Research project
Completed
Research into Nazi-looted art in the research library of the Herder Institute
Examination of the partial inventory originating from the former publication office in Berlin-Dahlem
Duration
2016 - 2019
The results of research carried out by David Zimmer in 2008 on around 350 selected volumes confirmed this assumption. As early as 1994, 212 volumes with Ukrainian ownership stamps were returned to Ukraine. In 2016, a research project was finally initiated to investigate the entire collection received at the time, in the course of which the previous owners are to be identified in detail, the affected copies recorded in the OPAC and books, brochures and journals unlawfully held by the Herder Institute restituted to the heirs or legal successors of those robbed.
The project is part of the provenance research in museums, libraries and archives promoted by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media to identify unlawfully acquired cultural property.
Library holdings restituted to the Maćica Serbska and the Sorbian Institute. Claudia Junghänel / Herder-Institut, Rechte vorbehalten - freier Zugang
The Berlin-Dahlem Publication Office was founded in 1931 by the German nationalist Director General of the Prussian State Archives, Albert Brackmann, as a publication fund. It was initially located at the Prussian Secret State Archives and functioned as the office of the North and East German Research Association. During the Nazi era, it helped to underpin the German Reich's claims to power with a völkisch argumentation. Among other things, the staff of the publications office provided maps for the development of the General Plan East. In the late winter of 1945, the employees fled from the Soviet army from Bautzen, where they maintained an alternative office, to Coburg. With them, files and a large part of the library ended up in the American occupation zone.
Ownership stamps are recorded as part of provenance research, in this case the stamp of Poznanskie Towarzystwo Przyjaciol Nauk. Herder-Institut
