Once both sides have come to an agreement in Russian-German relations, the formalities can be completed surprisingly quickly.
That was the case now in the case of the return of 91 valuable books from the holdings of the University Library in Voronezh, which a Wehrmacht officer had captured there during World War II, by his son, the 86-year-old Hans-Erich Frey from Neu-Isenburg in Hesse.
In a moving ceremony in Berlin's Russian House of Culture and Science, Frey handed the books, some of which still bear traces of fire, to the library representative, the German Klaus-Dieter Heinze, who studied in Voronezh and heads the Association of Graduates of the University .
Kerstin Holm
Editor in the features section.
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The action of a “citizen diplomacy” deliberately bypassed high politics, where the fronts have hardened in questions of the return of cultural goods relocated due to the war, because Germany insists on the return of all confiscated cultural goods, while Russia regards its “self-compensation” for losses suffered as legitimate. The Russian ambassador appeared only as authorized informant. In this way, however, the very real danger that Moscow might keep rarities from the bundle and appropriate them to the library of the Academy of Sciences was avoided, as the rector of the University of Voronezh, Dmitri Jendowitzki, emphasizes. The books will now be shipped via Moscow to their place of origin, where they will be viewed,possibly restored and presented in October as part of the Russian-European project “Green Campus” and incorporated into the collection.
The Eastern European historian Wolfgang Eichwede, who has already organized numerous returns of books, pictures and icons stolen privately by Germans to Russia and stored the books for months in his apartment, spoke of a “great, great moment”. The collection includes 58 Russian, 30 French and two Russian-French works; In addition, an English edition by Byron is part of the lot. This includes early complete editions by Nikolai Karamsin and Alexander Pushkin. The oldest piece is the somewhat battered first grammar of the secular Russian language, a unique specimen that possibly dates from the 17th century. The most beautiful book is an early catalog of the art collections of the St. Petersburg Hermitage, published in 1805 under Tsar Alexander I.In French, the book documents the prevailing idiom of the nobility, only after the war against Napoleon did Russian become socially acceptable. The paintings by Leonardo, Veronese, Correggio, Rubens, Rembrandt are reproduced as academic black and white drawings. Like many other books, the book bears the ex-libris of a noble family from the Voronezh area, whose cultural treasures were nationalized after the October Revolution.
The engineer Erich Frey, whose son has now returned the books, spoke Russian as a native of the Baltic States and was stationed in German-occupied Voronezh in 1942 to restore the water and electricity supply there. The father had good contact with Russians and, for example, received metal deliveries from the Soviet Union after the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, says Hans-Erich Frey. The fact that German fighter pilots illegally penetrated Soviet airspace at that time was "very embarrassing" for him, Frey senior said. He sent the books from Voronezh to Neu-Isenburg by field post and later stated that he had recovered them from destroyed houses. Frey junior, born in 1935, admits that at some point he realized that this could not be true. When he speaks ofFrey tears several times that it was an illegal extraction, that Germany waged a war of annihilation against the Soviet Union, that he was ashamed of the crimes of his compatriots and bowed to their millions of victims. He describes his return as a modest gesture of reparation.
His father often leafed through the books, Frey reports, but when his mother moved into a smaller apartment after his death, they came to the back row of shelves. After she too died in 2002, Frey looked for a way of restitution. But the Foreign Office, to which the former mayor of Neu-Isenburg turned, did not want to take action without an overall solution to the looted art issue. Actors in a German town twinning with Voronezh also showed no interest. Finally, the search for a mediator led him to Eichwede, who had already organized the return of a book stolen from Voronezh University in 2006 during the Second World War.
Voronezh University is a research university, it is among the ten best in the country, trains numerous foreign students and takes part in the Erasmus program. Unfortunately, as at other universities, teachers' salaries are cut every year. Jendowitzki assures, however, that the books will be digitized as soon as possible and freely accessible to international research. Against the background of the geopolitical confrontation, the citizen diplomatic initiative, said the Rector, testifies to the will of Russia and Europe for peaceful cooperation.