DELECTUS SEMINUM Quae Pro Mutua Commutatione Offert – Hortus Experimentalis “La Leonina” Beaulieu-sur-Mer (A.-M.)

Probably more interesting because of the author ARPAD PLESCH (sometime blacklisted for financial connections with the Nazi government) than the contents of the book…Árpád Plesch ( 1889 – 1974 ) was an international financier , Hungarian banker and lawyer and owner of a famous collection of rare botanical drawings and books and precious esoteric pornography. His collection of books on botany was included in the book of Douglas Cooper, Great Private Collections .Dr Arpad Plesch, a distinguishedHungarian lawyer, international financier and collector of rarebotanical books and pornographic esoterica. A fascinating man, hecould converse on any topic, though he was also the subject of anumber of disagreeable stories.Born in Budapest in 1889, he had been extensively educated beforebeing attached to the Austro-Hungarian War Office and entrusted by allsuccessor states to liquidate the economic representations ofAustria-Hungary in Stockholm and Zurich. After 1925 he devoted himselfto his extensive investments, and in 1936 he sued the British Crownfor face-value redemption in gold, with interest, of a considerableblock of convertible gold notes; issued in 1917 by theBritish Government and redeemable in London or New York. The Court ofAppeal found in his favour, but the House of Lords reversed thedecision on the grounds that the bonds came under American law. HadPlesch won, he would have been the richest man in the world.In 1939 he applied for Haitian citizenship, having taken an 80 percent share in the Haitian-American Sugar Company. It was said that hewas acting in a manner detrimental to the interests of both Britainand the United States, and in 1941 he was blacklisted in bothcountries. Intelligence reports described him as a cunning,shrewd and suspected man . . . unprincipled and reported dangerous . .. a financial and legal genius without scruples or allegiance, withoutany hampering ties of national feelings; His private life toowas unconventional. Originally the secretary of a rich internationalbuilder, he married first his widow and then his daughter.He was married three times, to:Leonie Ulam, Marysia Ulam Krauss Harcourt-Smith, daughter of the previous (grandmother of playboy and international financier Franco-Swiss Arpad Busson , 1963) and Countess Maria von Wurmbrand-Stuppach, aka Etti Plesch (en) , his last wife, who inherited his immense fortune.The Plesch’s lived between their apartment in the Avenue Foch in Paris and Leonina Villa in Beaulieu-sur-Mer in the South of France (where they built the beautiful botanical garden Leonina).Dr. Plesch died in Paris in 1974. The book collection was sold at Sotheby’s in 1975-1976.Rear cover has remains of adhesion to another copy. Botany.