Roads to Ratibor: library and archival plunder by the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg. Part II

Abstract

Scholarship has not adequately studied the history of Nazi cultural plunder during the Second World War, or the further international displacement and restitution efforts thereafter. The present study discusses one of the primary agencies of plunder, the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR). It focuses on the plunder of libraries and archives, tracing their migration, revealing new sources, and identifying collections that did not return home after the war. Emphasis falls on materials that ended the war in the little-known ERR research and library center in Ratibor (now Polish Racibórz), to which the Germans transported more than two million books. Sixty years after the end of the war we are still finding cultural treasures the Nazis plundered, many of which were displaced or plundered a second time at the end of the war. Displaced treasures continue to surface in countries from Finland to Argentina to Japan. Scholars have spoken of “Art as Politics”, the “Rape of Europa”, or the “Grand Pillage”. The “spoils of war” seized by the victorious Soviets on the Eastern Front included cultural property previously looted by the Nazis. Today we know more about the “Beautiful Loot” that ended up in the Soviet Union as “hidden treasures”.

Keywords

• wojna światowa 1939-1945
• rabunek archiwów i dóbr kultury
• Sztab Operacyjny Rosenberga (ERR)
• Alfred Rosenberg
• Ratibor