{"id":155,"date":"2019-03-26T09:17:55","date_gmt":"2019-03-26T16:17:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/?p=999943730"},"modified":"2019-03-26T09:17:55","modified_gmt":"2019-03-26T16:17:55","slug":"antiques-roadshow-alum-bruce-hermann-hates-nazis-but-theyre-his-top-seller","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/hi-lo\/art\/antiques-roadshow-alum-bruce-hermann-hates-nazis-but-theyre-his-top-seller","title":{"rendered":"‘Antiques Roadshow’ alum Bruce Hermann hates Nazis, but Nazi items are his top seller"},"content":{"rendered":"

Long Beach resident Bruce Hermann is tall, with gray hair and an easy smile. If he looks familiar, it\u2019s probably because he appeared on the PBS program “Antiques Roadshow” for 11 seasons. Friendly and highly intelligent, he\u2019s also a bit security-conscious. Though we talked on the phone a few times before meeting, he asked to see my ID a few moments after I first shook his hand. It\u2019s nothing personal, he told me, it\u2019s just something he has to consider, given his line of work.<\/p>\n

Hermann deals in the world of military antiques and artifacts. He and his business partner Kevin Finley run Grenadier Auctions, which functions much like an eBay for military items, though with some differences. People send him their collectibles\u2014or in the case of large collections, Hermann and Finely will pick them up\u2014which they evaluate. The items have to be original and unchanged. All auctions happen online, and bidding lasts for two weeks.<\/p>\n

Look at the Grenadier website now and you\u2019ll see that the vast majority of items there for sale are from Nazi Germany. To be clear, most of this stuff has been around since the end of the war.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of it was brought home by GIs as souvenirs and war trophies,\u201d Hermann said. \u201cHuge amounts of stuff.\u201d And now, with so many World War II veterans dying of old age, a lot of these items are now entering the market. And the prices just keep climbing.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I bought my first helmet at the age of 10 in 1969, I paid $35 for a double decal Allgemeine-SS helmet,\u201d Hermann told Military Trader in 2015. \u201cToday, that very helmet would bring in excess of $20,000. This has turned into what can be an expensive hobby\u2014however, there are still many affordable items for any level of collector.\u201d<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s be clear: Bruce Hermann is not a Nazi or a Nazi sympathizer. He opposes all the views of national socialism and hates Hitler and skinheads. He\u2019s 60 now and has been collecting military items since he was about 8 years old. His house is filled with antiques\u2014especially vintage radios. He turned his hobby into a full-time occupation in the 1990s, eventually becoming so esteemed in the world of military collecting that he got the gig as an appraiser on “Antiques Roadshow.”<\/p>\n

\"\"
Bruce Hermann, of Grenadier Military Antiques, holds two German military helmets one from WWI and other from WWII in Long Beach Wednesday, March 13, 2019. Photo by Thomas R Cordova.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

But everywhere you look, it seems that Nazis are on the march. They\u2019ve been with us since before World War II (anyone who\u2019s watched the History Channel in the last decade knows Nazis are as popular there as sharks are on the Discovery Channel), but mostly stayed in the shadows. That\u2019s changed in the last few years and now, they seem to operate far more openly, i.e. tiki torches.<\/p>\n

And right now, authentic Nazi items\u2014weapons, clothing, badges, armor, etc.\u2014are extremely valuable. In fact, 14 of Adolf Hitler\u2019s paintings sold in 2015 for $450,000, according to a Feb. 6 “Forward” story.\u00a0So why is this stuff so popular now?<\/p>\n

\u201cHollywood has a lot to do with it,\u201d said Hermann, who pointed out that there was a huge uptick in the value of Civil War items after the 1989 release of the movie “Glory.” And when “Band of Brothers” first aired on HBO in 2001, \u201cAmerican paratrooper stuff went wild.\u201d<\/p>\n

Paul Shull understands this well. His show “The Weaponhunter,” which examined the world of men (and it was always men) who collect historic weapons, ran two seasons on the Smithsonian Channel. He said he\u2019s met hundreds of collectors, who\u2019ve allowed him to examine and even hold not just rare rifles and swords, but also more intimate items.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve held Hitler\u2019s coffee cup,\u201d Shull said. \u201cI\u2019ve held Hitler\u2019s watercolors. It\u2019s the eeriest, strangest feeling you can imagine. There\u2019s a certain allure to that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shull calls Nazi items \u201cthe dark stuff,\u201d which, he said, helps explain their popularity.<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause they\u2019re so hard to get, certain collectors are driven to get these items. Or items with an evil stigma attached to them.\u201d<\/p>\n

As to who is buying all this stuff now, that\u2019s an equally complicated question. Hermann said his clients range from a kid who works in a hardware store to a brain surgeon. He even says he has a couple of Jewish clients who collect Nazi and SS items.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s anybody who has an interest in history,\u201d Hermann said, who adds that he would never knowingly sell anything to someone who would \u201cmisappropriate\u201d these items. \u201cI\u2019ve never met anyone who collected Nazi items who I would say was a neo-Nazi.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shull said much the same thing. He\u2019s met hundreds of military collectors, he said, and wouldn\u2019t describe any of them as Nazis. \u201cThese are lovers of history,\u201d he said. \u201cTo me, they\u2019re big kids. Collectors are so competitive, there\u2019s an alpha streak in these people. They have to have something. They will go to any length to get it. There\u2019s only a certain number of these items, and the rarer they get, the more the alphas want them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Though there was that one time when Shull felt very uncomfortable visiting a collection.<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t know whether to cry or punch him in the face,\u201d Shull said. \u201cI left the room. I go with my gut, and this wasn\u2019t cool. There was a human skull there.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Dr. Stanislav Vysotsky, a sociologist at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater who has extensively studied white supremacist groups says the very fact that Nazi items are so prevalent and valuable is a problem. \u201cContext matters a lot,\u201d he said. \u201cWhite supremacists collect these things because they\u2019re viewed as prized possessions. By having these, it gives you status. It\u2019s about achieving status in a small world.\u201d<\/p>\n

Vysotsky described the time he and his partner visited an antique mall in a small Wisconsin town a few years ago. There he found a display case containing Nazi antiques, but then he noticed that mixed in with them was contemporary Nazi imagery. \u201cWe were thoroughly offended and we walked out,\u201d Vysotsky said. \u201cThey were trying to sell this material to others who had a similar ideology.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hermann says this \u201ctaboo\u201d on collecting Nazi items didn\u2019t exist when he was a kid, just starting out. \u201cI don\u2019t look at it politically,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m a historian at heart. To me, every aspect of history has to be accounted for. If you squelch things, then you don\u2019t remember them.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"
Bruce Hermann, of Grenadier Military Antiques, holds a belt buckle from the Civil War which still has the blood stains as he shows some of his collections in Long Beach Wednesday, March 13, 2019. Photo by Thomas R Cordova.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

That being said, Hermann doesn\u2019t collect Nazi items, himself. In fact, he has no interest in them whatsoever, regardless of their value. Instead, he collects Union Army items from the Civil War. He has lots of very old photographs of soldiers, some far sharper than you might imagine given the very primitive glass plate tech of the time, and even a couple hardtack biscuits, one that is dated, authenticated, and framed. He has uniforms, carefully draped over mannequins and covered in plastic, and a few swords, too, including one saber painted a striking cobalt that can never be duplicated because it\u2019s made from whale oil.<\/p>\n

He also owns other, far more poignant items, that point to the human side of this kind of history. A section of a Union soldier\u2019s belt and buckle contains, on one side, the soldier\u2019s name which had been stenciled and, on the other, stains from the blood that poured out of the soldier as he lay dying on the battlefield.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor me, history is a tactile experience,\u201d Shull said, a sentiment Hermann heartily agrees with. \u201cIt needs to be touched, needs to be smelled. You have to be around the objects.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Authentic Nazi items are extremely valuable, Hermann paid $35 for a German helmet in 1969, it’s now worth in excess of $20,000.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":241,"featured_media":65686,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"newspack_sponsor_sponsorship_scope":"","newspack_sponsor_native_byline_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_native_category_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_style":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_placement":"inherit","inline_featured_image":false,"newspack_ads_suppress_ads":false,"newspack_popups_has_disabled_popups":"","_EventAllDay":false,"_EventTimezone":"","_EventStartDate":"","_EventEndDate":"","_EventStartDateUTC":"","_EventEndDateUTC":"","_EventShowMap":false,"_EventShowMapLink":false,"_EventURL":"","_EventCost":"","_EventCostDescription":"","_EventCurrencySymbol":"","_EventCurrencyCode":"","_EventCurrencyPosition":"","_EventDateTimeSeparator":"","_EventTimeRangeSeparator":"","_EventOrganizerID":[],"_EventVenueID":[],"_OrganizerEmail":"","_OrganizerPhone":"","_OrganizerWebsite":"","_VenueAddress":"","_VenueCity":"","_VenueCountry":"","_VenueProvince":"","_VenueState":"","_VenueZip":"","_VenuePhone":"","_VenueURL":"","_VenueStateProvince":"","_VenueLat":"","_VenueLng":"","_VenueShowMap":false,"_VenueShowMapLink":false,"_":"","_author_alias":"","cap-aim":"","cap-description":"","cap-display_name":"","cap-first_name":"","cap-jabber":"","cap-last_name":"","cap-linked_account":"","cap-newspack_employer":"","cap-newspack_job_title":"","cap-newspack_phone_number":"","cap-newspack_role":"","cap-user_email":"","cap-user_login":"","cap-website":"","cap-yahooim":"","newspack_article_summary":"","newspack_email_html":"","newspack_email_type":"","newspack_featured_image_position":"","newspack_hide_page_title":"","newspack_hide_updated_date":false,"newspack_post_subtitle":"","newspack_show_share_buttons":"","newspack_sponsor_byline_prefix":"","newspack_sponsor_disclaimer_override":"","newspack_sponsor_flag_override":"","newspack_sponsor_only_direct":"","newspack_sponsor_url":"","newspack_article_summary_title":"Overview:","newspack_show_updated_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[3,126],"newspack_spnsrs_tax":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-155","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-art","tag-instagram","tag-military-antiques","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/241"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=155"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65686"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=155"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=155"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=155"},{"taxonomy":"newspack_spnsrs_tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newspack_spnsrs_tax?post=155"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=155"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}