| Popis: |
The discovery of looted books at the end of the war, especially those from Jewish libraries, tested the American military government. Gathering, conserving, and identifying them posed intractable challenges, even as American authorities faced domestic and international pressures over the Jewish books in particular. The Monuments Fine Arts and Archives (MFAA) unit of the US Army, known as the Monuments Men, requisitioned Frankfurt’s Rothschild Library and later moved to a warehouse known as the Offenbach Archival Depot to establish operations for book restitution. This required innovative methods of librarianship designed to quickly manage and redistribute disarrayed and damaged volumes. The American government finally authorized Jewish Cultural Reconstruction, Inc. to handle the unidentifiable and heirless books, many of which came to the United States. For the Americans, these endangered books generated new understandings of the meaning of book collections, ownership, restitution, and cultural heritage. |
