24 August 2017 – Although Dieter Raab had told the story many times, it was still lovely to hear him talk about Dr. Busso Peus making him the offer to buy his numismatic dealership in 1966. At the time Dieter Raab was working in Switzerland at the Münzen und Medaillen AG, where a few bosses were all too sure that he would just stay there for the rest of his life. (And treated and paid him accordingly.) They did not take the young numismatist’s father into consideration, though. He had owned a pub and could thus provide his son with the means to buy the numismatic dealership of Dr. Busso Peus together with Peter N. Schulten. And thus Dieter Raab not only moved from Basel to Frankfurt in 1967, he also took the best secretary of the Münzen und Medaillen AG with him as his wife – which Erich Cahn continued to hold against him for decades.
Dieter Raab at his very favourite pastime: „playing“ with the coins, as he called it. Photo: Peus.
Dr. Busso Peus only made one demand at the time and that was that the company should remain in his name. It was important to him that Dieter Raab acknowledged the house’s tradition. After all, Dr. Busso Peus was already one of the oldest numismatic dealerships in Germany, and its name bore witness to a varied, typical German history that dated back to the year 1870.
The founder of the company Adolph Hess.
At the time Adolph Hess founded a numismatic dealership in Gießen, which he moved to Frankfurt in 1873. Today, his catalogues are among the most sought-after rarities of bibliophile numismatists. In 1894 he sold his numismatic dealership to Louis Hamburger, who should lead the business with the name Adolph Hess Nachfolger into the new century.
In 1910 Dr. Hermann Feith became partner at Adolph Hess Nachfolger. He was observant enough to foresee the antisemitic trend in Germany even before Hitler’s ascend to power, and founded a second numismatic dealership in the Swiss city of Lucerne under the same name. He relocated the department for ancient and European coins to Lucerne, supervised by Hermann Rosenberg. After the ascend to power, all Jewish employees of Adolph Hess Nachf. / Frankfurt were transferred to Adolph Hess / Lucerne. (Yes, it was this house which became business partner of the aspiring bank Leu with Dr. Leo Mildenberg at the top…) Dr. Feith sold the Frankfurt headquarters to the head of the department for German coins at the time, Dr. Busso Peus and the accountant of the company, Paul Rothenbächer.
Advertisement of Adolph Hess Nachf. under Dr. Busso Peus and Paul Rothenbächer.
Dr. Busso Peus and Paul Rothenbächer shared the library with the Lucerne branch, so that the significant body of works of reference in particular could go to Switzerland. The books on German coins stayed in Frankfurt, so that the numismatic dealership Dr. Busso Peus Nachf. is still the proud owner of one of the best libraries on German numismatics worldwide. In the „pre-computer-era“, specialists were also impressed by their extensive index of rare German coins, which was already started by Adolph Hess and had been continued for more than a century.
Advertisement of Adolph Hess Nachf. under a new name.
In 1940 the numismatic dealership Adolph Hess Nachf. had to change its name due to a National Socialist law that forbade all Jewish company names. Thus the „Münzhandlung Dr. Busso Peus“ came to existence. And Dieter Raab was able to buy it together with antiquity-specialist Peter N. Schulten in 1967.
Dieter and Lilo Raab.
Much has changed since then. In 1970 the dealership moved to the Bornwiesenweg. In 1973 Peter N. Schulten left the business to start his own auction house in Cologne.
Christoph Raab (r.) hands over an abacus to a representative of the ‘Schlossbauverein’ as a gift for the collection on occasion of a visit by the VdDM at the Castle Burg. Photo: UK
At the beginning of 2007, Christoph Raab, who was president of the „Verband der deutschen Münzhändler“ at the time, took over as manager of the business after his father Dieter Raab. Just like his father, he promotes coin collecting and represents the concerns of coin collectors in public. He is thus – like his father Dieter Raab before him – a member of the „Numismatische Kommission der Länder“.
The team of Peus at a dinner.
One thing has stayed the same over all these years: the unbelievable kindness, when greeting guests at Bornwiesenweg.
Christoph Raab and his employees at Peus are reading CoinsWeekly, too. Photo: UK.
CoinsWeekly congratulates the numismatic dealership Dr. Busso Peus Nachf. on the 50th anniversary and Mr. Christoph Raab for 10 years as manager of Dr. Busso Peus Nachf.
AD MVLTOS ANNOS
And here are some impressions of the celebration that took place in Frankfurt on 19 August 2017.
You can find the website of the company Peus here.
There is an article worth reading that is unfortunately not available on the internet. It is the famous article by Erich Cahn on the subject of Frankfurt coin trade 1924-1934 which was published in the 1981 festschrift „Frankfurter Numismatische Gesellschaft 1906-1981“.
Due to his very honest remarks about the Frankfurt coin dealing-cartel in the 1930s, he supposedly got into a big fight with his brother Herbert. At least that is how the rumor goes…
We have often reported on Dieter Raab already, for instance on occasion of his 75th birthday, when he was awarded the Otto Paul Wenger Preis and, sadly, also on occasion of his death.
Of course there is also an entry about Dieter Raab in our Numismatic Who’s Who.
And this is the obituary we issued on Peter N. Schulten, who bought the numismatic dealership Dr. Busso Peus in 1973.