
Since we as trainees get the chance to visit many libraries, and spend a lot of time in them day-to-day, I thought I would introduce to you a different kind of library today: The Library of Lost Books. Like the name suggests, it’s not so much a physical space (anymore) but rather a virtual collection of book titles and their locations around the world that once used to be housed together in the Library of the Higher Institute for Jewish Studies in Berlin.
Founded in 1872 the Institute was one of the leading liberal rabbinic seminaries in its time, and shaped liberal Judaism in Germany and, through its students, around the world. Rabbis like Dr. Rabbi Leo Baeck and the first female rabbi Regina Jonas studied here. But the Institute also functioned as a social space and as a place of study for those more interested in Jewish Studies without rabbinical ordination. As a flourishing centre of Jewish life and study, the library, led by Jenny Wilde, became one of the world’s most important Jewish libraries, collecting approximately 60,000 titles on Jewish history and culture in at least six different languages. After 1933, the rise of the NSDAP and their repressive measures against Jewish individuals meant that the Institute, seemingly paradoxically, initially flourished as a centre of Jewish life and knowledge. Donations of private collections from those fleeing and the closure of two prominent rabbinical seminaries meant that the library holdings and student body started growing rapidly. It also expanded to secular education and holdings when Jewish enrolments at university and school were capped at 5% in 1933, and finally altogether banned from teaching or studying at German universities in 1938. This is not to say that this continued indefinitely – many fled, were imprisoned or deported, especially after the beginning of the Second World War. By 1942 the classes that the Institute was able to offer were only a fraction of what they once had been.

Because the Institute’s staff, including their librarian, knew that they held valuable, rare books and that Nazis sought to utilise Jewish books to justify their repressive, antisemitic policies or destroy them altogether, they successfully rescued several smaller collections and books by smuggling them out of the country in private collections of people with non-German passports. However, many books remained in the library until its forced closure in 1942. The library’s collection was then transferred to the Reich Security Main Office, where a “Jewish Library” had been set up in 1939 that held all seized items from Jewish libraries all over Germany. It is estimated that the total of the books held there was 2-3 million. Due to the threat of bombing, many of the books were packed into storage in 1943 and distributed to depots all over German-occupied territory; especially, Germany, Poland, and the Czech Republic. Jewish prisoners, including Jenny Wilde, were forced to catalogue, sort and process these collections to make them more usable for the Nazis – a form of intellectual forced labour that some of them nonetheless drew comfort from. Aside from the main Jewish Library in Berlin, there were also book collections set up in various other places, including the Jewish Museum in Prague. Many of these books survived the war inside these depots.
After the end of the Second World War, many surviving former students, employees and teachers of the Institute laid claim to the rescued collections. However, there was no one clear successor to the Institute, and the Allies, who managed the return of all seized books to their owners, decided to instead hand the books over to an organisation called the Jewish Cultural Reconstruction founded solely for this purpose. They distributed the remaining books, for which no previous owner or successor could be found, across Jewish cultural and educational institutions all over the world.
Other depots were raided by special Red Army troops called the Trophy Brigades as they approached Berlin, who sent their loot back to Moscow. It’s unclear how much and if any of these were previously housed at the Institute, nor how likely it is that they will be returned. Yet other books ended up as shelf-fillers in various Berlin Libraries as they were found in destroyed houses or abandoned depots.
As is evident, the books that once belonged to the Institute’s Library could now be scattered far and wide, especially in the UK, Central Europe, Israel and the United States. This is why this library is now called the Library of Lost Books – there is no clear way of tracing the entire collection as it was split up, sold, identifiers covered up, inherited, smuggled and abandoned. Over the years some books have turned up and identified as those previously belonging to the Institute’s collections. This happened especially when they were sold at auction or newly catalogued or consulted.
The initiative ‘Have you seen this book?’ also known as the Library of Lost Books, is run by the Leo Baeck Institute and intends to both publicise the history of these books in a beautifully created interactive exhibition and to appeal to the general public for their support in locating them. One of the main ways that this can happen is by local investigation – grab a book search checklist off the initiative’s website here, order some books into the reading room of your local library, and see if you can find some telling provenance marks such as a bookplate, a stamp, or a so-called paper book tail. Alternatively, you can have a browse through the database of reported books and see if you can put your transcription skills to use!
While a virtual record of all the Institute’s former books is one of the primary aims of the initiative, a physical reunion of the books is not. This has multiple reasons; firstly, the Institute never had a direct successor. While there are progressive rabbinical seminaries in Germany, none of them are, or claim to be, directly related to the Institute. Secondly, many books now found in libraries may have been acquired perfectly legally under the assumption that the book was a genuine, sellable commercial good rather than a looted item. And, most notably, the initiative is more interested in how the books ended up where and which ones survived. Completing the library once again is an impossible task – there is no complete catalogue nor the ability to search private collections or find out what was destroyed. A digital reunion however, coupled with the active efforts of highlighting and fighting against Nazi crime, lets the legacy of the Institute as a place for joyous, transformative Jewish learning live on.
In memory of those who perished in the Holocaust, chasidei ummot ha’olam, and all those seeking to preserve their memory and legacy. Zichronam livracha, may their memory be a blessing.