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The coins assembled here form a research-collection in the best sense of the word. Lückger belonged to a group of highly de- dicated collectors and amateur scholars closely related to the structures and the representatives of official archeological research. His growing expertise won him the respect and the friendship of some of the most important numismatists of his time, Ernest Babelon and Francesco Gnecchi. Gnecchi even published several coins of the Lückger collection in his contributions to the Rivista Ialiana di Numismatica around the turn of the century.
At the time the only available standard-work on Roman coins was the Description Historique des monnaies frapées sous l’Empire Romain of Henry Cohen. Lückgers main objective in the field of Numismatics was to publish coins unknown to Cohen in pre- paration for a future corpus of Roman Imperial Coinage. To this end he published between 1920 and 1940 a number of articles on Roman coins and coin hoards in Frankfurter Münzzeitung, Blätter für Münzfreunde and Deutsche Münzblätter (see below Bi- bliography of Hermann Joseph Lückger). In addition to these articles he published two books, the monography Die Entwicklung des Christentums und die Anfänge der Kirchengründungen im Rheinlande in 1934 and a collection of essays named Agrippas Rheinhafen, die Ara Ubiorum in 1936. The topographical and chronological frame set by Lückger in this latter work was finally proved in 1980 in the course of the restructuring of the Museum Ludwig. He always wished to inspire the interest in the “long history and the glorious past” of his parent city. However, sometimes his ardent local patriotism led him a little bit astray, – for example in claiming the importance of Cologne as a Roman mint place even in cases, where this is completely unattested and highly dubious.
For the numismatic researcher the hoard of St. Maria im Kapitol at Cologne, which was discovered in 1895, was of the highest significance: This hoard contained between 150000 and 250000 small bronze coins (centenionales) of the later Roman Empire and thus forms the largest body of Roman coins ever found. Together with the director of the coin cabinet of Berlin Heinrich Dressel (1898-1919) and his successor Kurt Regling (1921-1935) Lückger, who had provided crucial information about the cir- cumstances of this find in the first place, followed up the subsequent publication of the huge hoard-complex. Lückger played also an indispensable part in the publication of the spectacular coin find from Gertruden-Strasse in Cologne, discovered in 1909, and in the documentation of the famous hoard from Morenhoven near Bonn, that was already excavated in 1880. Of another hoard from Cologne, he analyzed the numerous issues of Magnentius and of Decentius with the christogramm on the reverse. During the main period of Lückger’s collecting activity, that is between 1890 and 1940, the assembly of coins underwent constant internal changes. Many coins were added to the collection, which Lückger had once inherited from his grandfather, but other coins were given away instead. With a number of collectors from Cologne and from Bonn, among them P. Kalenberg and a cer- tain Heider, Lückger was frequently in contact, – exchanging, buying and selling coins on a fairly regular basis. Thus even some of the rare and (at least at the time) unique coins from the Lückger collection, that were listed by Gnecchi and later on quoted in volume VII of RIC are no longer there. They may have been sold or exchanged against other coins that tempted Lückger even more.
But in order to get hold of more and other interesting material it soon became indispensable to follow the principal coin auctions within Germany and beyond. Many coins in the Lückger collection come from the most distinguished numismatic auction houses of the time. The handwritten labels often name the firm Adolph Hess Nachfolger of Frankfurt and its successor Dr. Busso Peus, whose auctions Lückger visited in person during the early forties. Also Adolph E. Cahn and Sally Rosenberg are among the sour- ces that are most frequently mentioned, thus underlining the great importance of the city of Frankfurt am Main for the European coin trade before and still during the 2nd world war. From 1918 the relationship between Hermann Joseph Lückger and the community of coin dealers from Frankfurt became more and more consolidated. Evidently Lückger’s main contact in Frankfurt was Leo Hamburger, who was representing him also at several sales of Adolph Hess Nachfolger. Also on the coin trays of Leo Hamburger Lückger seems to have had the privilege of the first choice, because only a few of the coins quoting Hamburger on their labels can also be found in earlier or contemporary publications of this firm.
In the course of the thirties Lückger succeeded in sharing his lifelong hobby with his son Johann Mathias, called Hans, who was born in 1897. Dr. Hans Lückger continued the collection after the death of his father in 1951. Towards the end of the sixties he donated a large part of the family collection, mainly medieval and modern but also ancient coins with a direct or indirect relati- onship to Cologne, to the Kölnische Stadtmuseum. Later on, in the course of the seventies, his widow, guided by her sense for aesthetic value, bought a couple of very beautiful Roman coins to replace a part of the losses.
Dr. Busso Peus Nachfolger is very pleased by the fact that with the documentation and sale of the remaining part of the Lückger family collection the axis Cologne-Frankfurt, once established by Hermann Joseph Lückger and Leo Hamburger, is once more revived. We are proud of the opportunity to offer to our clients and to other members of the collecting-community worldwide such a marvelous assemblage of Roman coins, absolutely outstanding in respect of its comprehensiveness, its quality and its par- ticular historical value. Many individual specimens in this collection have served as reference-pieces for important numismatic pu- blications such as RIC, Strack, Schulte and others; a small number of the coins, however, have remained unpublished yet. We see it as our duty and as an honor to add a small list of those unpublished types and variants below, thus reinforcing the cooperation between numismatic science and the coin trade and setting forth a tradition considered essential by Herrmann Joseph Lückger himself. Moreover we add a small bibliography of Lückger’s publications dealing with ancient numismatics.
Christoph Raab Dr. Florian Haymann
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