Berlin State Library restitutes 13 volumes to the Jewish Community of Vienna
Press release from 12/04/2014
The Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation has today restituted 13 volumes from the holdings of the Berlin State Library to the Jewish Community of Vienna (IKG Vienna). The volumes in question were published between 1840 and 1914. Four volumes were formerly owned by the Jewish Community, the other nine belonged to Jewish organisations, of which the IKG Vienna is the legal successor.
The Berlin State Library had clarified the origin of the books as part of its recently completed research project "Creating Transparency". A total of around 11,000 particularly suspicious printed works from the Staatsbibliothek's historical collection were examined. Shortly after the research results were published in the Staatsbibliothek's online catalogue (StaBiKat), the IKG Vienna approached the Foundation with a request to return some of the identified books.
Hermann Parzinger, President of the SPK, says: "The comprehensive examination of our own holdings with regard to cultural property confiscated as a result of Nazi persecution is a high priority for us. We are not only concerned with clarifying the provenance of spectacular individual objects, because injustice is not measured by the significance of the object. The painstaking detailed work of researchers is a prerequisite for any restitution. It is all the more gratifying when this work leads step by step to the clarification of the ownership of questionable holdings and these can be returned to their rightful owners."
The President of the IKG Vienna, Oskar Deutsch, thanks all those people who have created the conditions for this restitution with their commitment: "I am happy about this restitution because every book has its history. The Jewish Community Vienna is committed to the careful handling of formerly stolen cultural assets - regardless of their value."
The Jewish Community of Vienna already had its own library at the beginning of the 19th century, which had grown to around 35,000 volumes by the 1930s. The whereabouts of its library and the holdings of various Jewish associations, which were presumably transferred to the main building of the IKG Vienna in 1938, have not yet been conclusively clarified. What is certain, however, is that both the IKG Vienna and the organisations it represented as legal successor lost the books as a result of persecution in accordance with the Washington Principles.
In the course of the November pogrom of 1938, the Gestapo sealed the library of the IKG Vienna. Between 1939 and 1941, the volumes were transferred to the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA) in Berlin on the orders of Adolf Eichmann. At least some of them were relocated to Lower Silesia and Northern Bohemia as a result of the air raids on the then capital of the Reich in 1943. After 1945, only a small proportion of the holdings were recovered.
The IKG Vienna, which was dissolved in 1942, was re-established on 16 June 1945. The Jewish Museum Vienna Association, the Jewish Theological College Vienna Association and the Bet ha-Midrash Vienna Association, from whose holdings the remaining restituted books originated, no longer exist today. As the locally responsible religious community, the IKG Vienna is their legal successor under Austrian law.
Provenance research at the Berlin State Library
At the Berlin State Library, the systematic examination of the historical print holdings (three million volumes) is making pleasing progress. Over 1,000 volumes have now been returned to their rightful owners or their legal successors.
As in the case of the museums, the systematic review of the library's own holdings is mainly carried out as part of projects. The State Library's projects were made possible by the funding provided by the BKM and the Cultural Foundation of the Federal States for research into Nazi-looted property. Following the aforementioned project "Creating transparency: Research, cataloguing and supra-regional verification of Nazi-looted property in the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin's printed material holdings", which was completed in June 2014, the project "Nazi-looted property after 1945: the role of the Central Office for Old Scientific Collections" was launched in August this year. The aim of this project is to research the routes taken by Nazi-looted property, some of which was distributed to different libraries after the Second World War. At the end of 2013, the State Library published the 400-page study "Beschlagnahmt, erpressst, erbeutet. Nazi looted property, the Reich Exchange Office and the Prussian State Library between 1933 and 1945", which has since served as a basis for the search for unlawful acquisitions in the library's own holdings and also provides important information for provenance research in other libraries and institutions.
The State Library attaches great importance to the long-term documentation of research and cataloguing results. All proven cases of Nazi-looted property are documented promptly and comprehensively with all traces of provenance in the online catalogue StaBiKat and in the internet database Lost Art of the Magdeburg Coordination Office. The information can therefore be researched worldwide.
After analysing the recorded ownership notes, possible owners or legal successors are identified and a fair and equitable solution is sought in accordance with the Washington Principles.