Academic literature on the topic '1939-1945 Libraries'

In 1940, on the initiative of the authorities of the General Government, the scientific libraries in the Warsaw. Krakow, Lublin and Lviv into a network of state libraries. This network was managed by the Central Library Board in Krakow under the direction of Gustav Abba and the supervision of the authorities in Berlin. To General Government, Berlin delegated a dozen German librarians who took up successive managerial positions in these libraries. The German library managers, although loyal functionaries of the Third Reich, undoubtedly protected the library collections totaling some 6 million volumes from dispersal, as well as preserving some 300 jobs for Polish librarians.

Angus McGill Mowat was an inspirational voice for public library work during the Great Depression. In 1937, after he became Inspector of Public Libraries in the Ontario Department of Education, he helped revive spirits and raise service ambitions in smaller rural libraries. Building on the “modern library” concept popularized after the First World War, he re-energized trustees, librarians, and library workers with hundreds of visits to promote local efforts before 1939. His inspections encompassed the advisement of trustees on management and financial processes; the promotion of librarianship and staff training; the improvement of collections and services for adults and children; the reorganization of functional building space; the formation of county systems; and support for new public school curriculum reading reforms. Although warfare interrupted his work, Mowat’s wide-ranging inspection method brought renewed optimism and laid the groundwork for genuine progress in the provincial public library system after 1945.

Danish archaeology in the shadow of the swastika, 1933-1945 With Hitler’s takeover in 1933 and the emergence of the National Socialist regime, Prehistoric archaeology in Germany was strengthened, both on the economical and the scholarly level. Prehistoric archaeologists entered into a Faustian bargain with the new government, and arguing the presence of Germanic peoples outside the borders of the Third Reich, they legitimated the Nazi “Drang nach Osten”. With the Fuhrer’s lack of interest in German prehistory, the fight for control of this field became a matter between two organisations, the Ahnenerbe, which was attached to Heinrich Himmler’s SS, and the competing Reichsbund für Deutsche Vorgeschichte under NSDAP’s chief ideologist, Alfred Rosenberg’s “Amt Rosenberg” (Figs. 1-2). When the Second World War broke out in 1939, Ahnenerbe appeared as winner of the fight over the German prehistory. However, the archaeological power struggles continued in the conquered territories until the end of the war.Immediately after the Nazi takeover in 1933, leading staff members of the Danish National Museum in Copenhagen, such as Mouritz Mackeprang, Poul Nørlund, and Johannes Brøndsted (Figs. 3-4) dissociated themselves from the political development south of the border. However, in the course of time, and in conformity with the official Danish accommodation policy towards Germany in the 1930s, the opposition changed their attitude into a more neutral policy of cultural adjustment towards Nazified German colleagues.The Danish government’s surrender on the 9th of April 1940 meant a continuing German recognition of Denmark as a sovereign state. From the German side, the communication with the Danish government was handled by the German ministry of foreign affairs in Berlin, and by the German legation in Copenhagen. Denmark was the sole occupied country under the domain of the ministry of foreign affairs, and from the beginning of the occupation it became a regular element in the policy of the ministry to prevent other political organs within the Nazi polycracy to gain influence in Denmark. Not until the appointment of SS-Gruppenfuhrer Werner Best (Fig. 5) as the German Reich Plenipotentiary in Denmark in November 1942, the SS and the Ahnenerbe got an opportunity to secure their influence in Denmark. However, due to the chilly attitude in the Danish population towards the German culture propaganda, practiced mainly through the German Scientific Institute in Copenhagen, and the gradual worsening of the political conditions following the resignation of the Danish government on the 29th of August 1943, the Ahnenerbe, led by Wolfram Sievers (Fig. 6), was never firmly established in Denmark. The one result of Ahnenerbe’s influence in Denmark worth mentioning was the effort by the Kiel Archaeologist Karl Kersten (Fig. 7) to prevent German destruction of prehistoric Danish (Germanic) relics. Kersten began his work in 1940 and was met from the start with aversion from the National Museum in Copenhagen, which regarded the activities of the Ahnenerbe-archaeologist as German interference with Danish conditions. Yet, in time the work of the Kiel archaeologist was accepted and recognised by the muse- um, and he was officially recognized by the Danish state when in 1957, Kersten was made Knight of Dannebrog.Less successful than the Ahnenerbe rival was the prominent Nazi archaeologist Hans Reinerth (Fig. 8) and the efforts by Reichsbund für Deutsche Vorgeschichte to gain influence on the Danish scene of culture politics. One of Reinerth’s few successes in occupied Denmark was a short contact with two Danish archaeologists, Gudmund Hatt and Mogens B. Mackeprang (Figs. 9-10). However, the connections with the RfDV-leader do not seem to have been maintained, once the Danish government had ceased to function from the 29th of August 1943.During the occupation, around 300 listed burial mounds and an unknown number of prehistoric relics below ground level were destroyed or damaged due to construction projects carried out by the German occupants (Figs. 11-12). The complaints about the damage put forward by the National Museum were generally met by understanding in the German administration and in the Bauleitung (construction department), whereas the Wehrmacht had a more indifferent approach to the complaints. As opposed to this, the Danish museums managed to get through the war with no damage or German confiscations worth mentioning, thus avoiding the fate of museums, collections, and libraries in countries such as France, Poland, and the Soviet Union.Lars Schreiber PedersenÅrhusTranslated by Annette Lerche Trolle

Abstract The article covers the history of the former Land and University Library in Prague (now the National Library) between 1939 and 1945. The activities of the library were to be supervised by a German commissioner appointed in 1940 – Josef Becker, First Director of the Prussian State Library. As his duties kept him primarily in Berlin, he appointed the younger Berlin bibliologist Carl Wehmer as his permanent deputy in Prague. Although their main task was clearly the Germanisation of the library, one cannot deny that they deserve some credit, for example for increasing the staff level of the institution. Yet their main merit lies in that many of the library collections seized by the Gestapo and other bodies were not shredded but taken to the Clementinum, the seat of the library. From 1943, they organised the evacuation of book collections to places outside of Prague, which was threatened by air raids. The transport was supervised by Emma Urbánková, the head of the department of manuscripts. Approximately 12,000 volumes of medieval manuscripts and printed Bohemica of the 16th–19th centuries were evacuated to Karlštejn Castle in wooden crates. They included the library’s most valuable manuscript – the Codex Vyssegradensis, a coronation evangeliary from the 11th century. At the castle, they were deposited in the Burgrave’s House as well as directly in the famous Chapel of the Holy Cross. The massive Zlatá Koruna (Golden Crown) monastery and the châteaux in Pohled and Horažďovice also served as depositaries for the book collections. By the beginning of 1945, a total of 582,000 volumes had been sent to these three premises. They included many historical book collections. The paper is accompanied by recently discovered photographs documenting the course of the book evacuation.

The author approached the problem of national identity – the most popular topic among Ukrainian scholars still – in the terms of relativism. Despite the ancestry, a person might choose other identity in Ukraine. The article focuses on biography of Henryk Wereszycki (1898–1990), a Polish historian. His natural father Mykola Hankevyč was a leader of the Ukrainian Social-Democratic Party, mother was Rosa Altenberg, a daughter of a Jewish book trader. Contrary to his parents, Henryk became neither Ukrainian, nor Jewish but a prominent Polish historian. After graduating from the Faculty of History of Lviv University, H. Vereshytskyi taught history at Lviv gymnasiums. In 1930 was published his first book «Austria and the 1863 Uprising». For the last four pre-war summers he worked as a librarian at the Pilsudski Institute in Warsaw. In September 1939, H. Vereshytskyi participated in the fighting for Warsaw, was captured and spent five years in fascist concentration camps. His mother, brother and sister were died in captivity. In the postwar period G. Vereshytsky continued his career as a historian.From 1945 to 1947 he worked in the Institute of National Memory, 1947–1956 – docent of Wroclaw University, 1956–1969 – Professor, later is a Doctor of Jagiellonian University. The entire edition of his first book «The Political History of Poland. 1864–1918» (1948) was destroyed by censorship. This book (first reprinted in Poland in 1990), as well as his «History of Austria» and «Under the Habsburgs» were included in the gold fund of Polish historiography. Keywords socialism in Galicia, Polish historiography, Rozalia Altenberg, Mykola Hankevych, Henryk Vereshytskyi.

Texte remanié de: Doctoral dissertation--Madison (Wis.)--University of Wisconsin, 2002. Titre de soutenance : Up the hill of opportunity: American public libraries and ALA during World War II.
Bibliogr. p. 267-281. Notes bibliogr. p. 219-266.

Vom 7. bis 9. Dezember 2009 fand in Weimar die Tagung „Wissenschaftliche Bibliothekare in der Zeit des Nationalsozialismus. Handlungsspielräume, Kontinuitäten, Deutungsmuster“ statt, die der Wolfenbütteler Arbeitskreis für Buchgeschichte initiierte. Die Konferenz zielte auf die Denk- und Handlungsmuster der leitenden Bibliothekare, vom Mitläufer bis zum Opponenten, ab und stellte die Frage, wie der Berufsstand sich anpasste und nach 1945 entwickelte. Dabei wurden auch die Unterschiede in der Entwicklung in Ost- und Westdeutschland nach dem Krieg thematisiert.