Hamburg State and University Library returns Nazi-looted property – and receives it as a gift

Pur­chased at a Berlin auc­tion house in 1937, these unique items be­longed to the writ­er, lit­er­ary schol­ar and pas­sion­ate au­to­graph col­lec­tor Hein­rich Spiero (1876-1947). He was an im­por­tant fig­ure on the Ger­man lit­er­ary scene, ini­tial­ly in Ham­burg and then from 1918 on­wards in Berlin. Des­ti­tute as a re­sult of be­ing per­se­cut­ed as a Jew dur­ing the Nazi era, Hein­rich Spiero was forced to sell many items from his col­lec­tion in 1937 – in­clud­ing the au­to­graphs pre­served in the Ham­burg li­brary.

The fact that the valu­able col­lec­tion will nev­er­the­less re­main with Ham­burg State and Uni­ver­si­ty Li­brary is due to a gen­er­ous ges­ture by Spiero’s heirs, who de­cid­ed to do­nate the resti­tut­ed au­to­graphs to the li­brary along with oth­er ob­jects be­long­ing to the fam­i­ly. The heirs were present at the clos­ing event and car­ried out the resti­tu­tion and do­na­tion to­geth­er with Robert Zepf, Di­rec­tor of the State and Uni­ver­si­ty Li­brary.