Hand-sewn unique pieces

The German Exile Archive has been donated the fractional estate of the designer Charlotte Bondy (1907-1986). Born Charlotte Schmidt in Munich, she emigrated to Great Britain via Switzerland in 1936 and married her jewish fiancé Paul Bondy, with whom she started a family in 1937. In London, the animal-loving designer tried to gain a professional foothold. She designed a variety of stuffed animals, but they never went into production. Charlotte Bondy rejected simplified mass production of her designs. Thus, many of the stuffed animals remained unique. An extensive collection of the hand-sewn animals was included in the collection of the German Exile Archive.

Soft toys designed by Charlotte Bondy Photo: Alexander Paul Englert

Recipes from Austria

The topic of cooking continues to occupy the German Exile Archive, also in its collection. A wonderful new acquisitions is the handwritten recipe book by Margarethe Kollmann.
She had learned in Vienna from the famous cook and cookbook author Alice Urbach, whose standard work "So kocht man in Wien!" was "Aryanized" in 1938 and reprinted with stolen authorship.
Margarethe Kollmann emigrated to Great Britain in 1938 and put her baking and cooking skills to work as a clerk for a wealthy family in Hayling Island. Her pastries saved her life, she later told her daughter Ilse Camis, who had reached Britain on a so-called Kindertransport. Ilse found shelter in a home for refugee girls. The paths of mother and daughter crossed here, for the director of the home was none other than the famous Alice Urbach, with whom Ilse's mother had studied in Vienna. Even though they lived in different places, mother and daughter tried to stay in touch.

The surviving cookbook begins in 1915. It contains many recipes from Austrian cuisine: Mehlschöberl, Zwetschgenknödel, Schwammerlsuppe, Kartoffelschmarn and Palatschinken. The recipe collection accompanied Margarethe Kollmann into exile in Great Britain. She included recipes and drink tips from the country of refuge - for example "Cod Fish" or "Hot days drinks" - in it and switched to the English language for them. Language mixtures can also be found in the book: "½ cup Milch, ½ cup Zucker, 1 teaspoon Salz, ½ cup warm Wasser." An impressive exile object, which found its way into the collection of the German Exile Archive through the mediation of the historian and author Karina Urbach, the granddaughter of Alice Urbach.

Recipe book by Margarethe Kollmann Photo: Alexander Paul Englert

Music and more: Electric Callboy

New acquisition at the German Music Archive: If you organize a game night, you usually think about what kind of music should be played. But what to do if you invite to a music evening but don't have a suitable game at hand? The solution is offered by the metalcore band Electric Callboy, who have put everything you need for a nice evening with nice people into the deluxe fan box of their current album "Tekkno": a quartet card game with the characters of their music videos, coasters and of course the new album. And as a special highlight: a sound bottle opener. For this, according to the interview, the band "just recorded some bullshit in the studio". Let the games begin.

Collection of pirated prints

After tough negotiations, the German Museum of Books and Writing was able to take over a collection of pirated prints comprising around 3,000 copies. The focus of the acquired holdings is on underground prints of the 20th century. However, it also includes prominent examples from earlier centuries.
What exactly is a pirated print? Unauthorized reprints have plagued the book world since the invention of printing. The aggrieved parties in the early days of printing were the publishers. With the discussion about copyright and the strengthening of authors' rights in the 19th century, the topic of pirate printing shifted. In the digital world, it takes on new relevance and explosiveness.
A cooperation with the DFG (German Research Foundation) Research Training Group "Literature and the Public Sphere" (GRK 2806) has been initiated to research the collection.

The DNB’s new collection of pirated prints includes around 3,000 items, and some recent titles may seem familiar Photo: Cornelia Ranft

Business views of Leipzig companies

Business papers usually have a short half-life. They often have a topical reference and are therefore not kept for too long. They belong to the ephemeral literature.
In 2022, the German Museum of Books and Writing was able to acquire a collection of very special business papers: The 446 printed letters and invoices from Leipzig companies date from 1860 to the middle of the 20th century. They not only provide information on details of social and economic history, such as the companies' individual lines of business or the number of their employees. At the same time, they show views of the company buildings and thus represent an important source of art and architectural history.

Geschäftsansichten Leipziger Unternehmen Photo: DNB

Provenance research: On the Trail of the Past

Provenance research (from the Latin verb “provenire“: to originate) focuses on the origins and history of cultural artefacts. Here special attention is paid to identifying items looted by the Nazis, i.e. objects that were confiscated from their owners during the National Socialist era due to racial, political or ideological persecution. The aim of this research is to find the heirs of the former owners in order to return the books to them. The German National Library is also coming closer to this goal with the help of cooperations. In 2022, the German National Library was able to close another restitution case. A first edition of Goethe's "West-oestlicher Divan" was returned to the rightful heirs.

In summer 2022, the German National Library joined the LCA cooperation. In the network, founded in 2016, ten libraries from Germany and Israel are currently working together in partnership on the research and return of books seized as a result of Nazi persecution. A joint database enables the provenance researchers of the cooperation to pool their knowledge and to conduct cross-institutional research on investigate cases of suspected looting.

Unlike a library catalog, the LCA database is not a pure object database. It works with three different types of data records: Copies, provenance notes, and entities, i.e., persons and corporate bodies. The link between these data records makes it possible to visualize relationships between books, features found in them - such as stamps or bookplates - and the previous owners from whom the features originated. Researchers from the cooperation can store research results on the respective entities in the non-public backend and view or add to them across institutions.

Making connections digitally visible

Book collections that once belonged together but are now scattered among several libraries can thus be digitally related to one another and duplicate research can be avoided. As far as it is possible according to data protection and privacy regulations, the research results are simultaneously made visible in the front end of the database, which is freely accessible via the Internet. This external transparency enables descendants of persecutees and interested members of the public to find out about the sites and to approach the LCA cooperation with additional information about the sites.

Goethe first edition: Who were the owners?

The synergies that can result from the cooperative research approach of "Looted Cultural Assets" were already experienced by the provenance research of the German National Library before it joined. It owes important information to the cooperation for a restitution case from the German Museum of Books and Writing, which was concluded in the summer of 2022.

In 1956, the German Museum of Books and Writing acquired a first edition of Goethe's "West-oestlicher Divan" at an auction of the West-Berlin antiquarian bookseller Gerd Rosen via the Deutsche Buchexport-GmbH. The copy contains a bookplate referring to the merchant couple Emil and Jenny Baerwald.

The story of Jenny and Emil Baerwald

The couple had married in New York in 1906 and lived in Berlin since 1925. Racially persecuted as Jews in Nazi Germany, the couple decided to return to the United States in 1938. While Jenny Baerwald had greater freedom to travel as an American citizen, Emil Baerwald had to apply for a visa at the American consulate in Berlin. For this reason, he was also unable to return after leaving the country in August 1938, so Jenny Baerwald traveled alone to Berlin in the fall of 1938 to settle final matters before the couple made the crossing to New York in March 1939.

Parts of their removal goods remained in the overseas port of Hamburg and were probably put up for auction in 1942. It is no longer possible to clarify how the Goethe first edition came into the antiquarian book trade. With the help of the LCA database, however, it was possible to determine that already in 2018 another book from the former Baerwald private library was identified in the holdings of the Zentral- und Landesbibliothek Berlin, which probably also circulated in the Berlin antiquarian book trade around 1943. Through its Berlin colleagues, the German National Library was able to establish contact with the heirs of Emil and Jenny and return the Goethe first edition to them in the summer of 2022. With the agreement of the heirs, the book is still available in the catalog in the form of a digital copy.