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German Lost Art Foundation Berlin Branch Office
44 volumes from the holdings of the Johann Christian Senckenberg University Library at Goethe University have been handed over to the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung.
The handover and signing of the agreement took place in the university’s central library in Frankfurt-Bockenheim. The books and their original owners have been identified in connection with an extensive provenance research project which involves investigation of the library’s legacy holdings to determine whether they include looted property that belonged to individuals persecuted under the Nazi regime. The project has been funded by the German Lost Art Foundation since 2020 and will end in February 2025. Around 80,000 volumes are being analysed, more than 5,000 of which are from the Offenbach Archival Depot (OAD) set up by the US military government after the Second World War to identify the individuals (mostly Jewish citizens) from whom the books, manuscripts and ritual objects stored at the depot had been looted during the Nazi era. Numerous volumes from the OAD were restituted by 1948; the remaining items were handed over to the state of Hesse, ending up in Frankfurt Municipal and University Library. 42 out of the 44 volumes that were handed over to the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung were from the OAD.
Based on the work done to date, there are indications that other holdings of the former Municipal and University Library may also contain looted property. A follow-up provenance research project will also be funded by the German Lost Art Foundation. University library director Daniela Poth has suggested there may be further restitutions.
Originally belonging to social democratic associations and trade union libraries, the 44 books will now be transferred to the library in the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung’s Archive of Social Democracy. On behalf of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) and, more recently, the German Trade Union Confederation (DGB), the Foundation acts as a central collection point for any former holdings of predecessor institutions identified as Nazi-looted property.
The recently restituted books mainly comprise political literature dating from the first half of the 20th century. Not every book will fill a gap in the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung’s collection, since many were published in large quantities. This does not make the returned books any less important, however: the provenance research is said to have been hugely valuable since it has resulted in a meticulous description of the books’ ownership status as gleaned from the sequence of handwritten entries, signatures or bookplates.
The returned books will not disappear completely from the university library, since all database entries have been retained. These are supplemented with the note “looted property” and a reference to the restitution.
The project has resulted in 20 volumes being restituted to Jewish communities, Masonic lodges, trade unions and individuals to date.
