Valentin Weisbach

Valentin Weisbach, a Berlin banker, took over the Cypriot antiquities that Max Ohnefalsch-Richter had been unable to sell, and gave them to Leipzig. He was born in Berlin on 11 March 1843 and died on 23 October 1899⁶. Brönner describes him as a prosperous banker who held honorary functions in cultural, scientific and social life, and refers readers to the memoirs of his son, the art historian Werner Weisbach¹.

Ohnefalsch-Richter returned to Berlin in the spring of 1896 and hired a pavilion at the Gewerbeausstellung to sell what remained of his collection, which he valued at about 60,000 marks in a letter to Rudolf Virchow. From 11 June 1896 his letters to Virchow name Weisbach as a hoped-for source of money. Early in July a postcard to Virchow reports that Weisbach had relieved his embarrassment¹. Brönner writes that the terms are unknown: Weisbach may first have lent money against the antiquities, and whatever was unsold when the exhibition closed on 15 October probably passed to him that year. A handwritten Leipzig catalogue prices the stock at 35,433.95 marks, and Brönner suggests he may well have paid that sum¹.

In 1897 Ohnefalsch-Richter told Hermann Obst, director of the Leipzig Museum für Völkerkunde, that Weisbach had taken over everything he owned and was giving it to museums. The deed of donation to the Leipzig city council is dated 14 December 1898¹. Recke puts the gift at about 1,800 objects, among them finds from Kition-Kamelarga, Lapithos-Sotiros, Limniti, Nicosia-Agia Paraskevi and Pyla². A Hathoric capital found clandestinely at Idalion in 1894 was in his collection before it went to Leipzig³. The bronze, lead, glass, gems and jewellery were destroyed when the Leipzig museum was bombed in December 1943, and the remainder is now in the Museum für Vor- und Frühgeschichte in Berlin².