Presented in Association with
Gitbud & Naumann
The Robert and Julius Diez Collection

294, Lot: 1. Estimate $100. Sold for $340. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

LUCANIA, Velia. Circa 334-300 BC. AR Nomos (20mm, 7.31 g, 8h). Kleudoros group. Helmeted head of Athena left, helmet decorated with sphinx; monogram behind neck guard / Lion standing left, tearing at prey; Φ below. Williams 349 (O180/R253); HN Italy 1296; SNG ANS 1339; SNG Ashmolean 1289–90; SNG München 868–9; McClean 1449 (all from the same dies). Near VF, toned, areas of roughness along edge.

From the Robert and Julius Diez Collection.

Classical Numismatic Group, in association with Gitbud & Naumann, are pleased to offer selections of Greek coinage from the Diez Collection. This collection contains a number of coins with pedigrees to important sales of the early twentieth century. A portion was originally sold by Numismatik Lanz in 2011, and although a few of the pieces here were originally offered in that sale, most, especially the coins of Magna Graecia and Sicily, have not been seen since their appearance in sales over a century ago.

Prof. Dr. Robert Diez (1844 - 1922) was the son of Emil Diez, the mayor of Pößneck. Shortly after his birth, the family moved to Dresden, a city renowned for its culture and artistic associations. There, Robert studied art, becoming a well-known sculptor in the process. Much of his work was created for public moments in Germany, including the Reichstag in Berlin. A member of both the Dresden and Berlin Academy of Arts, Diez was influenced by the sculpture of ancient Greece. This naturally drew him to ancient Greek coins, which he collected until his death in Loschwitz, a district of Dresden, in 1922.

Munich-born Julius Diez (1870 - 1957), like his relative, was an artist, professor, and intellectual. A painter and a graphic artist, Diez was influenced by the prevailing artistic trends of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Among his works were book illustrations and items of ephemera (postcards, etc.). At the same time, Diez employed his artistic abilities to liberate art from conservative constraints. Besides publishing illustrations in the satirical journal Simplicissimus, Diez, in 1908, created a bookplate for the author and fellow member of the Münchener Secession, George Habich. This last work is notable not just for the social association, but also because two Greek coins were included in the design. Diez was also an associate of the German poet and writer, Richard Fedor Leopold Dehmel.

While it is uncertain which of the two men, Prof. Dr. Robert Diez or Julius Diez, started and built it, the Diez Collection offers a unique window into the collecting of Greek coins at the beginning of the last century. Of the 176 coins in this sale, only 26 are not pedigreed to earlier sales. Most of those that are pedigreed were sold by the important German and Austrian auction houses of the time — A. Hess Nachf., Brüder Egger, and Dr. Jacob Hirsch —and came from important collections including Consul Weber, Virzi, Philipsen, and von Schennis, as well as the Berlin Königliches Münzkabinett duplicates which were originally part of Imhoof-Blumer’s collection. The few other pedigreed coins were purchased from smaller German dealers, such as K. Schild in Berlin during World War II, and C.G. Thieme, who operated in Leipzig and Dresden between the 1870s and 1933. Since many of the coins in this collection where not illustrated in the original sales catalogs, their illustration in this sale will provide a useful supplement to those important sales of the first two decades of the twentieth century.