2016 - News - Detail Page - Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz

A fully preserved missal of the Orthodox Church from the 17th century is returning to Russia. It was previously in the Berlin State Library, where provenance researchers identified it beyond doubt as a wartime loss from the Novgorod Museum. Hermann Parzinger, President of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation and German spokesperson for the DRMD, and Barbara Schneider-Kempf, Director General of the Berlin State Library, today handed over the work, which was misplaced in Moscow in 1651, to Natalya Grigoryeva, Director of the Novgorod State Museum, and Mikhail Piotrovsky, Director General of the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg and Russian spokesperson for the DRMD.

Hermann Parzinger sees the restitution as much more than just a single work: "Provenance research has become a central task in the collections of museums, libraries and archives at all levels. With its help, it was also possible to attribute this outstanding missal from Novgorod. The restitution emphasises the trust and partnership in German-Russian cultural relations. Although the major political issues surrounding the cultural artefacts relocated as a result of the war are still awaiting a solution, German-Russian specialist contacts are continuing to develop and are more intensive than ever before. The individual find from Novgorod also gives me great personal pleasure, as Novgorod is known to have suffered considerable wartime losses and no records of this are available."

The Chairwoman of the Foundation Council of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, Minister of State for Culture Monika Grütters, very much welcomes the return of the missal: "The handover of the important missal to the museum in Novgorod is a success for provenance research and an opportunity to continue the German-Russian dialogue on cultural assets. We have many contacts between German and Russian experts in the cultural sector. I value these very highly and they should be expanded further. This is important, as there is still an open and, against the historical background, painful desire on the part of Germans and Russians for the return of their cultural assets that are still abroad. Especially in a time of globalisation, the population of a country is particularly aware of the identity-forming effect of culture. For this reason, Germany and Russia agreed in the German-Soviet Neighbourhood Treaty of 1990 and the German-Russian Cultural Agreement of 1992 to return lost or unlawfully removed art treasures/cultural assets located on their territory to the owner or their legal successor."

There is a handwritten entry in the missal that attributes the print to the library of the monastery of St Anthony the Roman near Novgorod. No more than around 15 books have survived from the important library of this monastery, one of the oldest in north-west Russia. There is also a pre-war stamp of the Scientific Library of the Novgorod Museum. The Russian city was occupied by German troops from 1941 to 1944, who also had cultural assets removed, including over 30,000 books. It is only partially known where the works ended up. The Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg planned to set up an "Eastern Library" in Riga, presumably to integrate the missal. How it finally ended up in the East Berlin State Library cannot be reconstructed today. The missal was identified as belonging to the Novgorod Museum during the systematic examination of suspicious holdings that the Berlin State Library has been carrying out for several years.

Press images for download via the Berlin State Library

• Press release and press images from the Berlin State Library

Further links

• ЗАЯВЛЕНИЕ ДЛЯ ПРЕССЫ: "Возвращение требника из Новгорода в Россию" (16.11.2015) (PDF, 160 KB, not barrier-free)
• Interview on the return of the missal (16/11/2015)