Walter Bergman

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Walter Bergman (1913-1986) was born Walter Bergmann in Königsberg (now Kaliningrad, Russia), East Prussia, on 30 July 1913.

In 1933, his family fled Nazi Germany to Amsterdam in the Netherlands. In 1936, Bergmann travelled to South Africa.

When World War II broke out in 1939, Bergmann sought to join the South African army, but as he felt his name was too German-sounding (there was significant anti-German feeling as the war loomed, and as the Nazi persecution of the Jews and the Holocaust had not yet happened, this feeling made no distinction between Germans and German Jews), he removed the second "n" from his name, adopting the Dutch variation of the surname.

During WW2, Bergman served with the South African forces, attached to the British 8th Army - rising to the rank of Sergeant Major - in North Africa, Italy and Palestine, seeing action in all these theatres, notably at El Alamein, Tobruk and Monte Cassino.

After the war, Bergman earned a living from what were ostensibly his hobbies, namely ice skating and photography. Several of his pupils became prominent South African photographers, and he taught ice skating at the Empire Exhibition.

It was during his military service - especially during his time in Italy and Palestine - that Bergman became interested in numismatics, a subject for which he would gain ultimate renown. During his life, he built up an impressive collection of Roman coins, particularly Denarii, and a superb collections of English milled half-crowns.

However it was his collection of South African banknotes that was most remarkable, acknowledged as the most complete collection in private hands. In 1971, as a past-President of the South African Numismatic Society, he published A History of the Regular and Emergency Paper Money Issues of South Africa, still considered to be the most definitive work on the subject.

He died in Cape Town in 1986.