Schmidt, Helmut (1987) ‘Menschen un Mächte’, signed first edition

Helmut Schmidt (1987) ‘Menschen und Mächte‘, German first edition, first printing, published by Siedler Verlag. Signed by Helmut Schmidt on the title page.

Provenance: the book was signed to me in person in 2006. Back then I was a student at Maastricht University in the Netherlands when former German Chanceller Helmut Schmidt was invited to give a talk. The man was amazing. He spoke in fluent English without any hesitations and his mind was sharp as a razor, inter alia making comments about the danger of global hedge funds. Two years later the world experienced the worst financial crisis ever as a reulst of banks and hedge funds ‘playing casino’. Schmidt was allowed to chain smoke during the talk. Afterwards he had a private talk with the VC and he reluctantly signed my book saying that it was an older title. Back then I was not a book collector, but I admired Schmidt for his intellect – something modern day politicians lack in buckets.