Erik Rees interviewed

by Nigel Bradley

=NRB= How did you get into graphology?

=ER= I was born in Prague and I got into graphology through my Father, Fritz Riesenfeld who was a contemporary of Saudek, Klages, Singer and Jacoby. Although he was a textile chemist and colourist, an expert in the application of printing and dyestuffs to cloth, he had this burning interest in graphology. He became a very well known man, in Prague and Vienna, and to some extent in Budapest, as a graphologist working with the Police and the Law Courts. If there was one person's word to be taken against another's, and there was no way of finding which of the two was a liar, my father was very often called in to give an opinion on the integrity of both people. From his report it would become evident who actually was the person with the most integrity, and that was taken as evidence. He was so respected, because he was one of those few people with total integrity.

As early as 1934, Hitler started raving, he knew that he was a nightmare. Father had read 'Main Kampf' from cover to cover and he knew that Hitler meant it. He couldn't stand the fact that so many people were hypnotised by his speech; by greed. Greed is something my father could not stand. He said, "Religion and greed are the sources of all of mankind's evil". My father realised what was going to happen and he understood. There was an agreement between the Czech Republic and France and England called the Little Entente. That Little Entente was relied upon by most people in Czechoslovakia as a safeguard against Hitler. And although we had a wonderful army of a million men in the mountains that could have held off Hitler for ages, just as the Greeks did, Neville Chamberlain let the whole side down by letting Hitler walk into the Czech Republic. My father knew that was going to happen, because he was so astute.

Everybody said to him, "How dare you take your family into exile and make them refugees? This will be over in six weeks and you'll have ruined everything for your family for no reason." He just walked out of the house, and left. We had a factory in Prague and his brother looked after it, taking it over from my father and desperate for us not to leave.

My father always said it would end in disaster. And in fact, all my people, every one of them, went to Auschwitz. Nobody survived except my father. When we came to England he said two things, first of all: we are in a country which is populated by probably the most understanding people on earth. They are tolerant, understanding and kind beyond measure. We are guests here and we must honour the laws and the way they live, otherwise we should not be here.

About graphology he said; "Graphology doesn't exist in England, you use it for yourself, I will teach you everything I know. Use it for yourself, make sure you make the most of it. Don't try and push it down everybody's throat in this country because it will do you no good and it will do the subject no good."

=NRB= How old were you when you came here?

=ER= I was eight. Father had to get permission to work, because we didn't have enough capital. He had to take a job very quickly. We moved about England quite a bit and eventually settled in the Manchester area. Later I had two years in the Army on National Service and eventually I went to South America, when I came back I got married to Audrey. My father died whilst I was working in Buenos Aires.

=NRB= Why are you called Erik Rees?

=ER= I was called everything from Resenfloat to Reisenfelt. In those days the British were less travelled and far less 'au fait' with languages, and nobody could get it right. I did two years National Service and I became the highest paid Radar Instructor in the Artillery, but I had problems with my name and my father said this is ridiculous, I want you to it. I didn't want to do that because my mother was very proud of the name. When my Father died she suddenly said, "Dad wanted you to change your name, I think he might have been right, let's do that". Instead of Riesenfeld, I shortened it to Rees. Later on I found that it was Welsh and I thought maybe my accent will be mistaken for Welsh.

=NRB= So what is your accent?

=ER= It is German and Czech. I speak German, Czech, Spanish and French, in that order. Because my parents kept up my languages I only spoke English at school, and when I came www we were speaking German or Czech.

=NRB= When did your father die?

=ER= He died in 1959 - at 63 years. My mother a little later in 1962.

=NRB= Was he published in graphology?

=ER= No, he was active purely on the basis of justice, which he had a thing about. He wanted to make sure that there was no miscarriage of justice and that people, who deserved it, got what they got. He would have been a Prosecutor if he had been a lawyer.

=NRB= So you came over here to Manchester?

=ER= We first came to London. The person who got us out of Prague is still alive. I think he's 90. He is Lord Michcon de Reya, the lawyer. He was then on the Czech Refugee Committee.

=NRB= You said that he had spoken with Klages. Had he studied with him?

=ER= Yes he had studied with him. They used to hold these discussion groups and my father was an avid reader and he had a semi-photographic memory. He would put into practice everything that he could. And he very quickly convinced people of his abilities in judging character. And that was highly respected. He mentioned three things to me that were very interesting. First of all Form Level He said "remember that it's not what somebody does, it is how he does it. Every time you move a pen you have a stroke, that stroke can be done in so many ways. It's how it's done. Although handwriting gives you a lot of facts, your strength as a graphologist will always be to interpret them correctly."

"There are many graphologists around", he said, "who seem to interpret everything wrongly. They add up two and two and make five. That is what you must avoid. And it was these discussion groups that he had with Saudek, Klages and Pulver. It was fascinating stuff. I knew that he used to work with the police and Courts. It was interesting to find that in England it doesn't work like that, the government doesn't issue an instruction, it is always a guideline. You can always take it or leave it. One Police Force will use graphology, another won't. It depends on the Chief Superintendent of that Police Force. I once spoke to a Chief Superintendent who said that he wouldn't use it if Jack does. Then I found that some Judges use it, some Judges don't.

Everything in this country has to be sold again and again. I used to think if I could prove the accuracy of graphology I would succeed. But I found that when I proved the accuracy is when I got the most opposition. Because the people were so frightened of it, they were so scared of having their own handwriting analysed. So many people seemed to have this bad conscience when there wasn't any need for it.

=NRB= It's like a scorpion's tail isn't it?

=ER= It's not until I get a chance to talk to these people, that they allow me into the company. I tell them that we have a code of ethics, that nobody's going to have their writing analysed until they give permission. Not until I can allay their worries of that invasion of privacy. This is a very British thing, British in the sense of an indigenous population on these islands, and there's a good reason for it. Academia is one of the worst places for this. After running experiments very successfully, I was once on the point of giving a course of graphology at Cambridge. That was kyboshed by the Dean of the Medical Faculty who told the young doctor carrying out the experiments that if he didn't cease the experiment, he would personally ruin his career. "Academia", he said, "is like Hollywood, people wield great power and if you want to get on, then you don't alienate certain people, because they can kill you, academically". He said "I have no choice but to drop it". Of course, I asked him to end the project.

I'd had an enormous amount of success in actually helping them to find the right people to study medicine. Because they couldn't get past the 50 per cent success rate and psycwwwtric testing wouldn't help either. So they tried graphology, and it would have helped, it got to 72 per sent success rate.

=NRB= When did those studies take place?

=ER= 1985 - 1986. It was after the British Institute of Graphologists was set up. I didn't broadcast this because I didn't want this young doctor to alienate his Dean in case he found out that he had told me and that I was now broadcasting it. And when this young doctor wanted the Dean to explain what his problems were, he said, Have you got any idea what would happen if graphology was allowed to come into Cambridge? Do you know the number of careers that it would decimate? It is the biggest political nightmare that you could imagine for people to know how people really are. " In fact this repeated itself at Broadmoor and I had the same trouble with the Ministry of Defence Police.

Once you get involved with the Establishment it's always shot down. One day it will work - I'll be long gone - but I hope that people will remember the fact that I was the prime mover. I started this long before my graphologist colleagues did their bit.

=NRB= How did you learn? You said that you learnt from your father, but what happened? You can learn in different sorts of way; did he sit you down every evening and give you formal lessons, or was he taking you through cases he was working on?

=ER= He always pointed out the difference between judicial graphology and interpretative graphology. He gave me lessons for an hour a day when I was a child, and a child learns quickly. He showed me different people's handwriting, he showed me movements, we went through and analysed everything. He read from books to me.

There are certain things that made me turn professional. I noticed in the handwriting of a friend that she was losing co-ordination in her circular movements and I knew that it could be a mental problem. She had been treated by doctors for migraine for a long time. When I saw the change in her handwriting I thought she'd got a tumour, and I told her to go and see a specialist. Because she trusted me she went, and within 24 hours she was in Middlesex Hospital having a brain tumour removed. It was in fact benign and she is still alive. I thought, if I can do that, what am I doing messing around in textiles? I'd never really enjoyed it and it was a dying industry anyway.

A very good friend of ours said his brother had embezzled his family and had committed suicide. He showed me his suicide note. I looked at that and thought how can a person write a suicide note and feel perfectly at ease and relaxed. There has to be some tension there. I doubted the validity of it. But this man said, "I've seen my brother's body at Golders Green Cemetery. I saw him before he was cremated." I thought I might be wrong, but I couldn't understand it. I was very unhappy for a long time.

Two years later the "dead" man rang up from Cape Town and spoke to his brother. It was a Mafia thing, the Fraud Squad was involved. The Mafia had done the man "a favour" which they were recalling, to pay them back and to repay his debt, which was £360 thousand he took £340 thousand from the family and embezzled them. In return the Mafia drugged him, as if he was dead, took away his present life and set him up a new one in South Africa in a luxurious www. And for that reason he went through with it.

But after two years he thought it was safe, and he could now ring his brother and say "look I'd like to make it up" The brother said, "as far as I'm concerned you are dead - stay dead." Then he rang me, and he said, "Erik you were right. I was looking at a drugged person, not a dead person, they cremated a pig." These things made me think, why don't I do something with this?

The reason why I went into it as a profession was Harry Greenway, the MP for North Ealing. In desperation I went to him. I'd written to www Secretaries, I tried everything. I told them that I would be willing to be tested, that I would work for nothing. I suggested to the www Secretary to put 30 or 40 examples of handwriting on the table and to mix in there three known villains and give me ten minutes to find them out. All I ever got in reply to that was " thank you for your interest, we will keep it on our files." Perhaps they thought I was a nutcase, but why, if I'm willing to do it? I said, "I don't want money, I don't want publicity and I am prepared to be put through any sort of test." So what else is there that could motivate a crank other than self-aggrandisement?

After demonstrating graphology to Harry, with analyses, he said " I'm sold, no-one could know anyone better than that." I will ask some questions in the House about graphology. I will see what they tell me and we'll meet again in a fortnight's time.

I met him again and he said to me, "Erik this is interesting, first of all no-one thinks you are a crank, there are in fact a couple of chaps like you at the Ministry of Defence, but nobody knew that and it's being kept very hush hush, but don't forget that most people in government and public life lead two lives. They have their own private life, and they have a public life. And all of them are very keen to keep the two separate. Nobody wants to have a piercing appraisal of themselves made public, so they try and avoid that sort of contact.

So nobody thinks you're a crank, but one thing is for sure - unless you can write a best seller and get the public on your side, what you have to do to get credibility in this country is to set up some sort of an institute or an association or a society. Because until you are a member of a society or graphology institute or something like that you will be spitting in the wind." That was the best bit of advice I ever had.

Soon afterwards there was an advert in the Telegraph. It was Frank Hilliger and the meeting was the start of the British Institute of Graphologists. Several people set it up. There was Jacqui Tew, Nettie de Glanville, David Perry - he was actually at the Ministry of Defence, John Hackworth, he was the first Chairman, May Turner, Vidyut Sharma. That was just about it. I helped to set up the Institute with Frank Hilliger, so I'm a founder member. I would like a lot of these people back again.

=NRB= When did you become Chairman of the British Institute of Graphologists?

=ER= I moved into Christopher Mollander's job when he had to go abroad.

=NRB= I am interested in what your ambitions are for the Institute.

=ER= I think the Institute has got to publish more information in its journal, also about forensic graphology, about comparative graphology and I think it should set up a training division for forensic graphologists so that we get away from this false enmity that we keep having with people who are so-called handwriting experts, people like Audrey Giles and some of these other people who are dedicated enemies of graphology and know nothing about it and have probably met a few incompetent graphologists and have based all their knowledge on their rubbish. And try and infiltrate a few centres of education.

If you are a teacher, and you are interested in graphology, you have got to let your colleagues in the school know what graphology can do, and start using it in the school for career officers, for children etc. If you are a policeman then you should start telling your colleagues about graphology. Each person who has learned graphology has to spread the word within that organisation, and other people in those organisations, - policemen, - doctors, should be welcomed to give talks to us so that we are invited back to give talks to them. We have to get together with people who don't necessarily love us. We've got to get out of this idea that we are a church, we have to be more outward looking, more flexible.

I want us to have groups up and down the country. Sue Fitzhugh promised to try to set up a group in Exeter, Linda Hencher is prepared to do it in York. I want us to have lectures, not just in London, but in different parts of the country so that it is more nationally spread. We are scattered all across the country but if any of these members want to take part in anything we do, they've always got to come down to London. We've got to set up branches.

=NRB= Do you hope to increase the number of members?

=ER= We will get more members. You can't stay still in this world, either you grow or you shrink and I want to avoid the shrinking. One of the people who has some good ideas on how to succeed is Frits Cohen. Many people take exception to Frits, partly because of his manner, partly because of his black and white attitude. He certainly knows how to make a success of something and I think we should listen to some of his advice. He has a mind like a razor, he is very direct. He is one of the few people in the Courts who really supports graphology and he has defeated some of our greatest enemies. My father, like Cohen, called handwriting experts 'comparative graphologists', he called Klages and Saudek and people like himself 'Interpretative graphologists'.

=NRB= What is GRET exactly?

=ER= I set up the Graphology Research and Education Trust (GRET). I've managed to make it dormant before we lost our money, we have over £2000 in a separate Treasurer's Account. We did a very successful analysis of 19 scripts to prove to Prof Roy Sanders, a Plastic Surgeon, that graphology works. A very similar project to the one that I had going in Cambridge which was kyboshed by the dean of that faculty. Here I was, lying on the couch of this man, and he was removing a small mole from my back which he said could turn nasty. As he was taking that out he asked "What do you do for a living?" and I said "I'm a graphologist". I thought he was going to make some slightly sarcastic remark and he said "that's fascinating, because I know it works in surgery". So I said, "How do you mean, surgery?" He said, "we're all taught how to make an incision and how to suture, but there isn't a scar you can show me in any field of endeavour, where I can't tell you who made the incision or who made the suture. I can always tell you who the surgeon was who did the job." I found that fascinating and he said, "Whatever we learn we still do it in our own way. Some start at the top quickly or go slow, others start at the bottom and go quickly, from the side. They are all different. If it works in surgery it has to work in other areas of endeavour."

I then told him what happened in Cambridge, and he said, "I have the same problem, I get people wanting to be plastic surgeons, because you make a lot of money, and most of the people who apply are after money. Very few of them make good plastic surgeons, many of them are entrepreneurial. And I would like to have a system. So I will give you a pilot project for which at this stage I can't pay. Perhaps it could be GRET's first project. I will send you 19 scripts, people that I know, and I would like you to do those for me. We'll see how accurate you are with your analyses." I split those 19, I gave about half to Elaine and the rest to Alice Coleman, because they use different systems. When I got them back I checked them all myself. A month later, he told me that it was absolutely astounding, not only did he agree with the findings, but all the 19 people involved agreed. Some were secretaries, some were students, some were doctors. He was then going to give me a project. Then came a problem: His unit: Restoration of Appearance and Function Trust (RAFT), housed at Mount Vernon Hospital in Northwood. The Management of Mount Vernon Hospital decided that they were going to split that unit up and close it down. They were going to split it across the Middlesex Hospital, Charing Cross Hospital and West Middlesex Hospital. All those surgeons in those units worked with each other and Roy Saunders was totally against this disastrous closure. He said that he needed all his budget to fight this, he said to come back to him to discuss the project after some time had elapsed.

I have just heard that Roy won his case and the unit will not be split, but it will move to Northwick Park around August 2001. In the meantime I agreed to carry out a further pilot with a more precise brief using medically qualified people. It may be that I will be able to reawaken GRET and stop it from lying dormant. But at least it is registered worldwide.

I had three graphologists, two in America, one in Canada, who tried to launch it there, but without success. It means that as a charity it is supposed to be a research organ into what graphology can do. Where are its boundaries? Do all diseases show up in handwriting? Which do and which don't? In this area it is easier to attract money for graphology research.

=NRB= Why was GRET set up? Couldn't the Institute do the same thing?

=ER= No, one of the briefs of the constitution of the BIG is to help graphologists earn money. It is profit-making, and as long as you have a profit-making clause it cannot be a charity. I took the same constitution of the BIG for GRET and left out the profit-making clause and the charity function was accepted, so I set it up with the help of one of my clients: Michael Webber of Pifco who is a trustee, and an another well known person. At that point we were beginning to move, I was hoping to stimulate more income, but the flow of income stopped, we couldn't keep going to the same people.

=NRB= So GRET has nothing to do with the British Institute of Graphologists?

=ER= No, it would be illegal to be in any way linked to a profit-making organisation. But it can be run by members of the BIG as a separate entity for the furtherance of graphology.

=NRB= What does the International Colloquium mean to you?

=ER= The Colloquium aims to bring together people who have graphology's interest at heart and not their careers. I know that sounds too noble, but basically there are graphologists in the world who care enough about the subject to want to see it used without necessarily first thinking of their own particular careers. And that is how it was formed originally. They are all people who are prepared to give time to nothing more than the furtherance of the interests of graphology and to make sure that if it is attacked in some newspaper in some country, there are enough people to get together to be able to counter that article with another one and to be informed and to inform each other of what is happening in their countries and what needs addressing and what doesn't. So this is very much an idealistic organisation.

Thank you Erik

Notes

2. Erik Rees was Chairman of the British Institute of Graphologists at the time of the interview. After retiring from the post Eric was awarded fellowship of the Institute for services rendered to graphology. His email address is erik@handwriting.fsnet.co.uk

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12 November 2002