Keep these letters, please!

'Orchestra prevents auction of letters', reads a headline on the front page of a Dutch newspaper on the third of December 1997. The Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, in the person of its managing director Willem Wijnbergen, prevented a 'collection' of little less than 200 letters, written between 1904 and 1922 to the administrator of Het Concertgebouw N.V., from being auctioned. In doing so, Wijnbergen saved an important part of the orchestra's history from being scattered and irretrievably spread among private collectors and institutions. With the financial help of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra sponsors Canon Europa, the ING Group and Sara Lee/D.E. the collection could be acquired. In Keep these letters, please! all these letters and postcards are printed and translated in English.