Stadtbibliothek Hannover returns Nazi-looted cultural property

Since 2017, the municipal library Stadtbibliothek Hannover has been conducting provenance research to look for Nazi-looted cultural property in its holdings. The central goal of this work, funded by the German Lost Art Foundation, is to return books looted during the National Socialist era to their rightful owners.

In August 2023, it was possible to return a brochure from the collection of Göttingen bookseller Marta Galley, née Baruch: Galley’s great-nephew Robbert Baruch travelled specially from the Netherlands to receive the item.

The municipal library received Marta Galley’s booklet from the archives of the NSDAP-Gau Südhannover-Braunschweig in 1946. The autograph “Marta Baruch” was found inside it. Based on a comparison with a handwritten letter by Marta Galley from 1939, it was possible to identify her as the owner of the brochure.

Born in Göttingen in 1907, Marta Baruch was a trained bookseller. Persecuted as a Jew by the National Socialists, she fled with her family to the Netherlands in 1933. Baruch’s parents Abraham and Bertha, née Jacobsohn, and her sister Hella were deported to the Sobibor extermination camp in spring 1943. Hella was murdered there in April 1943, her parents in May 1943. Marta Baruch’s siblings Siegfried (Friedl), Kurt and Johanne (Hanna) survived the Shoah. She herself managed to escape to the USA together with her husband Horst Galley and their son. Marta committed suicide there in 1959; her husband died the following year.

The brochure found in the municipal library was most likely confiscated by the Nazi authorities in the course of Marta’s flight from Germany in 1933, after which it ended up in the NSDAP Gau archive and later in the Hannover municipal library.

In accordance with the wishes of her heirs, Robbert Baruch, a grandson of Marta’s sister Hanna, is taking possession of his great-aunt’s brochure on behalf of the family.

Marta Galley’s restituted brochure Leonard Nelson: Vom Bildungswahn. Ein Wort an die proletarische Jugend. Rede, gehalten vor den Jungsozialisten in Hannover am 20. Mai 1922, Leipzig: Der Neue Geist Verlag 1923 can be found in the provenance database Looted Cultural Assets.

For further information on provenance research at Stadtbibliothek Hannover, see www.hannover.de/stadtbibliothek/Provenienzforschung

Projects at Stadtbibliothek Hannover:
Stadtbibliothek Hannover - eine Wissenschaftliche Stadtbibliothek und ihre zweifelhaften Erwerbungen in der Zeit 1933 bis 1945 (October 2020 to February 2025)
Zweifelhafte Provenienzen im Bestand der Stadtbibliothek Hannover (August 2017 to July 2018)