If we believe the accusations to be true, already in his time in Cologne Baldus had discovered his talent to make money by creating images, but in the very verbal sense. Here he gained his first practical experience in printing technique forging ‘Kassenanweisungen’, the paper money introduced in Prussia in 1821. The young man is having a good time with that money. The maximum penalty by Prussian law, which is printed on the notes, namely life-long penal servitude, does not deter him. However, the laws applicable for the Rhine Province are different, because the Prussian Land Law is not introduced there yet. According to the applicable criminal code, money forgery will be punished by the carrying out article 139 of the code, i.e. the death penalty. Edouard Baldus escapes with his life in the nick of time: The search for him by warrant remains without result. 

Eduard Baldus finally absconds to France and arrives in Paris in 1838. Thus the threathening guillotine does no cut off his head, but cuts him off from his past and roots – once and for all. With this escape from the scaffold begins his new life, his rise and success. 

Photographer of international class, Member of the Legion of Honour – and wanted counterfeiter of bank notes, escaped from imminent death penalty: He had to invent a past, to avoid loosing his present and to have a future. 

This explains the contradicting statements on his past, his constructed curriculum vitae as successful painter - but as well his experience in printing, which taught him the importance of perfection and precision. 

Did he resort to his old art, to improve the modest income of his family? Did he come under pressure when former accomplices came to Paris in the early 1840s? We'll likely never know, but in any case, he did not betray his secret. He was probably reformed forever by his dramatic escape from the scaffold, as he did not make use of his printing techniques to avoid bankruptcy.

However, would there have been the photographer Edouard Baldus without the counterfeiter Eduard Baldus? Hardly ever!

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