Investigation of Nazi looted property in the accessions of the years 1933-1945
Heidelberg University Library (UB) is the central library of Heidelberg University. Its task is to provide literature and information for the members of Heidelberg university as well as for the inhabitants of the city and the region. With a total stock of approx. 6.1 million media units (incl. library system), it is one of the most visited and most used university libraries in Germany. It is not only the oldest, but was also one of the largest German university libraries as early as 1933, with over one million volumes. By 1943, this stock had grown to about 1.2 million titles. Thanks to timely removal from storage, most of the books were saved from war damage. From 1922, the library director was Rudolf Sillib, who was succeeded by Karl Preisendanz in 1935 after a brief interim period; Preisendanz was dismissed in the course of denazification at the end of 1945. The only thing known so far about the search for books confiscated by the Nazis is that the UB took over books from confiscated holdings from 1935 at the latest. In addition, books were acquired in occupied foreign countries during the war. This was partly done by purchase, but there is no information about possible previous owners. It is possible, however, that there were further allocations from other confiscated or looted book holdings. Some suspicious facts indicate that the UB did not declare or only incompletely declared its respective additions after the war when the American military government approached it with corresponding restitution demands.
The subject of the project, which is funded by the German Lost Art Foundation, is therefore on the one hand the complete processing of all files relating to acquisitions between 1933-1945. The acquisition policy as well as the provenance of the books added to the collection during this period will be clarified. However, the main focus, both in terms of content and quantity, is on identifying the books that were seized from their previous owners during the 'Third Reich' for reasons of persecution or war. These are primarily those acquisitions that either go back to antiquarian purchases or where there is a suspicion of provenance from the occupied territories. The planned procedure is conditioned by the specific situation of the holdings. Research is significantly limited by the fact that until 1962 the acquisitions of the UB were not listed according to the year of acquisition, but according to subject groups. In addition, there are no more accession books from 1939 onwards. In any case, only the "regular" acquisitions, i.e. those made by purchase, are recorded in these. Books that came to the UB through exchange or as gifts were not included. A complete overview of all acquisitions is only provided by the handwritten index cards, on which the year of acquisition or, in the case of exchanged or donated titles, the exact cataloguing date is noted.
A systematic and time-consuming examination of these older index cards is therefore unavoidable in order to record the additions from 1933 onwards. All books classified as suspicious in this way are to be listed, checked by autopsy for older ownership indications and, if necessary, documented in order to be able to determine possible previous owners and their descendants in further research.
Running time: 01.03.2023–28.02.2025
