Anna Holzer-Kawalko

Salvaged from Nazi looters after Germany’s defeat, the Library of Professor Hermann Cohen, an eminent philosopher, is now kept in the Roth house annex of the Jewish National and University Library. Photo: Werner Braun, 1 June 1952. Courtesy of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Hermann Cohen in Jerusalem

In June 1952, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem commissioned Werner Braun to photograph the library of Hermann Cohen (1842–1918), one of the most influential German-Jewish philosophers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Cohen’s library had been transferred to Israel from Germany in 1949 and placed in the house of Leon Roth.

Ratibor, Germany, books confiscated by the ERR unit (1939–1945). © FA 1 73/74, Yad Vashem.

Anna Holzer-Kawalko

Robbery and Restitution

Somewhere between 1943 and 1944, Nazi ideologue Alfred Rosenberg must have asked his subordinates to take a picture of the new depot for plundered cultural property in Ratibor. The photograph became both a testimony to Nazi crimes and a part of the commemoration of postwar cultural reconstruction.

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Beiträge von:Anna Holzer-Kawalko

Hermann Cohen in Jerusalem

Robbery and Restitution