Description

Mes traversées de l'Atlantique Sud racontées par Mermoz presented by Lte-Colonel Davet accompanied by the crew, Messrs Guillaumet, Ginnié, Clavère and Collenot.

FIRST EDITION of this lecture given in Paris at the Théâtre des Ambassadeurs on 22 November 1934, presented by  Colonnel Davet and accompanied  by crew members Guillaimet, Ginnié, Calvère, Collenot.

ONE OF 12 NUMBERED EXEMPLIES ON HOLLAND PAPER, the only large paper edition.

Autograph signed letter from Jean Mermoz to Suzanne Deutsch de La Meurthe:

"For Mademoiselle Suzanne Deutsch de la Meurthe whom I admire infinitely for all that she gives of herself in the cause of Ailes Françaises of which she is the benefactress, the driving force... loved and honoured.
As a token of my gratitude and respect
and affectionate. Mermoz  26 Xbre 34"

followed by a dispatch from Colonnel Davet :

"In tribute, very simple, very true, very proud, Davet".

On 12 May 1930, Mermoz, accompanied by the navigator Jean Dabry and the radio operator Léopold Gimié, boarded a Laté 28, a single-engine plane named Comte de la Vaulx, to fly to Natal in Brazil on the first air link.  over the South Atlantic, after a journey of twenty-one hours. This day marked the opening of the first airmail route between France and South America. 

MERMOZ SHIPMENTS ARE EXTREMELY RARE

Almost 2 years after writing this letter, on 7 December 1936, Jean Mermoz disappeared at sea aboard a Latécoère 300 Croix-du-Sud. He was only 34 years old.

During his career, Mermoz gave only a few lectures, and only one other lecture was published as part of the Grandes Conférences de l'aviation at the Petit Palais, in October 1935, under the title Above the Andes mountains.
His book of memoirs, My Flightswas published after his death in 1937. 

For these reasons, Mermoz's autographs on printed texts are almost impossible to find. 

EXTRAORDINARY PROVENANCE : The Deutsch de La Meurthe family pioneered the aeroplane in France in 1898

Henri Deutsch de la Meurthe (1846 - 1919), nicknamed "The king of oil in Europe"In 1845, he founded a company to process and trade vegetable oils in La Villette. After the first underground oil deposit was discovered in the United States in 1859, he took a keen interest in oil and built a new plant in Pantin to study its properties. In 1881, he bought a refinery in Rouen, then in 1883 the Saint-Loubès oil refinery in Gironde, and in 1889 joined forces with the Rothschild brothers to refine oil in Spain. One of Henri Deutsch de la Meurthe's strengths was to understand that the development of small combustion engines, supported by the rise of the automobile and aviation, would considerably increase oil consumption. In 1898, he founded the Aéro-Club de France with Ernest Archdeacon and Gustave Eiffel, and in 1900 created a prize of 100,000 francs awarded to the first person to fly from St-Cloud to the Eiffel Tower in less than 30 minutes. He then created the 50,000-franc Grand Prix d'Aviation for the first flight of a heavier-than-air aircraft over a kilometre in a closed circuit.

He took part in the creation, on the initiative of Lazare Weiller, of the Compagnie Générale de Navigation Aérienne (1908), which bought the Wright brothers' patents. It organised demonstration flights of the Model A, piloted by Wilbur Wright at Le Mans, starting on 8 August 1908. He also invested in aircraft manufacturers Astra (1909) and Nieuport (1911). In 1909, Henry Deutsch de la Meurthe offered the University of Paris the sum of 500,000 francs and an annual annuity of 15,000 francs to set up a research centre, which was to become the Institut aérotechnique de Saint-Cyr-l'École.

After Henri's death, his aviation-loving daughter Suzanne (1892-1937) took over the business.  her father. In 1927, she founded the Aéro-Club de l'Aisne, giving them their first two aircraft, and in 1931, she created a 1000km vitsse race.