Here’s the lead for the story “Germany demands return of rare book found here“:
Any of the usual suspects in the book world could have bought the book, but only Rod Shene recognized the rare quality in the slender volume of old German drawings. He put down $3,900 for the work and hoped that one day he would be rewarded for his judgment.
Just another day on the job for Shene, 46, who buys and sells rare books for a living out of his St. Louis apartment. Though $3,900 certainly represented a sizable investment, serious dealers such as Shene typically spend up to $15,000 for a collection.
But there is nothing typical about this book. In the past four years, it has thrust him into a heated dispute with the German government, threatened to damage his reputation and robbed him of his time when he needed it most. Yet the book is the find of his career.
First, the good news: Shene was right about the book’s quality. Last year, leading auction house Sotheby’s valued the book of drawings at $600,000.
But Shene’s good fortune came with some bad news: The book may have been stolen from an unlikely victim — the German government. The state-owned Staatsgalerie in Stuttgart claims a World War II U.S. Army captain took the book and others from a castle and eventually deposited them in his Richmond Heights home.
Here’s the most disheartening bit:
The German consulate in New York contacted the U.S. attorney’s office about the matter. It, in turn, contacted the Department of Homeland Security to see whether Shene illegally moved stolen merchandise across state lines.
I feel safer not that the DHS has run out of terrorists, illegal aliens, and mobsters to prosecute under the Patriot Act.
