The German Edition of the Little Red Book – Signed by Mao

Posted: December 10th, 2023 | No Comments »

An interesting rare copy of Worte Des Vorsitzenden Mao Tse-Tung (the German language edition of Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung – also known as The Little Red Book) Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1967. This is a first edition of the German language edition.

But whayt about the squiggles you may say? Well…

This copy is signed by Andries Oele and dated 1974 on the title page. Oele was a Dutch radical Maoist in 1970s Rotterdam. Following his murder by the husband of a woman he was having an affair with, his extensive library, almost exclusively of Socialist, Maoist and Maxist-Leninist subject matter, was sold.

The flysheet also has a handwritten note – ‘Pe 6.2.69. Gen. Hertsfeldt. Yu Zhen’, referring to the fact that the volume is believed to have been presented to General Gustav Hertzfeldt, the East German Ambassador to Beijing at that time, when he met with the Head of the Main Department in the Chinese Foreign Ministry, Yu Zhan, on this date.

But most importantly there appears to be Mao’s signature – only a handful of Little Red Books were actually signed by Mao.

By the way, it’s up for auction November 30th 2023 from a Glasgow auctioneer and valued at between £4,000-£6,000. Click here

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