Dear Aerodrome Forum pilots-
Great commentaries from the seasoned vets and the novices alike. Have enjoyed reading them for years, and finally made my first post yesterday.
The recent auctions on eBay show that the Charles Donald collection of Richthofen memorabilia has been dispersed. This indicates that the family did not desire to donate the collection for scholarly research to a university or museum but of course did the beneficial and lucrative thing. That said, it was rumored through years of commentary that the Donald collection had many never-before seen photos of Richthofen. I wonder might these photos ever surface in “Over the Front” or “Cross & Cockade” or even on the internet? (Some persons have indicated that photos existed in this archive of Fokker Dr.1 425/17 at its crash site pre-scavenged…)
My only real take on Charles Donald as historian was that he provided much of the photographic material used in the 1969 “Cross & Cockade” Richthofen slam-bang spectacular, plus some articles on collecting. But I am pleading ignorance. Did he contribute much to the study of MvR?
P.J. Carisella also built up an impressive Richthofen archive. Whatever became of it?
In Carisella’s first-edition hardcover printing of “Who Killed the Red Baron?” he posits a near-surreal account in a postscript detailing a visit to Bertangles cemetery in 1968 or 1969 and digging in the original burial site for Der Rittmeister in search of the metal plate affixed to a propeller-cross that the British made as a funerary placard. In this bizarre narrative, he describes recovering bones that he believed were Richthofen’s, stating that some witnesses of the 1925 exhumation reported seeing the German officials only taking the skull. This is just so weird, because the book ends right there. I know that mass-market paperback editions were printed in the 1970s. Was there any follow up to this? If the story is correct, were these bones later returned to the current Richthofen family plot?
The only Richthofen memorabilia artifact I’ve seen is the small swatch of fabric from 425/17 on display at the San Diego Aerospace museum. There’s still no treasure-trove showing up from the former Soviet Union…!
Those of you who know of the Donald and Carisella archives are encouraged to help me learn more. I donated a lot of WWI aero memorabilia to the San Diego Aerospace museum years ago – much of it from the estate of George Cooke, one of the founders of the U.S. “Cross & Cockade” journal. I was a young brat kid, and the family was generous in giving me things not sold as part of the collection. I never profited from it, but wanted those items accessible to others (dumb kid!) and over the years, with the items I’ve added on my own, I hope to make these available to others, too.
Apologies for the long post – I’m a college English teacher, and can’t help myself!
Hope to get to fly my own red airplane this weekend if the weather in the Mid-Atlantic is good…!
Best regards,
-George