Retracing Nazi Book Theft

[ColbertWatcher]

Duchess Anna Amalia Library, Weimar, Germany

Der Spiegel
10/24/2008
German Libraries Hold Thousands of Looted Volumes
By Michael Sontheimer

Hundreds of thousands of book stolen by the Nazis are still in German libraries. A few librarians are acting like detectives, searching for the books and hoping to return them to the former owners or their families. However, many libraries have shown little interest in the troubling legacy tucked away on their shelves.

(...)

It was an intern who at the end of last year first peered into the dusty accession books from the World War II years. What Arno Barnert found were deliveries from the Wehrmacht's "loot warehouses" in Göttingen. He found accessions from the Polish cities of Krakow and Poznan, the Polish consulate in Leipzig and a high school in the Dutch town of Enschede. Books once owned by the Viennese Goethe expert Friedrich Fischl, who was deported in 1941 and murdered in the ghetto of Lodz, Poland, were recorded as a "purchase."

Barnert notified the library management. A few days later, the intern received a visit from the library director, who advised the young man not to make the Nazi loot the subject of his thesis. Barnert was told that if he did decide to do so, he would not be making any friends and would not exactly be improving his prospects of getting a job. He might even be seen as a whistleblower, the director said.

But Barnert continued his search. "Documenting the paths and histories of books that were acquired in the Nazi period is a fundamental task for libraries, a question of ethics," he says. In February, Barnert began collaborating with Frank Möbus, a Göttingen specialist in German studies who was in the process of preparing an exhibit about book burning.

(more)
--Der Spiegel

[Hardrada]

1. This is more confusing than that since quite a lot of rare

German books were war booty taken to the US and the USSR.

[ColbertWatcher]

2. Damn. Well, at least they can find the ones in German libraries.

How could they trace US/USSR war booty books?

[Hardrada]

3. They turn up now and then. Sometimes at auction and the German

museums try to get them back. In the US, I mean. I know the Russians have been turning over some of the items to Germany, stuff they've had in storage.

[ColbertWatcher]

4. I know I shouldn't be shocked but I am. It is amazing that the books are being returned. n/t

[Hardrada]

5. In the interest of better international relations, I would think.

[ColbertWatcher]

6. I guess I should have said "found" instead.

And yes, of course, you're right, re: "good relations."