Research project at University Library Johann Christian Senckenberg in Frankfurt uncovers more Nazi plunder than expected
First project on provenance research at the main library of Goethe University Frankfurt reveals further demand in this area – Successor project examines rare prints – Extensive stock from Baer’s antiquarian bookstore in Frankfurt identified
Since the autumn of 2020, researchers have been combing through University Library’s collections in the search for books that were unlawfully confiscated from their owners during the Nazi era. In the course of the first project, which was supported by the German Lost Art Foundation and has now ended, it became apparent that the volume of looted property in the collections is larger than expected. Provenance research must continue, not least so that the rightful owners can be identified and their possessions returned to them. At a joint press conference today, Goethe University Frankfurt and the City of Frankfurt presented the results so far and the next steps.
In the spring of 2025, University Library Johann Christian Senckenberg in Frankfurt completed its first provenance research project and has now finalized the corresponding research report. The objective was to identify books in the library’s collections that were confiscated from their owners during Nazi persecution. This project was initiated by University Library and constitutes the beginning of systematic provenance research in the library’s stocks that is designed to continue over many years. A further goal is to find solutions for restitution or reparation. This is foreseen in the Washington Conference Principles on Nazi-Confiscated Art of 1998, a legally non-binding but morally and ethically international consensus aimed at identifying looted art, locating its rightful owners or their heirs and achieving a “just and fair solution”.
Schleiff: “The university is facing up to its history”
“The university is facing up to its history. The scientific analysis of the library’s stocks is an important part of this task. From a moral standpoint, the injustice committed during the Nazi era is not time-barred. Here, we are fully committed to the Washington Principles. That is why University Library launched the first large-scale provenance research project five years ago: We wanted to know which books from expropriated property are accommodated in our library and to make amends for the injustice done in relation to the unlawful acquisition of these works. That this task will now become so much more extensive than expected poses major challenges for us,” says Professor Enrico Schleiff, President of Goethe University Frankfurt.
The project was mostly funded by the German Lost Art Foundation in Magdeburg and received additional support from the City of Frankfurt, which owns many of the books that belonged to the previous City and University Library. This was formed after World War II through the amalgamation of several libraries, including City Library. In a contract signed in 1999, the City of Frankfurt and the State of Hesse agreed that part of the stocks would remain the property of the City. Roughly estimated, this constitutes a third of the books published before 1945.
City Councilor for Culture and Science: “The sheer number of looted books is alarming”
Dr. Ina Hartwig, City Councilor for Culture and Science: “For a long time, the contaminated term ‘Aryanization’ made people think of realty, shops or businesses that were snatched from their Jewish owners. The extensive research conducted at University Library here in Frankfurt shows, however, that this interpretation is too narrow. The sheer number of looted books in the joint collections of the university and the city is alarming and their systematic analysis long overdue. The project now completed represents a first step and is the outcome of the constructive and fruitful cooperation between Goethe University Frankfurt, University Library and the City of Frankfurt, which we want to further expand in the future.”
Daniela Poth, Director of University Library Johann Christian Senckenberg: “With Daniel Dudde and Darleen Pappelau, we have been able to assign two very competent specialists to this task. With great interest, perseverance and care, they have taken on the detective work of tracing and documenting the books’ journeys and determining their rightful owners. They have presented a magnificently systematic assessment, for which we thank them most sincerely, and we hope that they will continue provenance research at University Library with the same dedication in the future too. We also thank, of course, the Executive Board for its support at all levels.”
Dr. Uwe Hartmann, Head of the Department for Cultural Property Losses in Europe in the 20th Century at the German Lost Art Foundation: “We are delighted that with University Library Johann Christian Senckenberg another important cultural institution in Frankfurt has acknowledged its historical and moral responsibility to review its own stock in order to ascertain how books and other objects were acquired during the Nazi era. The aim here is to find out whether these were once confiscated or extorted from their rightful owners. The results of the first research project funded by the German Lost Art Foundation corroborate the extent to which University Library also benefited from the looted property of Jewish and other citizens persecuted by the Nazi regime. We wish the provenance research team every success for the second project too!”
The project was originally planned to take two years. However, it was extended by the same length of time due to the unexpectedly high amount of research required. Namely, it emerged during the course of the project that the percentage of Nazi plunder in the collections under inspection was significantly higher than first assumed. When drafting the project, the researchers based their calculations on the empirical data of comparable projects. The situation in Frankfurt, however, was quite different: As a city with a large Jewish population, Frankfurt experienced persecution and expropriation under the Nazi regime on a greater scale – from which libraries and other cultural institutions, as the recipients of expropriated cultural assets, also “profited”. That is why the percentage of Nazi plunder in Frankfurt’s University Library is correspondingly higher than elsewhere.
Added to this is the fact that Frankfurt was a central hub of the Allies’ restitution efforts after the end of the war: The collection point for stolen and orphaned book collections was established first of all on the premises of Frankfurt’s former City and University Library and later moved as the Offenbach Archival Depot to the neighboring city. Millions of books were amassed there and, as far as possible, returned to their rightful owners worldwide. If this was not possible, the books remained temporarily in Offenbach and were then, from 1947 onwards, gradually handed over to the University of Frankfurt.
Of 75,000 books, ten percent were probably confiscated illegally
Some of the stocks that arrived at University Library during the Nazi era and in the post-war period were systematically analyzed for the first time within the first provenance research project. The project team attempted to trace their origins on the basis of stamps, bookplates and notes in the over 75,000 books that were examined in the first project phase. In the process, they discovered around 7,500 books that can be attributed to 350 different former owners and were probably confiscated illegally. Because of this high percentage, which surprised even experts, it was only possible to complete some of the individual cases.
In these first four years, many books have already been restituted, that is, returned to their rightful owners or their heirs. The restitution process varied greatly from case to case in terms of scale, duration and the solution found. In 35 cases involving a total of 90 books, it was possible to find a just and fair solution in line with the Washington Principles – including restitutions, regifts and buybacks. Books from Frankfurt’s University Library were returned to private individuals in Germany and aboard as well as to a large number of organizations, among them political parties, trade unions, Jewish communities and Masonic lodges.
A particularly important case is the books from the antiquarian bookstore of Joseph Baer & Co., a Frankfurt institution of global renown that was liquidated by the Nazi state in 1934. The libraries in Frankfurt took over extensive stocks back then at a price that was far too low. Up until 1945, there were several academic libraries in Frankfurt which, as the predecessor institutions of today’s University Library, together performed the role of a university library. Thanks to extensive research, it was possible within the project to investigate and systematically document this injustice for the first time. In the first project alone, the researchers working at the library identified over 5,000 books from Baer’s bookstore that must be viewed as Nazi plunder. The aim now is to contact the store’s heirs and arrive at a just and fair solution with them. The project team has started to search for these heirs and will continue to do so alongside its ongoing research on this case. Further important finds of Baer provenance can be expected in the successor project that started recently.
With the start of this second provenance research project, work will initially continue for a further two years. The German Lost Art Foundation has granted extensive funds for this project too. The focus is now shifting to new types of stock: Particularly in the spotlight this time are old, rare and valuable prints from the 16th to the 20th century found in special collections assembled since the 1940s. It is already considered certain that even this second project will be unable to conclude the search for Nazi plunder: University Library is preparing itself for a lengthy task.
