AntiquesPublicity.com - Henk Visser twice cheated death at the hands of the Nazis and survived to build one of the world’s greatest arms collections over half a century. An important part of it will now be sold at Bonhams on November 28th giving avid collectors a field day.

Hinderikus Lucas Visser, “Henk” to his friends, might well be called a very lucky man. Always fascinated by guns, in the 1930s, as a precocious 15-year-old growing up in Groningen in northeast Holland, he bought his first weapon, an old pin-fire revolver. It cost him less than a pound and he hid it from his disapproving mother.

But his enjoyment of guns got him into a great deal of trouble. It encouraged him to undertake some high jinks, breaking into a German Officer’s mess shortly after Holland had been occupied during World War II. Caught, he was sentenced to death. Except for the bizarre intervention by Adolf Hitler himself, this episode would have been journey’s end for Visser. However he survived and died last year at the age of 82, after a colourful life devoted almost entirely to working with and collecting weapons.

His first escape from death at the hands of the Nazis was thanks to a friend of a friend of his mother’s. This gentleman, a General in the German military reserve waited until the German high command was celebrating a victory. Approaching Hitler, he presented the Fuhrer with the Visser file and boldly explained the situation. Hitler, it is recorded, looked up and said: “A friend of yours?” He then he personally crossed out Death Penalty and wrote 15 years instead.

The pardoned Visser was transported to a prison in Germany as a forced labourer. Conditions were hard, less harsh than a concentration camp but Visser became sick with tuberculosis. Aware that he had received a pardon from Hitler the prison authorities tried to ensure that he did not die and moved him to the prison hospital.

Another second bit of luck once more saved his life. An uncle of his who worked for Phillips was able to intervene taking advantage of the fact that an old German law said that a dying prisoner could go home to die. To make this work, he had to obtain the consent of all five judges who had condemned Visser to death. It took a while to locate them because they were scattered all over Germany. Having got their signatures, the uncle sent a Philips ambulance to Germany to collect Visser who was brought back to Holland where he spent the remainder of the war in a Roman Catholic sanatorium.

Because of his amazing life-saving luck and his lifelong passion for weapons Visser managed to assemble what is probably the largest and most important collection of Dutch weapons in the world.

The legacy of the late Henk L. Visser, and his passion, is a magnificent personal collection of which he was justifiably proud. The fabled Visser gun and art collection – numbering some 900 objects - is greatly respected by connoisseurs throughout the world for its range, content and authenticity. Visser at one time owned almost half of the world’s surviving ivory-stocked Dutch pistols. In 1988 this unique collection of ivory stocked pistols was the first private collection to be displayed at the Royal Armouries in the Tower of London since 1952.

HELP FOR THE HERMITAGE

Henk Visser was recognised as the world’s greatest expert on historical Dutch firearms. His expertise was sought from the Hermitage in St. Petersburg and the Moscow Kremlin Armoury, where scores of old Dutch guns were in need of skilled restoration and cataloguing. In Emden, Germany he was involved in the restoration of the most beautiful Dutch wheel-lock pistols in their museum, formerly known as the Rüstkammer.

In 1950 he travelled to Indonesia to work in the tobacco industry for five years. He then returned to his homeland and his first love – firearms – and became the manager of the Dutch Arms and Ammunition factory `de Kruit-hoorn’ in `s-Hertogenbosch. Later he became Far Eastern manager of Oerlikon, the Swiss armaments firm based in Zurich. These experiences provided him with the opportunity to travel widely, collect arms of all sorts and meet fellow collectors and museum curators.

According to his biographer, J.P. Puype, for the last three decades Visser focussed increasingly on the historical development of military weapons and also the paintings of Dutch cavalry battle scenes. His interest in the 17th century - which saw many technical innovations - helped to focus his collecting. It drew him to collect Saxon weapons, French and German guns, English weapons chosen for their technical perfection, and, of course, Dutch firearms.

Henk Visser was a member of many European and American arms collecting societies and a patron of a number of museums to whom he lent important pieces from his collection. He sponsored exhibitions and other museum projects including the hugely prestigious exhibition of Dutch muskets and pistols held in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam in 1974, followed by an identical exhibition held in 1978 in the municipal museum of Leiden.

Posted: 11|6|07 at 10:52 am. Filed under: News.