[Bill Murray]

Hanno and others:

Regarding private collections by well known authors, I am not a really good source, but.....

According to Margo VanderVeen, she sold Bart's collection to a Dutch fellow who had a museum called Marshall Museum at Overloon or something like that. Hanno is aware of this.

It seems that this Museum has been transferred to something called "The National War & Resistance.com" or something like that which seems to be at the same location.

The web site for the latest Museum does not indicate that they have Bart's archive in their collection.

If we are really on the search for the "Holy Grail", someone in Holland needs to follow up on where Bart's collection is now resident.

As regards a couple of other very prolific authors, I have read that Walter Spielberger, or his heirs, donated his entire collection to one of the major German archives. Perhaps BundesArkivKoblenz or some other one.

Of the other authors that I keep contact with, Fred Crismon is alive and well and has his entire collection intact. The same for Uwe Fiest/Feist.

Summary is that if we wish to make all of this materiel available to historians, modellers etc. we need to make a pretty major effort to either have the source holders make the stuff available on the net or donate unwanted materiel to historic organizations such as this one.

Bill