Hamburg SUB restitutes Nazi-looted art to Friedrich Ebert Foundation together with ZB Recht

In the course of prove­nance re­search, 125 books on Prince Ot­to von Bis­mar­ck, two copies of Bis­mar­ck’s let­ters and a song book­let were found some time ago in the hold­ings of the Staats- und Uni­ver­si­täts­bi­blio­thek Ham­burg (SUB). All these ma­te­ri­als came from the prop­er­ty of the Auer pub­lish­ing house, which be­longed to the SPD. And, sub­se­quent­ly, the con­nec­tion grad­u­al­ly be­came ap­par­ent: The Bis­mar­ck-Bücherei Specht, to which the let­ters and books be­longed, was orig­i­nal­ly cre­at­ed as a col­lec­tion of the Bis­mar­ck ad­mir­er Emil Specht from Sach­sen­wald. On his ini­tia­tive, the Bis­mar­ck Tow­er was built in Aumüh­le at the end of the 19th cen­tu­ry ac­cord­ing to plans by the Ham­burg ar­chi­tect Her­mann Schom­burgk and a place for Specht’s Bis­mar­ck Li­brary was cre­at­ed with­in. Af­ter Specht’s death, the mu­nic­i­pal­i­ty of Aumüh­le ac­quired the tow­er, but the li­brary was par­tial­ly sold to the SPD-owned Auer pub­lish­ing house in 1927.

The Auer pub­lish­ing house had its own li­brary, pub­lished writ­ings by Marx, En­gels, Bebel and Liebknecht, and pub­lished the Ham­burg­er Echo, which was wide­ly read in so­cial demo­crat­ic cir­cles. It can on­ly be spec­u­lat­ed as to why it hap­pened to be the Auer pub­lish­ing house that bought the Bis­mar­ck Li­brary – was it out of in­ter­est in the for­mer Re­ich Chan­cel­lor as the per­son re­spon­si­ble for the An­ti-So­cial­ist Laws of the 1870s? In the course of Nazi per­se­cu­tion against so­cial democ­ra­cy, the pub­lish­ing house and parts of its li­brary were con­fis­cat­ed in May 1933. The above-men­tioned books and let­ters were in­cor­po­rat­ed in­to the hold­ings of the present SUB Ham­burg as a “gift” from the Ham­burg Gestapo in the years 1937-1939. Six of these books were trans­ferred to the Bib­lio­thek des In­sti­tuts für Auswär­tige Poli­tik­be­tween 1949 and 1954. Af­ter 1973, the Bib­lio­thek des In­sti­tuts für In­ter­na­tionale An­gele­gen­heit­en was in charge; since 2004, this li­brary has been part of the Cen­tral Law Li­brary.

Re­search by the prove­nance re­searchers at the SUB led to find­ing the cur­rent right­ful own­er. In the tra­di­tion of the for­mer SPD par­ty archives, the Friedrich Ebert Foun­da­tion is re­spon­si­ble for the par­ty’s claims for resti­tu­tion re­lat­ing to Nazi-loot­ed art.

The books orig­i­nat­ing from the Bis­mar­ck-Bücherei Specht will be avail­able for re­search in the li­brary of the Friedrich Ebert Foun­da­tion. As our col­league in Bonn re­marked from the side­lines dur­ing the han­dover, they’ll have their place right next to Karl Marx’s li­brary.