Since 2019, the Federal Archives has been conducting its own provenance research in the holdings of the library of the Foundation Archive of the Parties and Mass Organisations of the GDR in the Federal Archives (SAPMO) in Berlin-Lichterfelde, in accordance with the Washington Declaration of 3 December 1998, which Germany joined on 9 December 1999 when it signed the “Declaration of the Federal Government, the Länder, and the national associations of local authorities on the tracing and return of cultural property as a result of Nazi persecution, especially Jewish property.”
The foundation library comprises approximately 30 libraries from the Parties and Mass Organisations of the GDR that were incorporated into the foundation, as well as a large number of other libraries that have also been taken over. It contains approximately 1.7 million volumes.
Looted property found in the library holdings of the Institute of Marxism-Leninism at the Central Committee (ZK) of the SED (IML)
Random checks revealed that some of the libraries that were brought in or taken over contained books that had been unlawfully confiscated from their owners during the Nazi era. After the end of the war in 1945, these books became part of the holdings of these libraries through their takeover or were purchased from antiquarian booksellers.
The library of the Institute for Marxism-Leninism at the Central Committee (ZK) of the SED (IML) is particularly affected by this. The basis for this library was established in 1948/1949 by Bruno Kaiser, then department director at the Public Scientific Library Berlin (ÖWB), later the German State Library. Kaiser acquired the books from the ÖWB during the establishment of the library of the Research Institute for Scientific Socialism, the precursor to the Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute (MELI), later the IML. It consists of roughly 10,000 volumes of monographs, which were recorded on site in a separate accession journal from October 1948 to December 1949, as well as additional holdings of periodicals and unprocessed volumes that were incorporated in subsequent years.
In addition, volumes were regularly acquired from the “Central Office for Scientific Old Collections at the Gotha Library (1953-1959) and the Berlin State Library (since 1959)” (ZwA). A contract between the ZwA and the IML dated November 1965 stipulated that the IML library could acquire volumes from the SPD library, the Institute for State Research, and the Amsterdam Institute for Social History. The library of the Nazi Institute for State Research purchased books that emigrants or deportees had been forced to leave behind. In 1966, approximately 90,000 volumes were taken over and gradually incorporated into the IML library collection.
During inventory checks, duplicates were regularly identified in the IML library. These were either assigned to the “valuable titles fund” so that they could be sold to antiquarian bookshops or to the “duplicate fund” to be used in book exchanges. The “valuable titles fund” currently comprises roughly 9,000 volumes, most of which were published before 1945. In total, the IML library contains approximately 200,000 volumes published before 1945, which are gradually being checked to determine whether they were confiscated as part of Nazi persecution.
Since 1993, publications on the German and international labour and trade union movements have also been incorporated into the SAPMO library in accordance with the foundation decree. These include volumes from the unprocessed holdings of the incorporated libraries, including the IML library. The approximately 30,000 volumes of monographs and periodicals from 1993 to 2019 that were published before 1945 may also contain volumes of Nazi-looted property.
Systematic research and restitution of Nazi-looted property
The systematic research initially covered the reading room holdings of the SAPMO library and the library holdings in the reference room of the Federal Archives in Berlin-Lichterfelde, as well as the duplicate holdings of the IML library that were taken over and continued by the SAPMO library. Among others, there were found volumes from the library of the Institute for Social Research (IfS), which was confiscated in 1933.
In 1948, the first year of access to the IML library, a considerable number of volumes from the IfS library were identified, as well as individual volumes from confiscated private libraries. During checking the IML’s unprocessed library holdings, which comprise approximately 25,000 volumes, copies from Nazi-looted property, including from the IfS library, are also regularly identified.
When volumes of Nazi-looted property are discovered, the legal heirs are identified and, where appropriate, restitution or other mutually agreeable solutions are prepared. In 2022 and 2023, 1,000 volumes each year were returned to the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt am Main, in 2025 1.200 volumes and the archive holdings RY 22 (Archive of the Institute for Social Research at the University of Frankfurt/Main) with 572 file units. Further restitutions are currently being prepared.