Manuscript sales by the Badische Landesbibliothek

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Gesta Witigowoni's dedication image, Reichenauer manuscript

In September 2006, for the first time since the founding of the Federal Republic of Germany, an attempt was made by a state government to sell larger quantities of cultural goods in museums and libraries to the art and antiques trade; the attempt provoked an international protest from professionals, scientists and citizens.

Event and background

On September 20, 2006 it became known that the state of Baden-Württemberg was planning to sell medieval manuscripts and incunabula from the holdings of the Badische Landesbibliothek Karlsruhe with an estimated value of 70 million euros. The background was a planned comparison between the state and the Baden House , which raised property claims on paintings, rare prints and manuscripts - including the affected manuscripts - worth an estimated 250 to 300 million euros in the state's museums and libraries . 40 million euros of the proceeds were to be used to set up a “Foundation Schloss Salem ”, into which the castle , which was previously owned by the House of Baden, was to be brought in to ensure its preservation. The other part was intended to compensate Haus Baden for investments already made in the renovation of the castle. The house of Baden wanted to waive the ownership claims. The German Research Foundation , the Ulm Association - Association for Art and Cultural Studies , the Association of German Art Historians , the Chairman of the Science Council , the President of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences, the Archbishop of Freiburg, the abbots of the German Benedictine monasteries, the Minister of State for Culture Neumann and numerous others Scholars and people from home and abroad warned against this possible sale, which would very likely have meant dismantling the collection as a whole and the individual volumes.

Legal position

The question of whether the property rights of the mentioned cultural goods belonged to the House of Baden as heir to the Grand Dukes of Baden or to the state of Baden-Württemberg as legal successor to the Grand Duchy of Baden was disputed. The opinion of the House of Baden was opposed by an opinion by the legal scholar Siegfried Reicke (1967) and, since September 2006, a constitutional justification of the property rights of the state by Reinhard Mußgnug .

agreement

On October 10, 2006, Prime Minister Günther Oettinger announced that the proposed settlement would be retained, but the money for this would be provided by a three-pillar model, which, in addition to the state, also included private patrons and art and cultural institutions . However, this does not rule out the sale of cultural goods in the context of a review of collections “in the sense of creating a profile”. The aim of the financing model was initially to maintain Salem Castle, to compensate for the investments made by the House of Baden and to acquire the works of art that were "undisputed" in its ownership. Among those works of art, Oettinger particularly counted the so-called margrave table by Hans Baldung Grien . As the historian Dieter Mertens was able to see from the files in the General State Archives in Karlsruhe, this work of art had already passed into the ownership of the state in 1930. While, according to Oettinger, the House of Baden continues to lay claim to the painting, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung listed other paintings that, according to Mertens, already belonged to the state, but wanted to be "secured" by the proposed settlement by the government of Baden-Württemberg.

On December 18, 2007, the expert report commissioned by the state government was available, which was supposed to clarify the ownership of all cultural objects to which the House of Baden claimed. It came to the conclusion that the vast majority of the disputed goods were state property. The report counted thirty-six manuscripts stored there, thirteen lever manuscripts and the so-called tulip books as the property of the House of Baden in the holdings of the Baden State Library . The state government then offered the House of Baden talks in order to come to a solution for the threatened cultural property of Salem Castle. Without taking the disputed question of ownership to court, the state of Baden-Württemberg agreed with the House of Baden on a payment from the state totaling 57 million euros for the Salem Palace and for other art treasures, including the Karlsruhe manuscripts that the report assigned to the House of Baden and which have now passed into state ownership. The agreement also included the fact that the House of Baden waived any claims to ownership of cultural assets that had been assigned to the Zähringer Foundation . The contract was sealed on April 6, 2009. This prevented the sale of manuscripts from the Badische Landesbibliothek.

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Archivalia: Are top manuscripts from the Badische Landesbibliothek sold?
  2. see below a. Open letter from the Association of German Art Historians from September 28, 2006 ; Open letter dated September 28, 2006 with over 2500 signatories from experts ( Memento of May 9, 2007 in the Internet Archive ); Letter to the editor, manuscript sales - Germany squandering its past from 19 international art historians (including from Harvard, Yale and Princeton Universities) in the FAZ of September 28, 2006, No. 226, page 44.
  3. Reinhard Mußgnug: Cultural Heritage - The manuscripts belong to the country. FAZ, September 29, 2006, No. 227, page 37.
  4. Press release State Ministry of Baden-Württemberg from October 10, 2006 [1]
  5. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of November 2, 2006, No. 255 / page 41 Art Market in the Ländle - Does Baden-Württemberg want to buy state property?
  6. Overview at Archivalia
  7. Oettinger's pictures, second delivery: These also belong to Baden-Württemberg! In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . November 4, 2006.
  8. Archivalia: Expert: Almost all disputed cultural assets from Baden belong to the state
  9. Cf. https://archive.today/20120721184706/http://www.baden-wuerttemberg.de/de/Mmeldung/178958.html?referer=88736

literature

  • Peter Michael Ehrle, Ute Obhof: The manuscripts of the Badische Landesbibliothek - threatened cultural heritage? . Casimir Katz, Gernsbach 2007, ISBN 978-3-938047-25-5
  • Klaus Graf : Lessons from the Karlsruhe cultural property debacle 2006 , in: Kunstchronik 60 (2007), Issue 2, pp. 57–61 ( online )
  • Martin Germann: The adventurous journey has to come to an end: a European odyssey from Fleury to Karlsruhe, or: Why old manuscripts should be kept intact . - In: Süddeutsche Zeitung No. 234, October 11, 2006, p. 16; Complete version with picture and table on the Internet: http://archiv.twoday.net/stories/2799773/ (since Oct. 13, 2006)
  • Dieter Mertens; Volker Rödel: Sine ira et studio? A review of the “Badischer Kulturgüterstreit” 2006–2009 . In: Zeitschrift für Geschichte des Oberrheins 162 (2014), pp. 471–503 ( online ).
  • Klaus P. Oesterle: Cultural property struggle in Baden. The report . In: Badische Heimat 90 (2010) 4, pp. 837–851.
  • Ludger Syré: The manuscript dispute - a unique event in the 50-year history of the Badische Bibliothekgesellschaft . In: 50 Years Badische Bibliotheksgesellschaft eV A documentation, ed. by Hansgeorg Schmidt-Bergmann on behalf of the Badische Bibliotheksgesellschaft. Bretten: Info Verlag 2016, pp. 31–41.

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