The role of displaced book collections in culture

Library Trends, Summer, 2003 by Ekaterina Genieva

ABSTRACT

SHOULD RARE BOOKS TAKEN during times of war as "trophies" by the enemy be restored to their original owners? This is a controversial but increasingly important issue for special collections libraries worldwide. Attempted restitution brings about a new set of losses and problems. Any rules of policies for such restitution will, at least for the time being, include complex legal and political considerations. It is important to consider that while the value of an individual book might not be so high, the same book as part of a collection might be very valuable. The German book trade and libraries, and their relation to the Soviet Union after World War II, is a major case study in the problems surrounding restitution of cultural property--in particular, the lack of bibliographical citations for much of the material. Librarians should consider the creation of a bibliographically sound, all-European register of rare books.

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As strange as it may seem, the problem of cultural valuables displaced as a result of war holds a very low ranking among the cultural issues discussed. Yet, the very roots of this problem are related to basic cultural archetypes, compared to which all legal and political aspects are secondary. Originally, victors treated captured "cultural valuables" (as we call them now) as material valuables and, at the same time, as sacral ones. In modern civilization cultural and sacral values have merged in many ways: the fruits of other people's spiritual culture are their sacred objects, so to appropriate such objects means, consequently, to defeat the enemy's spirit. That is why the issue of "trophy" objects of art and books is so important to the tolerant mentality that will not stand either victory or defeat in the spiritual sphere.

Although in practice museums of international significance can hardly get established without violating the property rights of defeated peoples, in theory the thesis stated in the international law about the inadmissibility of forced removal of cultural valuables undoubtedly prevails--at least, it is universally recognized that they should not be treated as purely material valuables. On the other hand, a full-scale physical restitution of the war trophies accumulated for centuries and particularly after World War II is hardly possible without new losses and offense. But, this burning issue has recently been the subject of wide speculation so often that it is not worth discussing it here in detail.

It is far less that another specificity of the issue of displaced valuables is recalled and, no matter from which side it is approached, it remains contingent: it is finite. It is finite and the number of the valuables is calculable, so that, compared to the entire cultural wealth of humankind, it is not so large. Even it it includes unsatisfied claims of the previous centuries, the share of indisputable valuables will greatly exceed the number of controversial ones. And, if the number of disputable items is finite and limited, the solution of the connected problems is possible. Of course, it will take time to work out such a solution. Obviously, it will be framed not by a simple and unambiguous formula, but rather by a more or less (it is desirable, certainly, not excessively) complex system of rules. After all, it will come to the point when legal and political aspects will stop being the problem of interest to humankind as a whole. Private disputes will remain and will be settled in legal form, and probably there will be new findings to which--in one way or another--the existing system of rules will be applied, while the political objectives, which are currently being tackled in connection with the issues of the displaced valuables, will cease to exist. What happened will not change, but the topicality will stay in the past, and this certainly is wonderful.

However, before all this happens, there is reason to study the issue from another angle: What role do the displaced collections, as they are at present, play or will they play in culture? This time we shall talk about book collections: First, because it is natural for a librarian, and secondly, because in some sense they are more indicative than artworks. In the case of artworks, there are very valuable objects that are few in number, and in all or most cases there is a possibility to come to an agreement on a certain form of compensation (ideally--on a return). Books, however, are very rarely as valuable as masterpieces of fine art, so that only large collections are valuable, while the value of every separate volume is relatively low. The collections as a rule split, thereby losing their value, and since simple and barbarous decisions like "leave everything" or "immediately return all," as it is already obvious to everyone, are not possible. All negotiations become much more complicated.

Thus, the major value of displaced books is in the fact that they previously were and virtually remain the constituent parts of collections. Since, with reference to World War II, the matter mainly concerns libraries of the German-speaking countries, this context is even more obvious and significant. From the point of view of libraries, Germany is a very peculiar country. First of all, it is the homeland of book printing. For many decades it was "supplying" the whole of Europe with its masterpieces of book printing, and consequently it was the main center of book trade and collecting of books of the early period. In a majority of other countries (except Italy) more or less valuable book collections of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries are almost exclusively the result of purposeful effort, while in Germany they formed naturally. Besides, Germany was the country with the largest number of universities in Europe, and that is why this is where the large collections of books of more or less public character started to develop pretty early, in contrast to those of monastic or aristocratic libraries. The multiplicity of cultural centers along with the disastrous consequences of the Thirty Years' War resulted in decentralization of the German library system. As it is well known, there is no all-Germany national library, per se, and previously the Bavarian Royal Library to some extent compared to the world's largest book depositories. Other German libraries are much smaller, but then they supplement each other, each having a special feature. Not without reason the national bibliographic center of sixteenth-century books is located in Gotha, and the center of seventeenth-century books is in Wolfenbuettel; both are former capitals of small states. Lastly, in the eighteenth century the central geographic situation of Germany in Europe and the cultural hegemony of France resulted in a curious situation. The German libraries accumulated collections of both national and foreign--especially French--books, while German books were poorly disseminated in other countries. For example, what we know about the libraries of Polish magnates is that, even in the Austrian territory of Galicia, they contained a majority of French books. In the countries to the West of the Rhine, there were more readers--and consequently collectors--of German books. The increasing number of French bibliophiles were interested in books mainly due to their elegance, and German books were not remarkable in this sense. Germany again very naturally turned out to be the central depository for the all-European book culture but, to stress it once again, it was a dispersed depository. The wealth of the collected matter in various languages could only compete with the ones of the countries beginning to join the European culture--America and Russia before the catastrophe of 1917.