SLUB Dresden | Interim Library Bergstraße/Open Science Lab (Zellescher Weg 21-25, 01217 Dresden) | 21 September 2023 to 20 September 2024

Opening hours: Monday to Friday 9am - 6pm

Are you a regular visitor to the SLUB Dresden? Do you borrow books or perhaps even read them on site? Have you ever noticed that many books contain stamps, handwritten names, signatures, notes or similar?

Such marks are called provenance marks. They provide information about the current or former owners of these books. These can be people, but also institutions such as a library. Behind these marks are fates that are linked to private or professional success, but also to persecution and suffering.

From November 2021 to August 2022, a team of six people examined 12,000 books in the Bergstrasse Library, the former law branch library. The aim was to document the provenance features they contained in order to determine the previous owners. The aim was to identify those books that are or could be looted property from the National Socialist era (NS looted property).

Nazi-looted property refers to objects that were confiscated from their owners during the Nazi era as a result of persecution. This looting affected groups of people and institutions that were considered enemies of National Socialist ideology due to their cultural background or their political and ideological beliefs. They were disenfranchised, driven into emigration or murdered.

The exhibition "Fateful Pages. Books by persecuted lawyers in the SLUB Dresden" presents the initial results of this academic research. It introduces people and institutions persecuted under National Socialism whose books were included in the holdings of the former Branch Library of Law. It presents biographical and autobiographical documents that trace their lives and fates of persecution. It also takes a look at cultural, political and social contexts and reveals gaps in the search for Nazi-looted property in the holdings of the Bergstrasse Branch Library.