From Shadow Theatre to the Empire

The Career of Curt Prüfer, Arabist and Diplomat By Arnoud Vrolijk, Leiden

On 15 December 1463 the Egyptian author Ali Ibn Südün (c. 1407-1464) finished a collection of serious and facetious occasional poems, strange sto¬

ries and burlesque sketches. Naturally enough, love was the theme, but in addition to that, the author devoted attention to all the momentous events in

a person's life: birth, circumcision, marriage, religious feasts and ultimately death. In his text, the author paid homage to delicacies like bananas in sugar syrup and the mind-enlarging capacities of hashish. The collection bore the traditionally rhyming title Nuzhat an-nufus wa-mudhik al- cabüs, which roughly translates as cThe pastime of the soul, bringing a laugh to a scowl¬

ing face'. As a document of everyday life in fifteenth-century Cairo and of the Egyptian vernacular language of the period, the text is invaluable. That there was a brisk demand for this book among the reading public is demon¬

strated by the existence of no fewer than thirty-eight manuscripts in public collections, and it is exceptional that among these thirty-eight, there are two manuscripts written in the author's own hand.

The first of these two autographs, dated 1458, is kept in the Bodleian Li¬

brary in Oxford; the second, dating from 1463, was once in the possession of the Egyptian landowner and manuscript collector Ahmad Taimür Pasha (1871-1930). In 1932 it found its way into the National Library of Egypt in Cairo, together with the rest of his enormous bequest of manuscripts and printed books. On the basis of the two autographs, which differ only slightly from each other, it was possible to prepare a text edition. 1

One of the thirty-six other manuscripts of the text is kept in the collec¬

tions of the Oriental Department of the Library of Leiden University, the Codex Or. 14.520. Curator Jan Just Witkam bought it from an antiquarian

1 Arnoud Vrolijk: Bringing a Laugh to a Scowling Face. A Critical Edition and Study of the Nuzhat al-nufüs wa-mudhik al- cabus by CAU Ibn Südün al-Basbugàwï. Lei¬

den 1998.

bookshop in Göttingen in September 1978.2 It is a manuscript on paper of 184 folios with 19lines to the page. The text is in black ink with red for the headings and the sparse decorative elements. The script, energetic and flow¬

ing, is doubtless that of a professional copyist.

The style used is nash, the common style for manuscripts, with influences from ruk ca, a cursive hand mostly used for letters and other private purposes.

The colophon on folio 181a mentions the name of the copyist, an Egyptian named Mahmüd b. Muhammad as-Sayyâd al-Marsafï. The date of copying is also given, the sixteenth of the month Gumddd "l-ähira of the year 1328 of the Islamic calendar, corresponding with 25 May 1910 ce. On folio 177a it is mentioned that it is a copy from a late sixteenth-century manuscript which is known to be preserved in the National Library of Egypt. 3 In terms of textual criticism, this early twentieth-century manuscript has little to offer.

As a copy from a sixteenth-century manuscript, it can tell us nothing that cannot also be found in its exemplar, and even the value of the exemplar is insignificant compared with that of the authentic autographs.

However, this does not make the Leiden codex a worthless object. Manu¬

scripts are more than a textual witness: they may also contain a wealth of information on the environment in which they originated, the persons who copied them, the patrons who ordered them and their subsequent owners.

For example, an Egyptian handwritten book from the beginning of the twentieth century may look exceptionally late, but in the Arab World, where the large-scale printing of books gained currency from the early nineteenth century onward, a parallel tradition of copying books by hand lingered on for a long time. In 1946 the Danish scholar Johannes Pedersen recalled that as late as the 1920s the National Library of Egypt in Cairo still had a special desk for copyists, who produced manuscripts to order. Just like their ancestors, they wrote with the traditional kalam, a classical, slant-cut reed pen, the modern steel nib finding no favour in their eyes. And just as dur¬

ing the Middle Ages in Europe, copyists were badly paid, but books were nevertheless expensive. 4 In this respect, the Leiden Ibn Südün manuscript can be regarded as an example of this late Egyptian tradition. Furthermore,

2 The antiquarian bookshop, Rolf Kerst, seemsno longer to be in business. From Rolf Kerst, Witkam also bought the Codex Or. 14.521, a manuscript with the same provenance as the Codex Or. 14.520 presently under discussion. The text of this manuscript was ed¬

ited by Manfred Woidich and Jacob M. Landau: Arabisches Volkstheater in Kairo im Jahre 1909. Ahmad il-Fär und seine Schwanke. Beirut 1993 (Bibliotheca Islámica. 38).

3 MS Cairo Adab 329, copied Du Cl-Higga 995/November 1587 by Müsä b. Mu¬

hammad b. cUtaif.

4 Johannes Pedersen: The Arabic Book. Princeton 1984, p. 53.

it is bound in a red morocco-leather cover with on the spine the Arabic title Dlwän Ibn Südün, "The Collection of Ibn Südün". After the Oriental fash¬

ion, the cover has a flap attached to back board, which gives it the impression of a portfolio. However, the material of the cover, the manner of gathering the quires and the tooling make it obvious that this is a European product.

Most likely, the cover was made in Cairo by a German bookbinder named Richard Preller. 5 The spine contains in the Latin alphabet the words "Dr.

CP." and in Arabic "ad-Duktür Kurt Burüfar"

The German Arabist Curt Max Prüfer (1881-1959) 6was born in Berlin as the son of a schoolteacher. Prüfer, small and of slight build, studied Ori¬

ental languages at the University of Berlin from 1900 till 1903. After that, he travelled extensively in the Middle East and lived in Cairo from 1907 until 1914. He showed an uncommon aptitude for the vernacular Arabic language of Egypt, and showed a lively interest in the daily life of the common man in modern Egypt. In this latter respect he was by no means a pioneer, sharing the interests of many other German scholars of his time.

In the first decade of the twentieth century, for instance, more than one German Arabist carried out research into one very specific aspect of Egyp¬

tian popular culture, the shadow theatre. 7 In the Middle Ages it had flour¬

ished with masterpieces by authors like Ibn Däniyäl (c. 1258-1310), but at that moment it was running on its last legs. The pieces that were performed were mostly gross and vulgar. One of these German scholars was the ec¬

centric Privatgelehrte Friedrich Kern (1875-1921), 8 who in 1903 attended a show in a slightly dingy café-cum-theatre in the neighbourhood of the Cairo fish market. The piece centred on a villainous Coptic priest, whose daughter converted to Islam and married a Muslim to the general satisfac¬

tion of the audience. He briefly reported on it in an article, "Das egyptische 5 The other Leiden manuscript hailing from Curt Prüfer, the Cod. Or. 14.521 (see above, n. 2), contains a sticker on the inside of one of the boards with the text "Richard Preller - relieur - Le Caire". The Ibn Südün MS. Cod. Or. 14.520 was most likely bound by the same bookbinder. The advice of Ms. C.H. Scheper, book restoration expert in the Leiden University Library, is hereby gratefully acknowledged.

6 Valuable information on Curt Prüfer was readily made available by his son Olaf H. Prüfer, professor of North American Archaeology at Kent State University, Ohio. In collaboration with his son Adam, Professor Prüfer is preparing a family history entitled Reflections on our time (Kent, Ohio, Prüfer Archives, Kent State University, in prepa¬

ration). His help is hereby gratefully acknowledged. Other sources on the life of Curt Prüfer will be cited below.

7 For German-language contributions in the field of shadow theatre, puppet theatre and other forms of popular drama see Fuat Sezgin: Bibliographie der deutschsprachigen Arabistik und Islamkunde. Frankfurt a. M. 1990-1995, vol.6, pp. 425-430.

8 Eugen Mittwoch: "Friedrich Kern." In: Der Islam 14 (1925), pp. 89-91.

Schattentheater" (1905). 9 In the autumn of 1905, Curt Prüfer witnessed the same play with some modifications in the same little theatre. He edited the text, made some line drawings and submittted the whole as a doctoral dissertation to the University of Erlangen under the title Ein ägyptisches Schattenspiel (Erlangen 1906). The same Friedrich Kern published an ar¬

ticle in 1906 on Egyptian humour and satire, in which he elaborated on the work of the above-mentioned ^cAli Ibn Südün, 10 and it must have been this article that moved Prüfer to order the modern Cairo manuscript which is now in Leiden.

When living in Cairo, Prüfer befriended German Orientalists like the well-known Biblical scholar Paul Kahle (1875-1964). From 1903 till 1908, Kahle was the Lutheran minister of the German community in Cairo and the principal of the local German school, but he also published regularly on the shadow theatre. ¹¹ Decades later, Kahle recalled the many times he had sought and obtained Prüfer's help in gathering Egyptian Arabic language data. 12

Prüfer also associated with the German Jewish Orientalist Max Meyer- hof (1874-1945), who practiced as an ophthalmologist in Cairo. 13 He as¬

sisted him in his search for Arabic manuscripts, among others by using his contacts with Egyptian private collectors like Ahmad Taimür Pasha, and together with Meyerhof he wrote five scholarly articles on ophthalmology in classical Arab science. 14

At the same time he struck lifelong friendship with Baron Max von Oppenheim (1860-1946), a scion of the Jewish banking house of Salomon Oppenheim jr. & Cie. in Cologne. Von Oppenheim, who was more than twenty years Prüfer's senior and to whom Prüfer affectionately referred to as "Onkel Max", held a precarious position at the German Consulate- General in Cairo from 1896 until 1909. Precarious, because it was highly unusual for the German Foreign Service to admit Jews or persons with

a Jewish background to its ranks. Von Oppenheim subsequently pursued

9

Friedrich

Spuren

griechischer Mimen im Orient. Mit einem Anhang über das egyptische Schattenspiel

von

Friedrich Kern. Berlin 1905, pp.

98-104.

10

Friedrich Kern:

MSOS.

Zweite Abteilung: Westasiatische Studien (1906), pp.

31-73.

11 Johann Fück: "Paul Kahle (1875-1964)." In: ZDMG 116 (1966), pp.

1-7.

12 Paul Kahle: "Curt Prüfer (26.7.1881-30.1.1959)." In: ZDMG 111 (1961), p.

2.

13 Enno Littmann: "Max Meyerhof 1874-1945." In: R. Paret ^{(et al.,} eds.): Ein

Jahr¬

hundert Orientalistik. Lebensbilder aus der Feder von Enno Littmann und

Verzeichnis

seiner Schriften. Wiesbaden 1955, pp.

134-138.

14 For an overview of Max Meyerhof 's publications in collaboration with Curt

Prü¬

fer ^see Fuat Sezgin 1990-1995, vol. 16, pp.

509-510.

a many-sided career as propaganda officer, desert traveller, expert on Arab Bedouin tribes, Assyrian archaeologist and owner of a private museum of

Oriental art and ethnographical artefacts in Berlin. 15

After his 1906 dissertation, Prüfer published two other studies on Arabic drama before he left Cairo in the summer of 1914, shortly before the outbreak of the First World War. 16 After that, no publications by his hand are worth mentioning, but in 1934 his old acquaintance from Cairo Paul Kahle took the initiative to have him appointed to the post of Erster Vorsitzender (First President) of the Deutsche Morgenländische Gesellschaft (German Oriental

Society), a function he held until the eve of the Second World War.

This is how the world of Orientalism knows him: a scholar with an ex¬

ceptional talent for languages and an avid interest in modern Egypt, an au¬

thor with irony and distance, and ^a highly appreciated networker. However,

it so happened that Curt Prüfer lived in an era in which Germany lost two world wars and witnessed the downfall of Imperial Germany, the Weimar Republic and the Hitler dictatorship, only to regain its dignity and prosper¬

ity under the German Federal Republic. Prüfer was a first-hand witness of this history by way of his second career as a diplomat; a career largely unknown among Orientalists, but which managed to attract the attention of historians of modern Germany. In his study Das Auswärtige Amt im Dritten Reich (Berlin 1987), the historian Hans-Jürgen Döscher included information on Curt Prüfer, using archival materials that his son Olaf H. Prüfer had put at his disposal in 1979. 17 Not long afterwards, Olaf Prüfer, professor of North American Archaeology at Kent State Uni¬

versity, Ohio, gave the same material to a Ph.D. student at this University, Donald M. McKale, who used the material to write two monographs on Curt Prüfer: ^a biography ¹⁸ and ^a partial edition of his diaries. 19

15 Neue Deutsche Biographie. Berlin 1953-, vol.19, pp. 559,562-563; Werner Caskel:

"Max Freiherr von Oppenheim (1860-1946)." In: ZDMG 101 (1951), pp. 3-8; Gabriele Teichmann (et al., eds.): Faszination Orient: Max von Oppenheim. Forscher, Sammler, Diplomat. Köln 22003.

16 "Das SchifTsspiel: ein Schattenspiel aus Kairo." In: Münchener Beiträge zur Kennt- niss des Orients 2 (1906), pp. 155-169; "Arabic drama." In: Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics. Edinburgh 1908-1925, vol. 4, pp. 872-878.

17 Hans-Jürgen Döscher: Das Auswärtige Amt im Dritten Reich. Diplomatie im Schatten der 'Endlösung'. Berlin 1987, pp. 252-254. Curt Prüfer's notes and handwrit¬

ten diaries are in the possession of Prof. Olaf H. Prüfer, copies are kept in the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, Los Angeles CA.

18Donald M. McKale: Curt Prüfer. German Diplomat from the Kaiser to Hitler.

Kent OH [etc.] 1987.

19Donald M. McKale/Judith M. Melton (eds.): Rewriting History. The Original and Revised World War II Diaries of Curt Prüfer, Nazi Diplomat. Kent OH [etc.] 1988.

Early 1907, not long after obtaining his doctoral degree, Prüfer was ap¬

pointed as dragoman, "interpreter", to the German Consulate General in Cairo, and in this capacity he worked together with the above-mentioned Max von Oppenheim. In practice, this meant that they gathered intelligence

on behalf of the German Government.

When in 1911 the position of director of the Khedivial Library, the Na¬

tional Library of Egypt, became vacant, the German Government proposed Prüfer as successor to a post that had traditionally been in the hands of German scholars ever since the library's foundation in 1870. However, his spying activities and his excellent relations with Egyptian nationalists had made him so unpopular with the British authorities 20 that they rejected him as a candidate. In his stead, they appointed another German scholar, Arthur Schaade (not an Egyptian as McKale suggests). 21 This rejection

meant a severe blow to Prüfer's scholarly ambitions and it made him change the course of his further career. Less importantly, it must have caused him to abandon whatever plans he had with his Ibn Südün manuscript.

In the First World War, Germany and the Ottoman Empire faced Great Britain, France and Russia as adversaries in the Islamic World. In an effort to incite the Muslim subjects of his enemies against their colonial overlords, the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire called for Jihad. Unfortunately, the Arab population did not respond to the call, their aversion of the Turks being greater than their love for the Islamic cause. From Istanbul, Max von Oppen¬

heim and Curt Prüfer tried to coordinate an Islamic propaganda cam¬

paign with German money, 22 while Prüfer accepted a commission in Syria and Palestine, undertaking desperate efforts to form an auxiliary corps of Bedouins in order to assist the regular Turkish army. The plan fell through, however, mainly because of the obstruction of the Ottoman authorities, who

20 Prüfer maintained excellent relations with prominent Egyptian nationalists, in¬

structing them among others in the making of bombs (personal communication from Prof. Olaf H. Prüfer, Kent OH).

21 For the diplomatic row over the directorship of the Khedivial Library see McKale 1987, pp. 20-24. Since the foundation of the Library in 1870, the following Germans held office: Ludwig Stern (1871-1874), Wilhelm Spitta (1875-1881), Karl Völlers (1889-1896), Bernhard Moritz (1896-1911), and Arthur Schaade (1913-1914). For details see Dalïl Dar al-Kutub wal-Wataiq al-Kawmïya, 1870M-2003M. al-Kähira 1424/2003, pp. 20-23. Ac¬

cording to McKale 1987, p. 23, the authorities appointed Ahmad Lutfï al-Sayyid in 1913.

Contrary to McKale's statement, al-Sayyid became the first Egyptian director only after Arthur Schaade had left his position in August 1914 in order to join the German Army. The Dalïl Dar al-Kutub, p. 23, contains a facsimile of an official letter in Arabic from Egyp¬

tian Prime Minister Husayn Rusdï dated 29 June 1915, explaining the circumstances of Schaade's sudden departure and the decision to appoint an Egyptian candidate as director.

22 Teichmann 2003, pp. 125-132.

distrusted the Arabs. 23 On the other side, the British colonel T.E. Lawrence,

"Lawrence of Arabia", was more successful in mobilising the Bedouins of the Arabian peninsula by promising their leaders independence on behalf of the British Government. Of course, the fact that the British failed to keep their promise after the war hardly needs to be mentioned. The image of Curt Prüfer, with his consummate knowledge of spoken Arabic, in the midst of his Bedouin troops in the desert is highly appealing, just like the fact that he managed to recruit young Jewish women in Palestine to spy on the British in Egypt. One of these young women was Minna Weizmann, sister of Chaim Weizmann, the future president of Israel. 24

After Germany's defeat and Kaiser Wilhelm's abdication in 1918, Curt Prüfer, a career diplomat of middle-class origin in a milieu of Prussian

aristocrats, was offered a chance to play a role in defining the foreign policy of the new-born Weimar Republic. He served as consul general in Tbilisi (1925-1927) and as envoy in Addis Abbeba (1927-1930), where he supported the interests of Emperor Haile Selassie. In 1930 he was appointed head of the Middle East department of the Foreign Ministry.

The fact that Adolf Hitler seized power in 1933 had no negative conse¬

quences for Prüfer. The Nazis pursued a policy that aimed at replacing the

"reactionary aristocrats with their international family ramifications" with party members who were to be selected on the basis of their "racial charac¬

teristics" and "combative spirit". 25

On the basis of such criteria, it proved difficult to find suitable replace¬

ments and most diplomats remained on their posts, but for Prüfer, who did not belong to the aristocracy, this situation created new perspectives. In 1936 he became director general of Personnel at the ministry, and one year later he joined the NSDAP.

In 1939, Reichsminister Joachim von Ribbentrop sent him as ambassador to Rio de Janeiro with the express order to safeguard Brazil's neutrality.

Failing again and barely escaping imprisonment, Prüfer had to leave Brazil when it sided with the Allied Powers in 1942.

Unlike Prüfer, many of his old friends and acquaintances suffered under the National Socialist regime. Paul Kahle and his family compromised themselves with the Nazis after Reichskristallnacht (9-10 November 1938) by helping a Jewish shopkeeper repair the damage to his shop. He and his family emigrated to Great Britain, only to return after the war.

McKale 1987, pp. 29-38.

McKale 1987, pp. 42-43.

Döscher 1987, pp. 79-102

Max Meyerhof, the Cairene ophthalmologist and scholar, relinquished his German citizenship when the Nazis took power and became an Egyp¬

tian national. He never returned to Germany and died in Cairo in 1945.

Baron Max von Oppenheim, whose father had abandoned the Jewish faith by converting to Catholicism, was given the official status of Halbjude,

"semi-Jew" or Mischling I. Grades, "Person of mixed blood of the 1st degree", in accordance with the Nuremberg race laws. This classification saved him from deportation, but it forced him into an insecure and socially ambigu¬

ous situation from which his international reputation as a scholar and even his former services to his country could only partly protect him. He died in 1946. 26

After the Second World War, the German diplomats claimed that they had hardly been involved with the crimes of the Nazi regime, and that they - as true gentlemen - had only remained on their posts to prevent worse things from happening. This viewpoint had to be abandoned after publication of works by historians like Christopher Browning 27 and Hans-Jürgen Döscher, who showed that at least parts of the German Foreign Ministry had been closely involved with the Endlösung. Prüfer, however, was never indicted by the Allies or condemned by an allied tribunal.

What Curt Prüfer actually did and thought during that period can be gleaned from the wartime diaries that were edited by Donald M. McKale.

On the whole, Prüfer spent less than one year of the war in Germany. He only returned from Brazil in October 1942, and in September 1943 he left for Switzerland, 62 years old and in poor health.

His private notes from that time reveal no particular greatness. As a civil servant pur sang he tried to carry on with his work as well as he could under the circumstances. With bitter sarcasm he not only described the increasingly hopeless situation at the front, but also the greater and smaller intrigues at the Department. He expressed his frustration about his strained relations with his family, his bad health, the nightly bombings and the lack of affordable food. He was quite unequivocal about his political tendencies, regarding the Fuhrer as the man who had saved Germany from the humili¬

ations of the Versailles Treaty, and the Allies as instruments in the hands of international Jewry.

Nevertheless, shortly after his return from Brazil he privately expressed his feelings of horror and dismay when he heard rumours about the large-

26 Teichmann 2003, pp. 83-94.

27 Christopher R. Browning: The final solution and the German Foreign Office. A study ofReferat D III of Abteilung Deutschland, 1940-43. New York 1978.

scale murder of the Jewish population. 28 With regularity, he also kept visiting Max von Oppenheim, although this was a politically sensitive thing to do.

After the war, while the Allied tribunals were still hearing cases against war criminals, Curt Prüfer restyled his personal notes on the war into more elaborate memoirs. These memoirs were destined for publication, so it is understandable that he left out references to the greatness of Hitler or the

"Jewish conspiracy". He also omitted details about his intimate life and most of his outbreaks of temper. 29

It is unknown whether Prüfer ever submitted his memoirs to a publisher, but it is certain that they were never published. Curt Prüfer's son Olaf and Döscher held that the memoirs were "slightly embellished" ("etwas verschönt") 30 in comparison with the original diaries, but the discrepancies between the two versions brought the above-mentioned American historian Donald M. McKale to pass a devastating judgment on Prüfer's character.

In both of his works, he gave a highly negative interpretation of the events in Prüfer's life, among others by using the psychological insights provided by one of his colleagues, Ronald H. Nowaczyk. 31By a combination of facts and psychology Prüfer emerged as a sexist, a heartless father, a fascist and an inveterate anti-Semite. In this quality McKale regarded him as a represent¬

ative of a whole generation. Rather disconcertedly, historian Jost Dülffer remarked in a review of McKale's biography that the broad scope of his sources was not commensurate with his differentiation in judgment. 32

As a scholar of modern German history, McKale was not primarily con¬

cerned with Prüfer's other career as an Arabist and his friendly contacts with colleagues like Max Meyerhof, who was Jewish, or Paul Kahle, whose anti-Nazi attitude was above suspicion. Only Max von Oppenheim figures in his studies, but rather incorrectly he describes him as "a former Jew who had converted to Christianity". 33 By devoting more attention to

this aspect of Prüfer's life, his studies might have been more balanced.

28 Döscher 1987, p. 253; McKale/Melton 1988, pp. 11,151. The notes are in French, most likely to avoid detection: "On m'a raconté ce matin des histoires affreuses surle trai¬

tement des Persans (i.e.the Jews, A.V.). Ils ont été massacrés hommes, femmes et enfants en grand nombre par des gaz asphyxiants ou par la mitrailleuse. La haine qui, forcément, doit en surgir nesera jamais éteinte. Dies weiß heute jedes Kind in allen Details."

29 The originals of these restyled, typewritten war diaries are inthe possession of Prof.

Olaf H. Prüfer, copies are in the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, Los Angeles CA, and in the Politisches Archiv des Auswärtigen Amts, Berlin (Nachlaß Prüfer).

30 Döscher 1987, pp. 253n., 254n.

31 McKale 1987, p. xvi.

32 Jost Dülffer: "Donald M. McKale, Curt Prüfer. German Diplomat from the Kai¬

ser toHitler." In: Historische Zeitschrift 251 (1990), pp. 186-187.

33 McKale 1987, p. 15.

Although Prüfer was successful in his short career as an Arabist, there can be little doubt that he failed as a soldier and a diplomat, not so much because of his personal shortcomings, but due to the fact that he was caught up in the tragedy of modern German history. As far as the Nazi period is concerned, one can say that he failed to define his moral responsibility in an era when Germany as a whole lost its bearings.

Curt Prüfer lived long enough to witness the repair of the war damage and the first flourishing of the Federal Republic. He died in 1959, and it was Paul Kahle who commemorated him with love and respect in the journal of the German Oriental Society, whose president he had been before the war. 34

Unfortunately, we do not know what happened with the rest of Prüfer's book collection. When questioned, his son Olaf declared that he had no knowledge about what had happened to the estate of his father. It is therefore no longer possible to establish how the Ibn Südün manuscript that Prüfer ordered found its way into the antiquarian bookshop in Göttingen. 35 Today, it rests on a shelf in the Oriental collections of Leiden University Library as

a witness to the more successful part of Prüfer's life.

34 Kahle 1961, pp. 1-3.

35 Years after date, the antiquarian bookshop Rolf Kerst suggested that the manuscript might have come from a collection that German Arabist Rudi Paret (1901-1983) had sold in the 1970s. See Woidich 1993, p. 27n.