| > Mr. Garber, the Second World War was also an inferno for German book and library culture. Do we now know more or less exactly what damage and losses occurred at which collection locations in Germany? > Yes, most of the damage is known and extends across the entire old German Reich, from Karlsruhe to Kiel, from Munich to Königsberg. The largest German library in the Reich was hit most spectacularly. In July 1943, the Hamburg City Library alone lost 700,000 volumes in “Aktion Gomorrha”. As far as the individual titles themselves are concerned, the relevant data is often still missing - unfortunately. There is no large and accurate work on the books and libraries that once existed and were lost or not returned during the Second World War. > How do you assess the historical and intellectual damage caused to our cultural memory by the absence of German books? > I will answer this question with a quote from the first expert on the subject from 1947: “It is a catastrophe that has no comparison in the history of libraries and in the history of science” (Georg Leyh). We have no account of the demise of German libraries. Germany has lost significant parts of its cultural memory forever. But who knows about it? Conversely, the greatest crime committed by Germany has led to an irretrievable loss of urban silhouettes and cultural witnesses. The answer? Never-ending mourning and never-ending work of remembrance. https://www.fr.de/kultur/literatur/eine-katastrophe-11007951... Generally, the cultural loss via burning down libraries and knowledge is inherent to war, and obviously does not only affect one country. The article also mentions the Library of Warsaw as an example of lost knowledge, but the loss of german culture "has no comparison in the history of libraries", per renowned librarian Georg Leyh. P.S.: Germany still does not own the Berlinka - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlinka_(art_collection) |
> P.S.: Germany still does not own the Berlinka - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlinka_(art_collection)
It does not, the German state dropped it for safekeeping in Lower Silesia and according to international law, its ownership was transferred together with the legal status of the respective territories per the Potsdam conference. Any discussion on the possible return of parts of the collection would need to start with the return of the thousands of Polish works of art held in German collections, to which, unlike Poland's legal claim to the Berlinka collection, Germany has none.