Event

Workshop in the History of Material Texts

Kathy Peiss, University of Pennsylvania
"Book Purges and Restitution in the U.S. Occupation of Postwar Germany"

DATE: Monday, February 1, 2016
TIME: 5:15pm
LOCATION: Class of 1978 Pavilion, Kislak Center, 6th Floor of Van Pelt-Dietrich Library

"In the immediate aftermath of World War II, the American military government in Germany faced two challenges concerning millions of books: 

the denazification of libraries, publishers, and bookstores, on the one hand, and the restitution of looted Jewish books, on the other. The work of restitution, centered in the Offenbach Archival Depot and the work of the “Monuments Men,” was then and subsequently hailed as exemplary of American war and postwar aims. At this very time, in contrast, operations to collect and destroy all publications with Nazi or militaristic content received little notice, until a sweeping Allied order brought a firestorm of condemnation from the press and the library profession. Quickly, however, these book purges largely disappeared from sight and American memory. Many items from both missions ended up in American research and university libraries, including Penn’s, one of the few to question these acquisitions. In this seminar, I will place these two histories together, to consider what they tell us about American policies and practices toward book culture in the WWII era. I will discuss how, under extremely difficult circumstances, books were identified, classified, sorted, and evaluated, and decisions about their fate made. My research is mainly archival, but there are several ways that the material aspects of books, such as book stamps and bookplates, offer a unique perspective on this history."