Hammer

£3,600

MAO ZEDONG. 1893-1976.
Very rare copy of 'Worte Des Vorsitzenden Mao Tse-Tung' (Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung - also known as The Little Red Book.) Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1967. Text in German. Half-tone portrait frontispiece. Original red vinyl over paper boards, titled and stamped with a star in blind on the upper cover. 1st Edition of the German language edition.
SIGNED BY CHAIRMAN MAO ALONGSIDE HIS PORTRAIT.
It is estimated that 5 billion copies of the Little Red Book were printed by the close of the 20th Century, but just a handful were actually signed by Mao.
THE VOLUME IS ALSO SIGNED BY ANDRIES OELE and dated 1974 on the title page. He 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, with this volume being purchased by the family of the current vendor.
FURTHER NOTE ON PROVENANCE: 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.