"XXXXV" SS District CT opinions needed...

[Friedrich-Berthold]

This is a long way from some foetid textile from Alsace, mind you. But why not? The "scull" threads are so terribly boring to me. Also the endless Schreierei about this fake and that criminal dealer also violates universal harmony. Maybe someone will be amused and even learn something. I like Dr. No's pictures of women, surely. Is the one Britt Eklund and the other is the very attractive Swedish actress in the film of Kundera's book?

[Doktor No]

Yes, "The Unbearable Lightness of Being", but not as Kundera wanted it, but who cares about his "Art" when there are Swedish beauties to look at. Which bring me to a Movie that has so much to do with collecting SS Cloth, "The Ninth Gate". In my collecting Movie empfehlen we have unscrupulous Dealers who will take advantage of anyone and crazed collectors who will step over dead bodies to get the items. This Movie is actually about rare books, but the analogy to collecting SS Cloth is a very easy transition. Oh, and Frank Langella surpasses all his other performances on Film and Stage, in my opinion, including his 1979 portrayal of Dracula. Langella is a tour de force as a rich collector. That reminds me, did Hammer Films got out of business because they ran out of ways for Dracula to bite people?

[Friedrich-Berthold]

Thanks. I have not seen this book collector film. I collect books, too, and also pay silly prices, but I try to be polite about it. Collectors and dealers are pieces of work, surely. There must be some deeper meaning to it all that I cannot fathom. In my own case, I am sure there were tailors in my family as well as not unsuccessful dry good merchants so that I am damned to feel cloth for decades. At least I am not selling re darned socks in the manner of what Josef Roth called "Luftmenschen" in his stories. The world has ever more ruthless people in it, surely. The role of the seven deadly sins with collecting Nazi regalia is a pretty old story, really. The criminal types attracted to it all in the early phases, which I got the tail end of in the middle 1960s, were somehow more pleasing than the high tech, big money personages of the present. The pawn shop figures, the gun show shysters, and traveling mid 20th century version of Hausierers (see Roth) all seem rather appealing to me in retrospect versus the lot today, especially the internet know it all with the bull sh!t check list that arises from five visits to the MAX or the SOS, the proverbial kingdoms of the blind where the one eye man is...you know what. But such expressions do not reflect the holiday spirit, so I shall stop. If advanced collectors would learn German to a workable degree, buy the Uniformenmarkt CD and just read it, the collecting world would be a brighter place. Rather, we have the predominance of mis information, stunted knowledge, and a totally incomplete basis of analysis paraded around as some incontrovertible truth that enslaves many credulous souls. These persons should take upon themselves the sublime mission of self cultivation and inner freedom from study and deliberate reflection. All obsolete and ridiculous ideas. But I shall tell you that some of the Wikipedia articles have improved a lot, but such is never enough for anyone who aspires to be a serious collector and also contribute to the growth of knowledge via this medium.

Thanks for the pictures of Ursula Undress and other film suggestions. I do not get out to see newer movies, as I am always busy posting images of old RZM adverts, while trying to do my small bit for the common defense of the Article VI area of the Washington Treaty.

[Friedrich-Berthold]

I rather like book collectors as a rule, and book stores, too, which where I live are obsolete. Or they are transformed in this odd digital way, which has greatly inflated the value of my library somehow.

Thanks for Robert H for the use of his Handbuch d RZM image.