Despite the sulphurous origins of the fortune of her late husband, Helmut Horten, who benefited from the spoliation of Jewish property in 1933, the dispersal of the collection of his widow, Heidi, also deceased, has exceeded all expectations. Part of the 203 million dollars (188 million euros) will be donated to organizations dedicated to the Holocaust.
Money has no smell…and neither do jewels for some.
The sale of the largest and most valuable private collection of jewels ever put up for auction, on May 10 and 12 in Geneva, almost benefited from a story-telling worthy of Disney.
The story of a beautiful 19-year-old Austrian innocent named Heidi Jelinek, with whom Helmut Horten, a German billionaire 32 years his senior, falls in love.
The rest is the same: they marry in 1966, and in the absence of children, together they collect many works of art, and much jewelry for the adored wife, for whom nothing is very beautiful.
The husband died in 1987, before his wife, and she continued to buy jewels like no one before or since… In all, hundreds of necklaces, bracelets, earrings, rings and brooches from the most famous jewellery houses (Bulgari, Cartier, Tiffany, Harry Winston and Van Cleef & Arpels) joined her coffers.
700 pieces to be auctioned
After his death in 2022, the executors of his will entrusted the collection to Christie’s, who auctioned 700 pieces in Geneva on May 10 and May 12.
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