Scripophily Puzzle No. 3 - solution

Scripophily Puzzle No. 3 was about a sensational art theft that happend in Belgium during the night of 10 April 1934. As a matter of speaking, you could say that, back then, the news of the robbery went viral.

On Thursday, April 12, 1934, The New York Times reported  :

Thief Steals Panel by van Eycks That Treaty Restored to Belgium

Wrenches It From Altarpiece, 'Adoration of the Lamb,' in Ghent Cathedral During Night — Most Sensational Art Theft Since That of 'Mona Lisa' Is Laid to an Eccentric. Thief Steals Panel by van Eycks That Treaty Restored to Belgium

-- Wireless to The New York Times ---

BRUSSELS, April 11. — One of the panels from the polyptych, "The Adoration of the Lamb," by the brothers Hubert and Jan van Eyck, one of the masterpieces of Flemish art, was stolen last night from the Cathedral of St. Bavon in Ghent. ... The panel stolen is the panel of St. John the Baptist and includes the figures of virtuous judges. It is about 54 inches long and 22 inches wide. The theft was discovered early this morning when the beadle of the cathedral was making his rounds. The thief had evidently hidden in the cathedral last night and had allowed himself to be locked in. ... The polyptych had been complete only since the conclusion of the World War, when Germany was ordered to return two panels, one of them that [was] stolen last night. The theft of a panel of the Ghent altarpiece is the most sensational event in the art world since a thief walked out of the Louvre in Paris with Leonardo da Vinci's "Mona Lisa" in August, 1911. ...

source: timesmachine.nytimes.com, accessed 2 Sep 2020

The three towers in the old Ghent city center, from left to right :

A) Saint Nicholas Church, B) Belfry of Ghent, C) Saint Bavo Cathedral

Puzzle No. 3 was a multiple-choice question in which you had to indicate one of three towers in a vignette. I also gave you two visual clues that lead to the solution : images of share certificates in these two companies :

1. La Victoire des Flandres SA - Vlaanderens Zege NV
2. Société de Plantation & d'Exportation de l'Elaeis au Kasaï, dite "Plantexel"

Obviously the vignette with the three towers was taken from the former share in a Flemish insurance company. After enlarging the image - by clicking it - you could see that the company was based in the city of Ghent. Searching online for images of towers in Ghent would confirm your first clue: Ghent. 

Registered office in Ghent 

in French : siège social Gand 

in Dutch : maatschappelijke zetel Gent 

The second clue showed a share from Plantexel, dated 1928. This Belgian company cultivated palm oil, aka elaeis, in Belgian Congo. You'll be surprised knowing how this company fits in this story.

First, let us have a look at the painting. It looks like this when all panels are open. The panels have paintings on both sides.

The brothers Hubert and Jan van Eyck painted the Ghent Altarpiece, or the Adoration of the Mystic Lamb, in Dutch: Het Lam Gods, in the 15th-century. The polyptych altarpiece measures with all panels open 11 ft × 15 ft (3.4 m × 4.6 m). This masterpiece of European art is located in the St Bavo Cathedral, Ghent.

In our story, the stolen panel is the one in the lower left corner. The painting on its front side is called The Just Judges or The Righteous Judges, in Dutch: De rechtvaardige rechters. A notice from the public prosecutor's office, dated 12 April 1934, shows one of the last pictures taken from the paintings on the front and the back of the panel. 

The public prosecutor's office distributed two days after the theft a notice with a description of the panel.
Left : front side painting The Just Judges 
Right : rear side painting St John the Baptist 

attribution : Vdkdaan / CC BY-SA, Wikipedia

At the end of April 1934 the thief demanded from the Bishop of Ghent a ransom of one million Belgian francs in return for the panel. The Belgian government intervened and refused to meet the demand.

The authorities started negociations after receiving a second letter from the thief in May 1934. More letters led to the return of the rear side painting. There was no further trace of the thief.

At this point our main suspect comes in to the story.  On 25 November 1934, stockbroker Arsène Goedertier, once a sacristan of the Bishopric of Ghent, suffered a heart attack. He was dying in the sole company of his lawyer to whom Goedertier declared that he knew the repository of the painting. Goedertier however was not able to disclose it but, so told the lawyer, he referred to documents hidden in the house.

signature Arsène Goedertier 

The documents found were incriminating and included carbon copies of the ransom notes. The  lawyer notified the police only a month later.  The latter concluded that Goedertier had been the thief.

After a while doubts arose whether Goedertier had been the thief, or the brain behind it. Some suggested that somebody else may have put the incriminating documents in Goedertier's home office after the latter's death. Several researchers have tried to prove Goedertier's guilt or innocence or tried to find the painting.

Today the original painting The Just Judges is still missing. What you see today, and also in the picture above, is a copy made in 1945 by Jef Van der Veken. A Ghent police detective is still assigned to the case of the missing painting.

Arsène Goedertier was one of the directors of "Plantexel". He signed many of the company's founder shares (the 2nd clue in this puzzle).

Searching the word 'Plantexel' in Google yields links to the story of the famous theft. The answer for this puzzle is C: Saint Bavo Cathedral, the location of the Ghent Altarpiece by the van Eyck brothers.

I received one correct reply. Well done reader-detective DB ! Why don't they assign you the Goedertier case ! 

 F.L.



Previous posts

• The spectacular collapse of the South Sea Company shares 
• Uncharted : The Buller Gold Mining Syndicate 

2400 scripophily lots coming up at HWPH's home base

Matthias Schmitt has scheduled its next double-session sale for 12 and 13 September 2020. With his team he brought together over 2400 lots of scripophily and related documents.

The first sale is a live auction held this time at Zorneding-Pöring, HWPH's home base. The next day an online auction takes place. Both sales offer historic and beautiful antique stocks and bonds from all continents.  

La Bourse - Journal et Banque Édouard Blée et Cie.

Édouard Blée and Pierre Nicolai founded this company in 1883 to operate a bank. The company also published a financial journal "La Bourse". The share's underprint shows a large crowded scene in front of the Paris stock exchange. This rare 2 Parts d'Intérêt certificate dates from 1884. Lot 153 in the auction welcomes bids from €250 onwards.

The emergence of the stock exchanges made a great impact on modern life. No doubt, historic shares and bonds related to bourses are fascinating. HWPH's upcoming sale includes several of these : 

• L65, Nasdaq Stock Market, Inc., common shares certificate, specimen, 2001
• L90, Bourse Khédiviale du Caire, Lstg. 10 share, 1903, at the time the most important bourse in the Middle East and Africa
• L195 / L196,  £100 / £1000 debenture, The Stock Exchange, London, 1899
• L153 La Bourse, with large vignette of the bourse de Paris, see image above

The South Sea Company was founded in 1711 as The Governor and Company of Merchants of Great Britain Trading to the South Seas and other Parts of America, and for the encouragement of the Fishery. It obtained a monopoly to trade slaves from Africa in the Spanish colonies across the Atlantic. This share was issued in 1720 at the peak of the South-Sea-Bubble when for the first time in history many small and large investors lost everything in a speculative rush at the stock market. L626 is expected to realize €3,000. 

The sale features a significant number of securities from the earliest joint-stock companies. Some examples : 

• Sparking the Industrial Revolution the Iron Bridge Company "for building a Bridge across the River Severn" was founded in 1777. Its share is signed by ironmaster Abraham Darby III who played a crucial role in the Industrial Revolution. A rare and top scripophily item, L628 starts at €18,000.
• L631 consists of one of the oldest German shares, a share in the Compagnie Royale Prussienne de Bengale, 1759. It is one of the earliest shares related to the Indian subcontinent as well.  
• An amazing copper print with vignettes of ships at sea and a view on the city of Sevilla is presented as L632. This share from the Real Compañia de San Fernando de Sevilla dates from 1748.

The Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra gave its first concert in 1781 in the Gewandhaus. The ensemble would welcome performers such as Mozart and Liszt. From 1835 to 1847 Felix Mendelssohn was the orchestra's music director. This share from the Neues Gewandhaus in Leipzig was issued in 1884 to finance the building of a new concert hall.  It was designed by architect Martin Gropius, a friend of Mendelssohn. The new premises are illustrated in the vignette. A memorial for Mendelssohn was unveiled in front of the concert hall in 1892. Because Mendelssohn came from a Jewish family the Nazi regime ordered the removal of the statue. A bombing destroyed in 1944 the New Gewandhaus. The city of Leipzig opened again a new Gewandhaus in 1981. A bronze replica of the original Mendelssohn statue was presented in 2008. L452, a multicolor printing feat by Giesecke & Devrient, starts at €400. 

Both auctions include together more than 900 German scripophily lots  :

• Interested in German automobile history ? What about Porsche, see lots 284, 285, 286, 358 and 1856. A rare Megola-Motoren-AG share from the 1920s, L341, may find a new owner at €270.
• The Königlich Bayerisch privilegirte Krystallglas-Fabrik Theresienthal was the first joint-stock company in Niederbayern. Theresienthal was, and still is, famous for its luxury glass. Founded in 1836 the company counted among its customers King Ludwig II. Its share, issued in 1841, is one of the earliest known glass scripophily objects. Extremely rare, bids invited at €3,500. L637
• There are many flags to see in the auction catalog. The share from the Ruder-Gesellschaft Sparta e.V. Berlin-Tegel is calling with the rowing club's flag. L1753
• A map of West Germany adorns a modern specimen stock certificate, L1900, from the HCA Hypotheken-Computer-Analyse AG

The two auctions count four bonds from the McDonald's Corporation : L58, L59, L2164 and L2165. The vignette shown here is different from what we usually see on McDonald's scripophily. It is a nice example of McDonald's image building capacities. In 2011 the company held a mega job fair in the USA. Business Insider, Apr 28, 2011, wrote "It's Harder To Get A Job At McDonald's Than It Is To Get Into Harvard". McDonald's was looking then for 50,000 new workers. They hired about 62,000 people after receiving a million applications for those positions - an acceptance rate of 6.2%. Enjoy your meal ! 

There is a lot more to discover in HWPH's auction catalogs. The live auction concludes with meeting for EDHAC members. Here are the details of the event:

• Dates
• 12 September 2020, Zorneding, Germany, public auction
• 13 September 2020, online auction
• Further info and catalogs, see here on HWPH. 
• Live bidding is possible through Invaluable.com, see here, where you can find high quality images of the lots.

F.L.

HWPH includes 270 lots of Russian scripophily. A dedicated PDF catalog, in Russian, is available here.  The vignette shown is a detail from L843, a 1902 share in the AG für Walfang und Fischerei im Stillen Ocean Graf H. H. Keyserling & Cie.

The spectacular collapse of the South Sea Company shares

Satire is a form of art that mocks wrongs, stupidities and faults in society thereby embarrassing individuals, organizations or society as a whole. Meant to be funny, satire creates useful social criticism.

In A Lesson in Greed: The South See Company Ursula Kampmann tells the story that is unfolded by a three-hundred-year-old Dutch engraving. 

A Lesson in Greed: The South Sea Company

by Dr. Ursula Kampmann, Bookophile, Curator of the MoneyMuseum’s book collection
translated by Maike Meßmann
copyright Dr. Jürg Conzett of the MoneyMuseum 

At the beginning of April, the Sunflower Foundation was able to purchase a satirical work for the MoneyMuseum’s book collection. The depiction of this copper engraving must be quite mysterious for anyone unfamiliar with the topic. It features a man with horns and cloven hoofs in front of a cartouche with a detailed drawing. In the centre of it there’s a tomb with a Dutch inscription: “Posterity will think of it as a fable and build a tomb in honour of Aesop.”

Satirical copper engraving on the financial crisis of 1720. Netherlands, 1720. 

Cover page of a series of satirical engravings on the “South Sea Bubble”.

Contemporaries knew immediately what this was about: the spectacular collapse of the price of shares in the South Sea Company. And indeed, the South Sea bubble is still one of the financial crises that are referred to today when it comes to explaining how human greed and the government’s indifference can lead to high losses, and even to bankruptcy. Let’s take a look at what was happening, and let’s do it from the perspective of the caricature.

To the right of the tomb there’s a rich man wearing a curly wig signing a paper on the back of a hunchbacked, who is selling those papers from his vendor’s tray. The hunchbacked is identified as stock trader Bombario.

But what are these shares that Bombario is selling? Well, of course the most popular stocks of 1718, share certificates of the South Sea Company.

Sovereign Bonds, Shares or Lottery Tickets?

Actually, this South Sea Company was nothing but a variant of the Bank of England: first of all it raised an enormous amount of money that the country needed desperately. In return for the loan, the company was promised annual interest payments and the privilege of trading in South America. Hence its name, the oceans around South America were called the South Sea back then.

However, the plan didn’t work out. Attempts to stimulate trade failed; the government didn’t pay interest; and when a new war broke out in 1718, the experiment seemed to have failed for good.

But instead of giving up, the company lent the country money once more. In a complicated contract it was stipulated when which funds had to flow into the Treasury and when the government had to repay which sums. A good mathematician would have already been able to see back then that the company got less money back than it lent the government, but who pays attention to calculations when he’s hoping for a speculative profit?

This is what the artist wants to express by depicting hunchbacked Bombario: whoever touched a hunchback’s hump expected to get lucky. Signing a share certificate on the back of a hunchback was almost a guarantee for luck. And indeed, luck was needed even for getting back what one had paid for the certificate, as shares in the South Sea Company were actually nothing but lottery tickets or rather betting slips. Only those who got out of gambling in time were able make huge profits.

The Master of Whisperers

What those responsible for the South Sea Company did was a masterpiece of psychology and PR. The directors deliberately spread rumours about the company’s potential on the speculative market. They made sure that all magazines reported on the huge profits individual speculators had made with these shares. At the same time, they granted potential buyers instalments and loans in order to finance purchasing shares.

High members of the government were bribed with shares at special conditions that they could sell immediately for a high price – by the way, many of them didn’t do this, which is why they were among the losers, too.

Greed

Of course, everybody wanted to be part of this great business. Not only those who knew enough about economics to decide whether an investment was profitable or not bought participating certificates. No, also rich widows, ambitious students and solid businessmen, in short, everyone who had a few pounds left or was at least creditworthy invested. And they invested not only in shares in the South Sea Company.

Boom

At that time, there were many companies that messed with people’s greed. A colourful brochure, overblown promises, a rumour whispered in someone’s ear, and prices exploded. It didn’t matter whether a company was realistic, what mattered was whether there was someone to buy your share for a higher price. Not the project but speculation was the reason for profits. Obviously, there was a loser at the end of the chain. And because insiders were aware of this, they called this business model “bubble”: a beautifully shimmering appearance with no substance at all.

To protect consumers from such bubble companies, the government passed the Bubble Act in 1720. It determined that any new public company needed to be approved by royal charter. It was hoped that this would curtail at least the wildest excesses of bubble companies.

The South Sea Company had such a royal charter, which meant that every speculator expected that now – after so many other companies had disappeared from the market – the speculative frenzy would focus on the shares of the South Sea Company. And indeed, people bought and bought, and in the August of 1720, only a few month before this engraving was created, a share certificate of the South Sea Company reached with £1,000 about ten times its nominal value.

Downturn

And that was it. Obviously the shares weren’t worth that much. If you wanted to be honest, they weren’t even worth the £150 one still had to pay for them at the end of September. The speculators had pushed up the share price with their greed and were now complaining that many of them had ruined themselves financially because the stock had fallen back to a reasonable price.

Our copper engraving comments on this by depicting Greek poet Aesop. Aesop was known for his fables, which used animals as protagonists to illustrate human weaknesses. It’s no surprise that there’s a parrot on Aesop’s shoulder. Such an animal parrots everything without thinking or evaluating the message. What a splendid picture for all the deceived shareholders who thought that the purchase of shares alone was a guarantee of profit.

Obviously, the damaged shareholders weren’t that reasonable. They demanded the government to punish the swindlers who had fooled them. And that’s why many of those who until recently had been considered clever men of honour had to stand trial: the directors of the South Sea Company were removed, many of their possessions were seized and share buyers were compensated. High politicians were deposed because they were found guilty of corruption.

Well, human stupidity could hardly be brought before the court. And only very few people understood the lesson of the South Sea bubble, namely that the real value of a share originates in the company and not in a potential speculative profit that can be made with it.

Ursula Kampmann

Related links

• The original article can be found here on Bookophile. 
• Bookophile was conceived by Jürg Conzett and Ursula Kampmann. You can subscribe here to its newsletter.

Notes 

1 The full name of the South Sea Company was The Governor and Company of the merchants of Great Britain, trading to the South Seas and other parts of America, and for the encouragement of the Fishery.  

2 The South Sea Company was founded in 1711 as a public-private partnership to buy state debt. It obtained a monopoly (Asiento) to trade slaves from Africa in the Spanish colonies across the Atlantic. After the South Sea Bubble debacle, the company survived after recapitalization measures by the government and continued until 1853. In its last years it ended its trading activities and only served government debt.

3 Scripophily from the South Sea company is known. Now and then "New South-Sea Annuities" certificates appear at auctions. You can see several of these, including an Exchequer Bill from 1720, and some coins as well, at the online collections of the British Museum, see here.  

4 Scripophily magazine, issue June 2000, features a full article, by Geoffrey L Grant, on the company showing a stock transfer certificate from 1715.

5 American auction house University Archives sold in their 6th May 2020 event a document for subscribing to shares in the South Sea Company, dated 1720. Signed by Isaac Newton himself, the lot realized $85,000 without premium.

F.L.