FATE OF HUGE FORTUNE

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 47, 23 August 1930, Page 26

FATE OF HUGE FORTUNE

DISAPPOINTED ARMY OF RELATIONS

The fate of the huge fortune —variously estimated at from. £5,000,000 to £10,000,000 —of the late Albert Loeske, the German financier, jeweller, and art dealer, has boen decided, says the "Daily Telegraph." The Berlin Court awarded it to his ) manager, Herr Oppenheimer, Frau Oppenheimcr, and his lifelong friend, Frau Rosa Blaustein, while his 300 blood relations, who contested the will, went empty away. The kindred of the eccentric bachelor : who refused to have anything to do i with them during his lifetime put forward the alternative pleas that tho will was a forgery; that tho testator was of unsound mind and under undue influence when ho executed it, and that 1 tho beneficiaries were unworthy to succeed. Tho Court, however, made very short work of all these allegations, for its I judgment was the result of a retire- ) inent of barely five minutes. i Defending counsel made the statement that tho moving spirit behind the disappointed relatives was a Russian living in Paris who described himself i ! on his letter paper as a" specialist in' inheritance cases," and that a hand- ' writing expert who declared the will to

be a forgery had been promised a fee equivalent to £2500 if his opinion was accepted by the Court. Albert Loeske, who died last October, dined, daily in a modest pothouse for 7sd, despite his great wealth. He owned valuable property in Berlin and other German towns, oil wells in Galicia and Rumania, clock factories in Switzerland, half a dozen artdealing firms, each with its own title, and the three shops of Margraf and Co., tho best-knowu jewellers in Berlin. His neglected relatives, who had hoped that he would remember them in his will, found that nothing had been left thorn. 'His manager, Oppcnheimcr, was authorised to pick out pic^ tures worth £15,000 from his galleries. The clock business was to be divided among certain members of the staff, and all his employees were left a year's pay. The residue of the vast estate went to tho wife of his manager and to Frau Blaustein. Loeske was for some time the biggest taxpayer in Berlin. It was said of him that he was the only millionaire in Germany who filled up his ineoineta^c return with scrupulous precision.