ECCENTRIC MILLIONAIRE

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXV, Issue 18536, 5 April 1930, Page 9 (Supplement)

ECCENTRIC MILLIONAIRE

DAILY DINNER FOR 7Jd. The story of the Loeske millions, the unfolding of which began in the Berlin Civil Courts recently, is a theme truly worthy of Dickens. Britain’s great novelist would have delighted in the eccentricities of the human oddity, who, when already a very wealthy man, dined daily for 7*d fn a modest pothouse, alongside underpaid clerks and shopping assistants; lived to be one of the greatest international authorities in certain provinces of antique art; and over whose immense fortune 300 relatives are now engaged in a great legal battle. The exact value of the estate of Albert Loeske, who died on October 1, has not yet been revealed, and perhaps is not even known. It is said to be certainly not less than £2,500,000, and probably as much as £6,000,000. Whatever may be its exact total, this great fortune includes:—Valuable house property in Berlin, Frankfort, and other German towns; oil wells in Galicia and Roumania; clock factories in Switzerland; half-a-dozen art dealing firms, each with its own title; and the three shops of Margraf and Company, the best-known jewellers in Berlin. Largest Taxpayer in Berlin. The nominal head of this last-known business was merely a salaried emI ployee of Loeske, though the world has | crnly .just become aware of the fact. ' But, though he kept as much as poss- | ible in the background, it was known ! that Loeske was for some time the largest taxpayer in Berlin, and it was flatteringly said of the invisible man that he was the only millionaire in Germany who filled up his income-tax return with scrupulous precision. During his lifetime Herr Loeske kept his numerous kith and kin at arm’s length. Not one of them held a post, however humble, in the numerous undertakings controlled by him. It is reported that one or two specially favoured individuals occasionally received from him a friendly letter, or even, in cases of innocent pecuniary embarrassment, a little money. However, it 1 was hoped that on his death he would make good the disregard for ties of blood which he had manifested consistently during his lifetime. Great, therefore, was the consternation of innumerable nephews and neices and cousins of various degrees of propinquity when his will was opened and it was found that not one of them was to have so much as a pfennig. One of I his art managers was to pick out for himself from the various galleries belonging to Loeske pictures to the value of £15,000; another was to receive the equivalent of £2500 in cash; the clock and watch business ,in which the Loeske millions had their original source, was to be divided among certain members of its staff; and all his employees were left a year's salary or wages. Money for Two Ladies. But the whole of the immense residue was to be divived between two ladies who had been his friends from youth upward. One of them is the ; wife of his general manager, Herr Jakob Oppenheimer, and the other is Frau Rosa Blaustein. That Herr Loeske’s relatives had great expectations and suffered corres- - ; dingly great disappointment is clear j from the fact that they have already ■ | united in a solid bloc to contest the , | will. The plaintiffs comprise 11 l | branches of the kinship, 42 “heads of families,” and about 300 persons in all. They put forward several pleas in sups port of their claim. • To begin with, they declare that the will, which professes to be a holograph. was not written by Herr Loeske, and. as proof of this contention, point s out that in one case a letter has been s omitted from the German word for “payment.” This, they maintain, is perhaps the one word which Albert Loeske could not possibly have misspelt. It is further urged that the testator , was not in his right mind when he j made the will, and that the residuary legatees should be disinherited on the e grounds of their “unworthiness to succeed” to his wealth. Finally, it has even been suggested „ that Herr Loeske did not die a natural death though one newspaper states that f this insinuation has already been disj proved by exhumation and autopsy, which showed him to have fallen a _j victim to cancer.