by Eran Laor

I BEGAN collecting maps in 1947. Since then, the collection has grown to a respectable size thanks to perseverance, good fortune and the help of friends. Quite often friends and acquaintances have asked what led me to choose this unusual hobby. I have since asked myself the same question and found two factors which explain my interest, nay, my craze for collecting maps: one direct, obvious reason and one hidden reaching far back into my past.

In 1945-46 I spent eleven months in Iran. Even though I had by then been acquainted with the Orient for more than twenty years, this sojourn opened an entirely new world to me, by which I was utterly fascinated. I soon discovered that other travellers had been similarly affected and that many of them had recorded their experiences over the past three centuries. I took to studying their works, of which I found old and sometimes even first editions in the bookshops of Tehran. Most of these books contained, apart from many illustrations, maps of Persia and sometimes of the surrounding countries. This was to be the direct circumstance which awakened my interest in maps. But the deeper reason was to be found elsewhere.

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Like all schoolboys, I spent much time day-dreaming about a future of many and varied possibilities. One of my long cherished dreams was to teach history and geography. My destiny however, led me on to an entirely different path. But my interest in foreign countries, in political activities remained alive; at times as a passive onlooker, at others an active participant. When at the end of 1946, I was transferred from Tehran to Paris and discovered the Left Bank, my liking for geography re¬appeared and soon expressed itself in an absorbing hobby. The Left as well as the Right Bank, with their long rows of bouquinistes, were then, but only for a few more years, rich treasure-hoards where one could find many interesting and even precious original maps and books. At first I kept looking for maps of Persia, but my interest was soon diverted to Palestine which had become my homeland in 1934.

I remained one year in Paris, during which time I visited London regularly at least once a month, and where my most important discovery turned out to be Great Russell Street. It was not only the British Museum that attracted me, but also the fact that the opposite side of the street was lined with second-hand bookshops, which have all but disappeared today. I became a constant visitor, and an enthusiastic customer of one of the dealers who specialized in Orientalia and in whose shop I again took up my hunt for books on Persia. I acquired there some important works, most of which are still in my possession, even though they have been exposed to many a hazard over the years. The dealer was George Salby, who kept a huge stock of treasures at 65, Great Russell Street, opposite the main entrance of the British Museum. Before returning to Palestine towards the end of 1947, I paid him a last visit and bought a number of further works, which I asked him to ship to my address in Palestine. I did not, at the time, foresee that the Holy Land was heading for a civil war and subsequently for a battle of life and death. The books not having reached me after a number of months, I asked one of my London friends to inquire at Salby’s, although I had almost given up hope of ever receiving them. Salby assured my friend that the books had been mailed, and added by the way that he had two good customers in Palestine, Mr Ben-Gurion and myself. The books did eventually arrive, despite the upheaval wrought by the civil war.

At that time, I had not yet met the London map dealers who were later to become my suppliers and friends. I found the maps which I acquired in 1947 on the Left Bank in Paris and in Vienna. In October of that year, I undertook a journey in Central Europe, the erstwhile Austro-Hungarian monarchy, and visited in particular Vienna, Prague and Budapest. The last two cities were already practically under communist rule, whereas Vienna was under the administrative authority of the four Allied Powers (Britain, the United States, France and the USSR), who had divided the city into sectors and set up their headquarters in the luxury hotels of the inner city. The Russians had occupied the Imperial Hotel, to this day the most aristocratic hotel on the Karntnerring. One of the large second-hand bookshops, that of A. V. Heck, was located nearby, and the Russians, occupying its front rooms, had turned them into one of their offices. The Heck firm was allowed to keep two small rooms in the back-yard. There I found two young people, the brother and sister Ingo and Stephanie Nebehay, who had inherited a share of the firm from their father, who had been co-owner. I mention this visit not only in order to list one of the first important sources of my collection, but also because of the fact that I, the client and buyer, found myself in the unusual situation of having to acquaint the young people with the value and sales prices of their wares: having been cut off from the world through five years of war and subsequent occupation, they were totally unaware of the trends on world markets.