Nazi-confiscated property in the IGdJ library

In the project Nazi-confiscated property in the IGdJ library, the Institute for the History of the German Jews carried out an extensive search for Nazi-looted art in its book holdings. The project was funded from September 1, 2013 to August 31, 2016 by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media via the German Lost Art Foundation (called the Bureau for Provenance Research until December 31, 2014) following a decision by the German Bundestag.

The IGdJ investigation is one of a series of research projects to be carried out in a wide range of German libraries, museums, archives and other cultural institutions following the Washington Conference on Holocaust-Era Assets (1998) and the Declaration of the German Federal Government, German states and leading municipal associations to locate and return cultural goods confiscated through Nazi persecution, especially those of Jewish ownership which was adopted one year later. The systematic search for Nazi-confiscated cultural goods is followed by the documentation and release of the findings with the aim of restituting objects to the former owners or their heirs.

The IGdJ library contains around 70,000 books. Prior to the start of the project, it was not possible to rule out the suspicion that the books published before 1945 originated from stocks confiscated or looted by the Nazis. As the institution library was designed and built as a Jewish collection, this assumption was even more valid.

In the first phase of the project, the 8,325 books and journals in the historic stock were reviewed. Of these books and journals, 941 included provenance information that indicated, or may have indicated, Nazi-confiscated property. The results of this review were documented in photographs and recorded in Excel spreadsheets. Following this, the project aim was to verify and research information on property confiscated or looted by the Nazis. Among the 941 with provenance information, 185 books were definitely, or very strongly, suspected of being Nazi-confiscated property.

At the end of April 2015, four books were returned to the Jewish community of Dresden in a ceremony. At the end of May 2016, 13 books from the historic Cossmann Werner Library were given back to the Israelitische Kultusgemeinde München und Oberbayern. For 303 books, the suspicion of Nazi-confiscated property could be refuted, or the information was too unspecific. For a further 389 books, the suspicion of Nazi looting cannot be ruled out, but the provenance markings were not conclusive enough to allow direct classification. Most cases involved information that included a first and last name. We hope to obtain even clearer results by digitizing these findings. In addition, on the recommendation of the German Lost Art Foundation, 65 books were designated lawful Nazi-looted property but a return to the original owners or successor institutions cannot be ruled out. These include volumes that were classified as ownerless after the Second World War and handed over to Israel or to Jewish institutions worldwide. These books subsequently returned to Germany mostly as duplicates via antiquarian bookstores.

Nazi-confiscated property in the IGdJ librarythe example of Dr. Joseph Norden

Joseph Norden was born in Hamburg on June 17, 1860. He spent his childhood and school years in Hamburg, where he went to the Talmud Thora School and then attended the Johanneum in Hamburg. After leaving school, Joseph Norden went to university in Berlin. There he studied philosophy and also took courses at the orthodox Rabbinerseminar (a training institution for rabbis). After completing his degree, he went on to study for a doctorate in Halle which he was awarded in 1895. In 1896, he took the rabbi examination at the orthodox Rabbinerseminar in Berlin. Dr. Norden was considered one of the leading advocates of liberal Judaism in Germany. His attitude made things difficult for him at the beginning as he was first a rabbi in Neustettin from 1897 and then in Myslowitz from 1899 in a predominantly orthodox community. In 1907, he became a rabbi in Elberfeld, where he could express his liberal views more freely until he retired in 1935.

Upon his retirement in 1935, he moved back to his old home city of Hamburg. He made use of his retirement to get actively involved with the Israelite Temple association in Hamburg and in 1939 succeeded the rabbi Bruno Italiener, who had emigrated. Dr. Norden refused to emigrate even though he was offered many opportunities. Having lived in his community when times were good, he did not want to leave it when things became difficult. On July 15, 1942, Joseph Norden was deported from Hamburg to Theresienstadt, where he died just over six months later on February 7, 1943.

In 1938, Dr. Norden had left a note of ownership in the book Die soziale Fürsorge im Alten Testament by Norbert Peters, which was published in 1936. After the rabbi was deported, his library was seized by the Hamburg Gestapo and transferred, at least in part, to the State and University Library Hamburg (SUB). Dr. Nordens book was one of around 1,000 pieces that the Institute received as a donation in 1975. Thanks to the help of the SUB, it is hoped that contact will be quickly established with the living grandchildren in the United States, Germany and Israel.

(c) Institut für die Geschichte der deutschen Juden