Jacob Hirsch

Cypriot coins turn up in Jacob Hirsch's Munich auction catalogues from 1901 to 1912 only as small sections inside sales of Greek coins. He was born at Altenkunstadt in Upper Franconia on 17 June 1874, the nephew of the Munich and Rome coin dealer Heinrich (Enrico) Hirsch, and took his doctorate at Freiburg in 1896. His coin business at Arcisstrasse 17 in Munich had issued more than a dozen catalogues by 1905; the thirteenth offered the Greek coins from the estate of Athanasios Rhousopoulos¹.

The sale of 20 May 1901 included a drachm of Euagoras I of Salamis (lot 403)⁹. The sale of 1905 offered a Persian-standard stater of Soli (lot 562) and a coin of the Koinon of the Cypriots showing the temple of Aphrodite at Paphos¹¹. On 11 November 1907 he sold an obol of Salamis attributed to Gorgos and a stater and a tetrobol of Pnytagoras³. In the Lambros sale of 9 November 1910 the Cypriot item was lot 814, a mixed lot of bronzes of Salamis and Roman-period issues⁴. The sale of 14 November 1912 included a didrachm of Baalmelek I of Kition (lot 574)⁵. None of these catalogues prints an earlier owner for its Cypriot pieces.

Hirsch moved to Geneva during the First World War and became a Swiss citizen in 1920. From 1921 to 1938 he wrote the catalogues for 18 sales of Ars Classica at Lucerne and Geneva. After 1945 he worked from Paris and New York, advising the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Gisela Richter. He died in Paris on 24 June 1955¹.