Dubious provenances in the holdings of Stadtbibliothek Hannover

In the course of its 580-year history and based on its long-standing scholarly standards, the municipal library Stadtbibliothek Hannover has extensive legacy holdings. These include a large number of potentially Nazi-looted items. The first random inventory checks were carried out in the early 2000s following the adoption of the Washington Principles and the Joint Declaration. With its launch of the project Zweifelhafte Provenienzen im Bestand der Stadtbibliothek Hannover [Dubious provenances in the holdings of Stadtbibliothek Hannover], the institution began to conduct a systematic search of its holdings for objects seized as a result of Nazi persecution. The aim of the research project was to locate Nazi-looted property in the holdings of Stadtbibliothek Hannover, investigate these items for evidence of previous owners and document the work done. The next step was to restitute the books identified as looted property to their rightful owners or to their heirs or legal successors wherever possible. As little research has been done in the area of provenance and Nazi-looted property in public libraries to date, the project also aimed to make a contribution to basic research. In terms of the time period in focus, the study looked at accessions from the years 1945 to 1955 (a total of 96,363 inventory numbers). The reason for choosing this period of investigation lies in the history of the municipal library’s holdings: as a result of a bombing raid in October 1943, more than 50 per cent of its total holdings of around 180,000 volumes were destroyed, including works confiscated as a result of Nazi persecution. As such, the expectation is that today there are more looted books among those items that entered the municipal library collection after the end of the war. Nevertheless, research still needs to be done to follow up on the thesis put forward in 2006 by Veronica Albrink, among others, that Stadtbibliothek Hannover was one of the main profiteers of the “exploitation” of looted books in the Hanover region during the Nazi era. To this end, a project to investigate accessions from 1933 to 1945 was initiated in October 2020.

Main areas of investigation

The project Zweifelhafte Provenienzen im Bestand der Stadtbibliothek Hannover [Dubious provenances in the holdings of Stadtbibliothek Hannover] focused on three groups of accessions from the early post-war period which are to be classified as particularly likely to have been looted property based on supplier details in the accessioned books: 'gifts' from the Gestapo and the Anstalt für germanische Volks- und Rassenkunde ['Institute for Germanic Folklore and Racial Studies'] from 1945 onwards, and the receipt of items from the archive and museum of the NSDAP-Gau Südhannover-Braunschweig (a regional administrative division of the Nazi party) in 1946.

The project in figures

A total of 5,683 books and loose bookplates were physically inspected. Of these, 1,931 objects are to be categorised as suspected cases of Nazi-looted property based on the supplier details and/or existing relevant traces of provenance. This is a rate of around 34%. Of the suspicious objects, 1,520 bear provenance information that allows concrete conclusions to be drawn about previous owners. The suspicion of looted property was clearly confirmed in 48 cases. The books in question were received by the municipal library mainly via the Gestapo and the NSDAP regional archive, having belonged to Jewish citizens and other individuals and organisations persecuted by the National Socialists, for example for political reasons. In 1,346 cases, further research is required to clarify the provenance. In 7 of the 48 clear cases of Nazi-looted property, the rightful owners or their heirs were successfully identified and the books returned to them.

Transparency

Public transparency regarding the results of the project was achieved in a variety of ways, including the publication of essays, the placement of project information on the Stadtbibliothek Hannover website, media work, cooperation with specialist colleagues and the exhibition Spuren der NS Verfolgung. Über Herkunft und Verbleib von Kulturgütern in den Sammlungen der Stadt Hannover [Traces of Nazi Persecution. On the Origin and Whereabouts of Cultural Property in the Collections of the City of Hanover] (6 December 2018 – 16 June 2019, Museum August Kestner, Hanover). The research data collected through the project was publicly documented in the cooperative provenance database Looted Cultural Assets (https://lootedculturalassets.de).

© Landeshauptstadt Hannover, Stadtbibliothek Hannover