Opening of the exhibition in the Clementinum

Published on 4 April 2016

On Thursday 31 March 2016 the final seminar of the project took place and was followed by the opening of an exhibition in the Clementinum. The exhibition summarizes the historical research carried out within the project by Marcela Strouhalová. The research attempted to answer three questions. What happened to the hundreds of thousands of confiscated books brought to the Sudetenland during World War II? What happened to the books confiscated shortly after the war? And who were the original owners? As this was the first probe into this section of the reserve fonds of the National Library of the Czech Republic, the research has elicited more questions than it has managed to find answers.

The exhibition is divided into 12 panels, which were created in cooperation with the exhibition department of the National Library. After the first introductory panel comes the topic of the cultural crimes of Nazi Germany, which describes how the Germans plundered cultural property, including the wealth of books. Thanks to their protection from air raids, the confiscated books found their way from Berlin to the Sudetenland and Silesia. The panel that follows is dedicated to the history of the National and University Library during the war era, when a large evacuation of books from the Clementinum to several castles took place. The next panel describes the punishment for crimes and book confiscation after the end of the war in 1945, based on presidential decree. The fifth topic is the fate of the National Library after 1945. The sixth is the National Library’s reserve fonds and their content - this panel is based on the 12,000 volumes that have been processed and catalogued during the project. Panels seven to eleven are dedicated to selected book owners – Jiří Arvéd Smíchovský, August Sauer, Engelbert Pernerstorfer, Gregor Schwartz-Bostunitschi and the Readership and Lecture Club of German Students in Prague (Lese- und Redehalle der deutschen Studenten in Prag). The final panel is dedicated to introducing the project Books discovered once again. All the panels are richly illustrated with copies of documents, period photographs and other visual material. There are also books with stamps and ex libris placed in show cases.

At the opening, the exhibition was introduced by Irena Maňáková (from the PR and Marketing Department of the National Library), Tomáš Foltýn (the principle project implementer), Petr Kroupa (the director general of the National Library), and the author of the exhibition concept, Marcela Strouhalová. Afterwards, the guests viewed the exhibition. This was followed by refreshments and an informal ending to the evening event. The exhibition will be on display in the main corridor of the Clementinum from 21 May 2016.

Photographs: Nina Seyčková and Eva Hodíková