NEW YORK, NY.- Few things help us connect with our heroes like a sample of their writing, whether it is their autograph, a letter, musical manuscript or other work.

So says specialist Marco Tomaschett as he unveils examples by Albert Einstein, George Washington, Sigmund Freud, Marlene Dietrich and others for his November 7 Autographs sale at Swann Auction Galleries in New York.

The centrepiece of the auction will be the 76-lot consignment from the Jimmy Van Heusen collection of autograph works by some of the greatest figures of Western classical music, as well as autograph manuscripts of some of Van Heusen’s most celebrated compositions for the likes of Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby, such as Love and Marriage, High Hopes and All the Way. It is being sold to benefit Cazenovia College in Cazenovia, New York.

Other notable highlights include signed and inscribed photographs from Albert Einstein and his wife Elsa, dating to 1933, offered together with an estimate of $6,000 to $9,000; a 1922 signed and inscribed photo of Sigmund Freud with an estimate of $10,000 to $15,000; a signed autograph manuscript by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle outlining his concept of spiritualism, which is estimated at $2,000 to $3,000; and a copy of a book on theoretical mechanics annotated by the Nobel Prize winning nuclear physicist Niels Bohr while he was a student at Cambridge University in 1911, which is being offered at $4,000 to $6,000.

One of the most intriguing lots is what is known as the Short Snorter belonging to Marlene Dietrich.

A short snorter is a bank note or roll of bank notes signed as a kind of certificate or keepsake by people who find themselves thrown together in an informal club, such as delegates at a conference or as passengers on a plane.

The tradition is thought to have started among Alaskan Bush flyers in the 1920s, but soon the rich, powerful and famous joined in. The name comes from the short-measure drink that pilots would imbibe to prevent themselves over indulging before flying. The idea was that if someone who had signed your short snorter asked you to produce it at a later date, you were obliged to do so or buy them a drink instead.

Notable collectors of short snorters include General Patton, who gathered signatures at the Casablanca Conference in 1943.

Dietrich was an avid short snorter collector and accumulated over 1000 signatures on a taped roll of 83 bank notes of various currencies during the 1940s. The signatures included those of Patton and her close friend Ernest Hemingway. Most of those who signed were linked to the military or the world of entertainment.

Many of the signatures would have come from the period of Dietrich’s war work. An active opponent of Nazism since she set up a fund with the film director Billy Wilder to help German dissidents and Jews escape Germany in the late 1930s, she completed two extended tours in 1944 and 1945, entertaining frontline troops in Africa, Italy and France, as well as visiting the UK.

She went as far as putting $450,000 earned from the film Knight without Armor into escrow to help refugees.

Consigned here by her family, the Dietrich short snorter carries an estimate of $3,500-5,000.

Previews for the Autographs auction, which also features world leaders, astronauts, presidents, musicians, writers and artists, start on November 2.