Morning:
8°c
Got the time, Herr Ribbentrop?
Louise Jury, Chief Arts Correspondent7 Nov 2008
WHEN Jewish comedy writer Laurence Marks told a watchmender his timepiece had gone kaput, he didn't know how right he was.
The Londoner had taken his Longines - an old Swiss make - to be fixed after it began to lose time.
The watch was repaired, but he also got a shock: he found out it once belonged to Joachim von Ribbentrop - Hitler's foreign minister. A tainted timepiece had been on his wrist. Then again, it could fetch £50,000 ...
So Marks did what an author should when faced with a moral dilemma: he wrote a play. Von Ribbentrop's Watch, by Marks and Maurice Gran, premieres on BBC Radio 4 tomorrow at 2.30pm, starring Miriam Margolyes and Harriet Walter.
It is set for the West End stage next year. Gran and Marks, both 59, are long-time collaborators on shows from The New Statesman to Birds Of A Feather. They met aged 10 in Finsbury Park Jewish Lads' Brigade.
Marks, who like Gran now lives in Gloucestershire, told how he bought the watch in 1985 in Los Angeles, but cannot remember how much he paid. He wore it for a few years, then put it in a safe and lost the key. When he retrieved it seven years ago it was losing time so he took it to a City watchmender. "He said, 'Has the watch been in your family a long time, is it a family heirloom?'" recalled Marks.
"I said, 'No, why do you ask?' And under this large magnifying glass he showed me an engraving on the back of the watch, '1930 JvR', and a very small swastika. The watchmender suggested he go to Sotheby's. They raised suspicions about its history and recommended further tests in Switzerland. "It came back to London with the news it was genuine," Marks said.
Ribbentrop, foreign minister from 1938 to 1945, signed the 1939 non-agression pact with the Soviet Union and his "diplomacy" helped push Europe into war. The watch was likely to have been taken from him at the Nuremberg trials, where he was sentenced to death.
Half a century later the question remains of what to do with it. In the play, a failing businessman desperately needs the cash the watch might sell for.
In real life, Jewish organisations including a synagogue have turned down the item as a donation.
Marks said: "There are three things I could do. Leave it to someone on my death and not tell them. Keep it and wear it. Or put it into an auction to make a big lot of money from it. What would you do?"
Reader views (3)
Great Story but if it were me I would get rid of it. Having had family die in the Holocaust it would bring back to many bad memories. Sell it there are lots of Jewish Organisations that could do with a little bit of financial help.
- karen laine, Stokenewington, 24/11/2010 13:15
Report abuse
What about auctioning it,keep some money for yourself & give some to one of the organisations, either here or in Israel, that help some of the Holocaust survivors who are old & in extreme poverty? It might cause them a moral dilemma but hopefully they will accept. After all, many people have accepted money (reparation)from Germany,such money not from Nazis of course,but certainly irrefutably linked.
- Lynda Kaye, London, 08/11/2008 18:39
Report abuse
I would wear it. The history of such an item is immeasurable. Lawrence of Arabia's Omega watch is in the Omega museum and no one will wear it as it should be used.
- John Wiffen, letchworth garden city, England, 08/11/2008 17:33
Report abuse
