This article appeared in the Cincinnati Enquirer last week, thought I'd share it in case others might also find it interesting: Treasure of rare books on the block Historical Society expects $4.5M+ from auction By Margaret A. McGurk Enquirer staff writer In the middle of the 1920s, a newly married Cornelius J. Hauck began to collect books. At first, he and his wife, Harriet Wesche, looked only for botanical subjects: trees, plants and flowers. In the next 40 years, the hobby blossomed into a passionate love affair with everything rare and glorious in the realm of the written word. The scion of a prominent Cincinnati brewery and banking family, Hauck bought books printed on paper, chiseled in stone, carved into jade, wrapped in leather and silver and jewels. Taken all together, those books form a spectacular treasure that stayed locked in a vault for 40 years, unknown to most outside the Cincinnati Historical Society, to which Hauck donated the collection in 1966, a year before his death. This month, its anonymity ends. On June 27 and 28, Christie's auction house in New York will sell the Hauck collection under the title "The History of the Book." Prices are expected to exceed $4.5 million. "Given the fact that we are really a regional history organization, it doesn't make sense for us to keep them," said Douglass W. McDonald, head of the Cincinnati Museum Center, which includes the historical society. Money from the sale will be used to care for the 50,000-plus books in the historical society collection. "We think it is important for these works to be put in the hands of people who can bring them more to the public's attention, and . . . where the world's scholars will be made aware of this collection." Francis Wahlgren, head of the books and manuscripts department at Christie's, said Hauck's books remained largely unknown in part because they were bought with the help of an unusually discreet adviser, Emil Offenbacher of New York. Offenbacher, a book dealer, bought many of the pieces on Hauck's behalf at estate sales and auctions in the '30s and '40s but did not reveal Hauck's identity. "His name is not bantered about the room," Wahlgren said. "Many book dealers would let that out, (that) they had a big client in Cincinnati and so forth. That never happened with Offenbacher." As a result, "There are things in there none of us have seen in 40 or more years," he said. "They are museum pieces in the sense that any examples that have survived tend to be in museums. They're unobtainable." The collection includes 900 items, to be sold in 700 lots, including ancient cuneiform tablets, illuminated manuscripts, rare bindings, sacred texts in Arabic and Hebrew and fragments of Greek papyrus, as well as modern miniatures and first editions. Because of the breadth of the collection, Christie's enlisted specialists in jewelry, silver, Asian art, Islamic artifacts, decorative arts and many other areas to assess and catalog the items. "No book collection has ever required such a team effort," he said. At least one local archivist regrets that the museum center did not make a greater effort to find a way to keep the collection intact, and in Cincinnati. Kevin Grace, University of Cincinnati archivist and head of the rare books department for the UC library system, said: "It's disappointing that they didn't try and get a local buyer first. It's a shame it's going to be dispersed and leave the city." The museum's decision to sell came as a surprise, he said. "We didn't find out about it until Christie's had it listed as an upcoming auction. If we'd known before, it might have given us the time to court somebody to endow the purchase. . . . We already have a very fine rare-book collection, and this would add to it. And since it was a Cincinnati-compiled collection, it would be nice to have it remain in the city." Museum spokesman Rodger Pille said some institutions outside Cincinnati that specialize in rare books were contacted informally about the possibility of buying the entire collection, "but at the end of the day, we determined that the auction provided a way for every one of those institutions to supplement their collections." The collection has never been exhibited in full, although a few items were shown during the museum center's "Prized Possessions" show in 2000. In recent weeks, about 40 pieces were displayed in London, Paris and Munich to entice European buyers, Wahlgren said. "In the book world, it's a huge source of excitement," he said. "This means a major new collector will be brought to light. A book from this collection will be known as the 'Hauck copy.'" * * * * Hauck collection The collection's single most valuable item, with an estimated sale price of $600,00 to $800,000, is "The Book of Friendship", an illuminated manuscript created between 1596 and 1633 to memorialize the crowned heads of Europe. A 20th-century Chinese-Tibetan portable "pocket shrine" carries the catalog's lowest price estimate, at $50-$150. A number of items are listed at less than $500. The newest book in the collection is a 1955 limited edition of Surrealist poems by Paul Éluard, listed at $1,500 to $2,000. The oldest is a Mesopotamian cuneiform cone dating to 2250 B.C., being sold with a newer but similar item; estimated price for both is $1,000 to $1,500. Francis Wahlgren, head of the books and manuscripts department at Christie's auction house, said his personal favorite among the 900 items in the Hauck collection is a 17th-century Dutch merchant's book on coins that has its own set of scales. Wahlgren described it as the original owner's "Blackberry, his technology at hand." See some of the rare items and get more info about the collection at Cincinnati.com. Keyword: photos [Note: I think I found the appropriate page at this site, but my browser showed it to be empty.) * * * * "The History of the Book" auction will be at Christie's, 20 Rockefeller Plaza in Manhattan, beginning at 10 a.m. June 27 and 28. Viewing days are June 23-26. The 679-page catalogs are $35 and can be ordered online at www.christies.com or by phone at 800-395-6300.