Photograph depicting Marshal Ion Antonescu, with his handwritten dedication and signature to his niece Rodica Mărculescu, Guggenberg photographic studio, 1942, kept in the family

1. Photograph depicting Marshal Ion Antonescu, with his handwritten dedication and signature to his niece Rodica Mărculescu, Guggenberg photographic studio, 1942, kept in the family

Starting price

EUR 250

Sold

EUR 2.500

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Session

Fri, 19 May 2023 12:00

The lot comes from the family archive of Marshal Ion Antonescu's grandniece, Rodica Mărculescu, the niece who grew up in his family after she became an orphan at the age of two. She had a special relationship with the marshal's wife, whom she cared for and helped after 1946. The wife, Rica, left her several belongings that had belonged to her and the marshal. These items remained in the niece's family until today. In a memoir about Ioan Petru Culianu, Șerban C. Andronescu tells us, regarding these items, that: “Philippe had been a fashionable journalist in Paris during Marshal Petain's time when Romania was led by Marshal Antonescu, and Artemisa had been friends with Rodica Mărculescu. Having been orphaned at the age of two, Rodica grew up alongside Ion Antonescu; she was like a good sister to him and, as Mizica said, died in her arms in the apartment on the old Mosilor Street 246. Mizica left her a few things from the Antonescu family, the moose of Mrs. Maria Antonescu, the gold watch with the marshal's chain, letters and other things of this kind.” Beyond the biography of the person - condemned by the People's Court on May 17, 1946 for war crimes - from which the few items kept in the family come, these represent historical testimony, which can be known and researched. The project of their sale through auction does not aim in any way to embellish the biography and deeds of Marshal Ion Antonescu or the slightest sweetening of the decisions that led to the Holocaust or military actions on one side or the other of the fronts of that violent historical period.

Dimensions

custom 15.7 x 11.6 inches

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