Lot 2420

Description

Netherlands Low Countries, Holland Province, leeuwendaalder (lion daalder), 1576, rosette mintmark, (D.8838, Del.831). Weak in places, otherwise nearly very fine and the first and rare date of issue.

Ex Alexandre Caratheodory Pasha (1833-1906) Collection.

Alexandre Caratheodory Pasha, was a leading statesman in the Ottoman Empire, whose interest in collecting ancient coins was inspired by his meeting with the French diplomat and numismatist William-Henri Waddington at the Congress of Berlin in 1878. He was not only a prominent Greek scholar, diplomat, and statesman in the Ottoman Empire but formed one of the most important coin collections in the 19th century. His father, was the personal physician to Sultans Mahmud II and Abdul-Aziz. He obtain a doctoral degree from the Paris Faculty of Law and pursued a career in the public service of the Ottoman Empire. In 1874, he was appointed ambassador to Rome. In 1878, as Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs, he participated in the preliminary negotiations with Russia that led to the Treaty of San Stefano, ending the Russo-Turkish War (1877-1878). Later that same year, Sultan Abdul-Hamid II dispatched him to Germany as head of the Ottoman delegation to the Congress of Berlin. His skillful negotiations with various European statesmen, resulting in the revision of the San Stefano peace terms in favor of the Ottoman Empire (Treaty of Berlin, 1878). Disraeli characterized him as "full of finesse and yet calm and plausible." During the Berlin negotiations, he had the opportunity to discover in his French counterpart, William-Henri Waddington, a common interest in ancient Greek culture and civilization. Waddington told him of his archaeological pursuits and the collection of ancient coins he had assembled in Asia Minor. He was appointed Governor-General of Crete however, he was called back to Constantinople, where he became Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Ottoman Empire (1878-1879). He was the only Greek to ever occupy such a prominent position. In 1884, the Sultan appointed him Prince of the autonomous Greek island of Samos (1885-1894). It is during those nine years, and inspired by Waddington's enthusiasm for ancient coins, that he took up coin collecting and amassed an important collection.

In 1895, amid renewed religious and social tensions in Crete, Abdul Hamid II appointed him as Governor of the island for a second time, but resigned in December of the same year and was appointed First Translator to H.I.M. the Sultan. In 1901, he attended the funeral of Queen Victoria as a member of the Ottoman delegation. This was his last official assignment. His funeral in 1906, in Constantinople, was officiated by the Patriarch and all the Holy Synod. In 1923 his children and grandchildren left Turkey. Some of them settled in Greece, others in Egypt, Switzerland, and Belgium, the coins were sold by CNG during 2015.