The Silich Collection of Historical and Art Medals

U.S.A./GERMANY, Wilson im Weltkrieg als eifriger Notenschreiber [Wilson in the World War, the Diligent Writer of Notes], 1916, a cast iron medal by H. Lindl, President Woodrow Wilson seated facing at a table, writing a memorandum and clasping a bag of money with his left hand, rev. naked female figure of Justice, blindfolded, holding a pair of scales in which sit a German eagle and a British bulldog, skeletal figure of Death behind pushing down on the scale bar above the bulldog, 73mm, 123.12g (Frankenhuis 1458; Jones, Dance of Death, 36; BDM VII, 558). Extremely fine £120-£150

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, The Silich Collection of Historical and Art Medals.

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Baldwin Auction 90, 24 September 2014, lot 2127

Thomas Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924) was Governor of New Jersey between 1911 and 1913, and President of the United States from 1913 to 1921. From 1914 until early 1917 Wilson's primary foreign policy objectives were to keep his country out of the war in Europe and to broker a peace agreement, despite several incidents involving the destruction of American vessels and ships with American citizens on board in 1915 and 1916. Interventionists, led by Theodore Roosevelt, wanted war with Germany and attacked Wilson's refusal to build up the army in anticipation of it, but it took until the summer of 1916 for Wilson to react and, in the wake of his narrow victory in the 1916 presidential election, war on Germany was declared on 6 April 1917.