Berlin and Dresden libraries return books confiscated due to Nazi persecution to heirs
Press release from 09/27/2018
Joint return of three books from the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin and the Sächsische Landesbibliothek - Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Dresden (SLUB) to the heirs of Hedwig Hesse
Both the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin - Preußischer Kulturbesitz and the SLUB Dresden recently found copies with the bookplate of the Berliner Hedwig Hesse in their collections. Hedwig Hesse and her family were persecuted as Jews in National Socialist Germany. In the course of the National Socialists' policy of persecution, expropriation and realisation, her books ended up in the hands of various antiquarian bookshops, libraries or other new owners.
Born Hedwig Bachur in Berlin on 8 May 1880, the former owner of the books had been married to Max Guido Hesse, owner of a publishing house for industrial printing in Berlin, since 1905. The couple lived with their three children at Helmstedter Straße 5 in Berlin. While the children Peter, Susi and Walter Hesse were able to emigrate to South Africa and the USA in time, Hedwig and Max Hesse were deported together to Riga on 19 January 1942 and murdered there.
"From my library. Hedwig Hesse." These words on a bookplate name Hedwig Hesse as the owner of the two novels from "Engelhorn's General Library of Rome" and Friedrich Freska's "Die Notwende", which have now been found in the two libraries. They are exemplary of the route taken by numerous books by deported Berlin Jews. Many were initially stored in the municipal pawnshop. In 1943, the Berlin City Library purchased around 40,000 of these books. In turn, other libraries acquired some of these books, so that the looted property was distributed throughout Germany. In recent years, other libraries have also found books belonging to Hedwig Hesse in their collections, which they have also restituted. The provenance project "Nazi-looted property in the SLUB (acquisitions after 1945)" is funded by the German Centre for Lost Cultural Assets.
More in the blog of the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin and in the blog of the SLUB Dresden: https://blog.sbb.berlin/gabel-messer-und-eine-eule-sind-zeugen/
Press images:
http://www.preussischer-kulturbesitz.de/newsroom/presse/pressebilder.html