Herzog August Library restitutes verse epic to heirs of Heinrich Spiero

The Herzog August Library (HAB) in Wolfenbüttel has restituted the book Luise. Ein Ländliches Gedicht In Drei Idyllen by Johann Heinrich Voß (first published in 1783/84) to the heirs of writer and German studies specialist Heinrich Spiero, who was persecuted as a Jew under National Socialism.

From a bookplate on the inside of the cover it was possible to identify the book as having belonged to the private library of Heinrich (1876-1947) and Olga Spiero (1877-1960). In common with the rest of his family, Heinrich Spiero was subjected to anti-Semitic persecution by the Nazi regime and was arrested several times. He was banned from writing and publishing from 1935 onwards. Heinrich and Olga Spiero were narrowly saved from deportation thanks to their non-Jewish son-in-law, and they survived National Socialist rule in Berlin. Owning a private library that is estimated to have comprised some 20,000 volumes, Spiero was forced to auction off more than 250 items from his extensive autograph collection when he experienced financial hardship due to an occupational ban, and from 1938 onwards he sold off numerous items from his private library under pressure of Nazi persecution. The now restituted volume with the Heinrich and Olga Spiero bookplate found its way into the HAB’s holdings in 1985 as part of the private library of the composer and university lecturer Ernst Pepping (1901-1981). The heirs of Olga and Heinrich Spiero have decided that after restitution, the print that was taken from their ancestors is to be donated to the HAB.

The Herzog August Library (HAB) has been carrying out investigations into the provenance of its holdings for four years, with funding provided by the German Lost Art Foundation. Based on a structured review of provenances, it has been possible to gain significant insights into objects in the HAB collections that were confiscated as a result of Nazi persecution. The materials examined to date include 14,000 numbered items from the acquisition records, 350 volumes of ars librorum and art books, 909 volumes from the Pepping Collection and 5,287 other volumes. The ars librorum and art books yield comparatively little evidence of their provenance – possibly the result of deliberate manipulation. Among the items of the Pepping Collection there is a significantly higher frequency of confirmed Nazi-looted property and suspected cases. The acquisition records indicate that the HAB also purchased from suppliers who are known to have traded in Nazi-looted property and that some such items were acquired from these suppliers – even long after 1945. A total of around 80 per cent of the volumes examined bear no traces of provenance at all, so a considerable number of unreported cases of Nazi-looted property can expect to be found among these.

Funded by the German Lost Art Foundation, the project Nazi-looted property among the acquisitions of the Herzog August Library in the years 1933-1969 started in December 2022, with a total of seven volumes having been restituted since. These include two books to the Library of the Austrian Chamber of Labour in Vienna – as the legal successor to the “Social Science Study Library at the Chamber of Labour”– another book to the same institution since this is where the private library of the lawyer Anton Menger is held, two books to the heirs of Mainz entrepreneur Felix Ganz and his daughter Olga Kreiß, née Ganz, one book to the community of heirs of Olga and Heinrich Spiero, and one book to the heir to Valeriu Marcu. A further six restitutions are still outstanding.

The abundance of provenance markings in the “Pepping Collection” has resulted in a significantly greater research effort, so the German Lost Art Foundation has approved the extension of the project until 31 December 2025.

For details of the project on the HAB website, see: http://diglib.hab.de/

To the project NS-Raubgut unter den Zugängen der Herzog August Bibliothek 1933–1969 [Nazi-looted property among the acquisitions of the Herzog August Library in the years 1933-1969]