Berlinka (collection)

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As Berlinka ( Polish for "Berlin [collection]"), even Pruski skarb ( "Prussia treasure"), an extensive collection of German original manuscripts in is Jagiellonian Library in Krakow , made up, since the end of World War II in Polish is possession. The whereabouts of the stocks is controversial.

Furthermore, the term is used more generally for historical book collections from the Prussian State Library in Berlin that are in Polish libraries .

Outsourcing and change of ownership

Between September 1942 and January 1944, the holdings were relocated from the Prussian State Library in Berlin to the Silesian monastery Grüssau and Schloss Fürstenstein to protect them from bomb damage . In the spring of 1945, Soviet troops conquered the area.

When, after the Potsdam Agreement of August 2, 1945, the German national territory east of the Oder-Neisse line fell under Soviet and Polish administration, these extensive depots came under the sovereignty of the People's Republic of Poland . The Berlinka documents were removed from the monastery by the Polish militia in the winter of 1945/46 and subsequently taken to Krakow. The question of whether they were on German or Polish territory from 1945 until they were transported to Krakow is a matter of dispute between German and Polish lawyers.

Extent of the inventory

The collection comprises around 300,000 volumes from valuable medieval manuscripts, autographs , including by Luther and Goethe , Schiller's doctoral thesis, an autograph collection (letters from and to 9,000 people) as part of the Varnhagen von Ense collection and an extensive musical collection with original scores of important compositions by Bach , Beethoven and Mozart , such as B. The Abduction from the Seraglio .

History and negotiations

The governments of the GDR and the People's Republic of Poland agreed in 1965 to repatriate the stocks from Poland , which mainly comprised part of the less valuable stocks.

Until 1977 the existence of the collection was denied to the West by the Polish side. But then, as now, it was in the library of Kraków's Jagiellonian University . Even musicologists at the university who worked scientifically on the composers Beethoven or Bach did not know anything about the existence of the scores in their university library. In 1974/1975 the library management urged that the collections be integrated into its own holdings, but this project was discontinued and the separate provenances and the old call numbers remained .

Since the late 1980s, scientifically proven users (doctoral students only with the recommendation of their respective universities) have been able to view the "Berlinka" for research purposes. At the end of 1999 incunabula from the Jagiellonian library appeared at auctions, which are said to have been stolen by former employees. Since then, the terms of use have been interpreted restrictively.

Like all German property in the former eastern German territories , the cultural assets were declared Polish state property by decree after March 1946. The German Federal Government , on the other hand, argues that in this case the Hague Land Warfare Regulations of 1907 apply as international law that is still valid today and prohibits the removal of cultural goods. Negotiations on the repatriation of cultural goods relocated due to the war started at the end of the 1990s at the suggestion of Polish President Aleksander Kwaśniewski and are still ongoing today.

The basis of the return negotiations is, among other things, the German-Polish neighborhood agreement of June 17, 1991. According to this, both countries “endeavor to solve the problems in connection with cultural goods and archive materials, starting with individual cases”. It is disputed whether the Berlinka represents booty art . According to the Polish view, this is not the case, as its stock was not dragged away from Poland due to the war , but was relocated within Germany . When the borders were redrawn after the Second World War, the relocation sites were on Polish territory, which means that the relocated stocks would now have reached Poland.

In December 2000, Poland proposed to the German government to return the collection in exchange for Polish works of art that had been looted during the German occupation of Poland in World War II. The German commissioner at the time, Władysław Bartoszewski, attributed the failure of a German-Polish foundation to find and buy such works of art because the then Federal Chancellor Gerhard Schröder “did not understand” this proposal.

At the beginning of 2006, the collection returned to public awareness when copies of Grimm's dictionary with handwritten notes by the Brothers Grimm , which had long been lost, were found in the library . In 2011 Heinrich von Kleist's letters were issued.

literature

  • Hannes Hartung: Art theft in war and persecution. The restitution of looted and looted art in conflict of laws and international law. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin a. a. 2005, ISBN 3-899-49210-2 ( limited preview in Google Book Search).
  • Werner Schochow: Book fates. The history of relocation of the Prussian State Library. Outsourcing, destruction, alienation, repatriation. Represented from the sources (= publications of the Historical Commission in Berlin 102). de Gruyter, Berlin et al. 2003, ISBN 3-11-017764-1 ( limited preview in the Google book search).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Jakub Gortat: Prints of the 16th century from the Prussian State Library in the University Library of Lodz . In: Cora Dietl and Małgorzata Kubisiak (eds.): Unknown treasures. 16th century Germanica in the University Library of Łódź . Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego, Łódź 2018, ISBN 978-83-8142-251-2 , p. 97-107 (Original title: Nieznane skarby. Germanika XVI-wieczne w zbiorach Biblioteki Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego . Translated by Małgorzata Półrola).
  2. staatsbibliothek-berlin.de , accessed on August 20, 2020
  3. ^ Reports of the Benedictine monks; quoted in: Dieter Henrich: Beethoven, Hegel and Mozart on the trip to Krakow . In: Neue Rundschau, vol. 88 (1977), no. 2, p. 175f.
  4. On the continued existence of the German state and thus its sovereign territory (1945–1990) cf. z. B. Klaus Stern : The constitutional law of the Federal Republic of Germany - Volume V , p. 1964f .; see also the case law of the Federal Constitutional Court z. B. in BVerfGE 77, 137 - Teso .
  5. Piotr Lechowski: The "Berlin collections" in the Jagiellonian Library Krakow. In: Inter Finitimos 7 (1995), No. 15/16, pp. 9-15.
  6. Michael S. Cullen: Who Owns Works That Belong to Humanity, and Where Do They Belong? Weimar 2003, documented in the Lost Art Register, Magdeburg
  7. Claudia Becker: Who owns the Berlinka? Berliner Morgenpost, June 23, 2002
  8. See Jan Pirożyński, Barbara Bułat: Jagiellonian Library . In: Handbook of the historical book collections in Germany, Austria and Europe . Edited by Bernhard Fabian, digitized by Günter Kükenshöner. Olms, Hildesheim 2003 ( web resource ).
  9. Peter Dittmar: When the librarian picks up the knife , Welt Online, August 31, 2007
  10. On the controversy Tonno Eitel: From dealing with looted art. In: Publications of the Coordination Office for the Loss of Cultural Property Magdeburg, Volume 4, 2007, p. 391ff. and Wojciech Kowalski: The restitution of Poland's cultural war losses. Ibid, p. 235ff .; see also: Federal Agency for Civic Education , accessed on April 18, 2009
  11. https://www.augsburger-allgemeine.de/kultur/Bartoszewski-Polen-wollte-Berlinka-zurueckzüge-id7152231.html
  12. University of Cologne  ( page no longer available , search in web archivesInfo: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.portal.uni-koeln.de