The current catalogues for the spring auctions at Reiss & Sohn are now available online. A total of around 1,700 lots of valuable and rare books, manuscripts and prints will be offered for sale during the three-day auction event in Königstein im Taunus. The most expensive lot in Auction 228 is a collection of 40 letters from Richard Wagner to his childhood friend Theodor Apel (estimated price €140,000). No less significant is a section of the original manuscript of Wagner’s first opera, ‘Die Feen’ (€40,000). Another highlight is Ptolemy’s ‘Almagest’ in the 1528 printed edition from the former collection of Copernicus’s pupil Georg Joachim Rheticus, who also added numerous handwritten annotations (€50,000). Another focus is on works on ornithology, including Levaillant’s magnificent work on parrots, his “Histoire naturelle des perroquets”, published 1801–1805, here in the Imperial folio edition with 145 colour-engraved plates (€60,000). Over 70 works on mining, geology and palaeontology form another interesting offering. A highlight of this section is the first edition of Georg Agricola’s ‘De re Metallica libri XII’ from 1556 (€30,000).
The second auction catalogue, covering geography, travel and atlases, features, within the section comprising 80 atlases, an edition of Wagenhaer’s famous nautical atlas, the ‘Miroir de la navigation’ from 1590, containing 47 nautical charts (€40,000). Among the approximately 600 lots of prints and maps, the most expensive item is the world-map by Clouet-Mondhare with the 4 continents, all together published as an ensemble of 5 wall-maps in 1776