Peter Winter’s “Swansong”: Memories of an Artist and a “Forger.” By Wolfgang Maassen. In English, 192 pages, color illustrations, 8¼ by 10¾ inches. 1st German edition published by Wolfgang Maassen, 2021. 1st English edition published by Leonard H. Hartmann of Philatelic Bibliopole, 2021. English edition ISBN: 978-0-917528-21-7. Price $65 plus $4 postage to U.S. addresses, available from Leonard Hartmann, Philatelic Bibliopole, P.O. Box 36006, Louisville, KY 40233 or from pbbooks.com.
What is more intriguing than a philatelic mystery? Nothing, except perhaps a tale of a philatelic forger. Peter Winter’s “Swansong”: Memories of an Artist and a “Forger” is both.
Winter, the subject of Wolfgang Maassen’s 2021 biography, is a larger-than-life character whose infamous career in philately is shrouded with hearsay and conflicting reports. Maassen, himself a chronicler of philatelic literature, a philatelic journalist who has penned more than 5,000 pieces, and longtime editor and publisher of German journal philatelie, underwent an enormous effort to piece together a narrative about Winter’s life.
The resulting story shows fact alongside fiction, treating all accounts with healthy skepticism. Maassen makes very few assertions from the evidence he gathers, even eschewing the term “forger” to describe Winter. Instead he allows readers to draw their own conclusions, admitting when there is just not enough information to turn legend to truth.
Figure 1. The cover and table of contents of Winter’s House of Stamps catalog, as reproduced in Part 2.
What I know of Maassen comes from the interview conducted by Abhishek Bhuwalka and published in the 2021 third quarter issue of the Philatelic Literature Review. I recommend reading this interview for an idea of Maassen’s credentials.
Maassen’s specific skill – though he has many – is in making wrongs right through his research, or correcting the record. “Everyone knows” is not good enough for him. From the PLR interview – and obvious when you read the biography – we know that Maassen’s efforts to collect information were immense. The sources vary from personal interviews with philatelists who had run-ins with Winter, conducted by Maassen himself to corroborate claims made decades prior, to email and letter exchanges with Winter, to journal entries by an American philatelist who ran into his stamp replicas through a third party. All sources are credited within the text, in copious footnotes, and the “Sources” list provided before Part 1.
Peter Winter’s “Swansong” is divided into two major sections: Part 1 – ‘Biographical’, consisting of around 95 pages, and Part 2 – Catalogue of Works, the final 90 or so pages.
Who is Winter? This question underlies the entire book. Winter was an exceptionally talented German forger who rejected the term entirely, instead marketing his imitations as replicas to avoid legal trouble and philatelic censure. He claimed to operate entirely in the clear, adding marks to his replicas to sell as such – but once they left his hands, unsavory dealers were free to sell them as genuine, flooding the market and fooling less savvy collectors.
Maassen records many of these cases in Part 1. Some of his practices, Maassen finds, were technically legal but morally corrupt, leaving philatelic organizations with little power of recourse. One of the most interesting cases shared is one of Winter’s biggest coups – debuting to the philatelic world a second “never-before-seen” 1-cent British Guiana. As most of you know, the 1-cent Magenta British Guiana is the world’s No. 1 philatelic rarity and was purchased in 2021 by Stanley Gibbons in a Sotheby’s auction. Winter led the philatelic world on a wild goose chase, puzzling experts and displaying the stamp at exhibitions. Many of the chapters share similar larger-than-life tales of showmanship and audacity. My single complaint is that a few of the stories are so caught up in “she said, he said” that it is difficult to understand what actually happened.
In Part 2, Maassen preserves an incomplete catalog of Winter’s works. Some of these pages simply show scans of the catalogs and exhibition pages published by Winter himself (Figure 1). Others show high-resolution scans of his replicas. These pages are beautiful and well worth a look.
Even for those who are uninterested in forgers and forgeries, Maassen has created a fascinating story. Peter Winter’s “Swansong” is also a fine example of philatelic research done right – Maassen left no stone unturned in pursuit of evidence, demonstrating the kind of follow-through that is a hallmark of the best philatelic writing. For that alone I would recommend reading this book.