutely about my father's memory, and it has to do with my sense of justice, also. I'm very gratified by the court's decision, and I very much regard it as a moral victory.

WERMAN: Well, Peter Sachs, thanks very much for speaking with us about the case of your father's poster collection. Greatly appreciate it.

SACHS: Not at all. And thank you very much for speaking with me.

WERMAN: And you can see a photograph online of Peter Sachs with some of his father's poster collection. That's at theworld.org.

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