Nazi-confiscated property in the SuUB Bremen

The State and University Library Bremen (SuUB) was one of the first libraries in Germany to make efforts to return cultural goods confiscated as a result of Nazi persecution. It began these activities in 1991. At that time, specific searches were started at SuUB Bremen for Nazi-looted property. By 2009, a total of 1,475 books had been identified as works that had entered the library via so-called Jewish auctions. These books were the property primarily of Jewish emigrants who had left Germany from the port of Bremen and whose belongings had been confiscated. It was possible for 330 books to be assigned to specific names and 290 were restituted to their owners or their heirs. A database of all Nazi-looted finds was also created in 2008 for the purpose of making the results publicly accessible.

As the previous investigation of the holdings concentrated on acquisitions from Jewish auctions, it cannot be ruled out that other stolen books may be located in the holdings of SuUB Bremen. For this reason, the project funded by the German Lost Art Foundation which was launched in February 2015 is pursuing the aims of conducting comprehensive systematic searches and documenting property confiscated by the Nazis in the years 1933 to 1948 and, where appropriate, arranging for these objects to be restituted to their former owners or their heirs. All the acquisitions made by the former SuUB Bremen between 1933 and 1948 are being examined. In total, approx. 86,000 books (purchases and donations) will be examined, with initial conservative estimates indicating that approx. 20,000 can be classified as suspected of being Nazi-looted property.

The project is taking into account the findings of previous projects involving research into Nazi-confiscated property in the SuUB Bremen and is building on these experiences.

Activities carried out between February 1, 2015 and August 1, 2016:

Work to record all acquisitions made between 1933 and 1948 which are classified as suspicious was completed in September 2015. The in-depth investigation of approx. 17,000 suspicious acquisitions is currently underway. In the in-depth investigation of the suspicious acquisitions, some results have already been achieved, meaning that the number of Nazi-looted objects discovered in the SuUB Bremen has more than doubled: Approx. 140 volumes of the former Bremer Volkszeitung newspaper have been registered in the Lost Art Database as found Nazi-looted property as well. The search for the rightful owners is still ongoing at the present time.

(c) SuUB Bremen