„Auch die Sammelgebiete der Nationalbibliotheken in den Volksdemokratien werden beachtet.“

Die Zentralstelle für wissenschaftliche Altbestände und Buchabgaben ins Ausland

Abstract

The research project Nazi-Looted Books after 1945: The role of the Zentralstelle für wissenschaftliche Altbestände (ZwA) is based on previous projects of the Berlin State Library – Prussian Heritage (SBB PK) on detection of Nazi-looted books in the SBB PK and on the Reichstauschstelle and Prussian State Library (Preußische Staatsbibliothek; PSB). It is funded by the Deutsches Zentrum Kulturgutverluste (German Cultural Heritage Center; DZK) and managed by the Department of Early Printed Books of the SBB PK. The project is aimed to research the ways individual books and book collections took in the decades after WWII. For this purpose, the history of the ZwA, established in 1953 by the State Secretary for Higher Education at the Library in Gotha will be reconstructed. From 1959 until its final dissolution in December 1995, the ZwA was located at the Deutsche Staatsbibliothek (German State Library; DSB) and the SBB PK. The task of the ZwA was to “secure, record and distribute unused scientific literature”. Primarily this was done among libraries subordinated to the State Secretary, than Ministry for Higher and Technical Education of the GDR. Among the estimated eight million books the ZwA distributed between 1953 and 1995 were also books from East and East Central European countries. In exceptional cases, the ZwA did not provide these books to libraries in the GDR, but to National Libraries in the People's Democracies. The essay outlines, based on books published in Prague, what kind of publications these were and regulations by which the books were distributed. Additionally, the question of the relationship between these books and Nazi-looted books from Eastern and East Central Europe is touched.