Trófeává vált könyvek: A Szovjetunióba vitt német könyvtári gyűjtemények története (Szemle). (Hungarian)

Books as trophies. The fate of German library collections taken into the Soviet Union. A review article. (English)

In 1945 and 1946 Soviet military troups captured a big amount of valuable rare books from libraries in Germany. This action has become famous as the Operation Trophy, but its details were published in the nineties only. The review - which relies on journal and newspaper articles, as well as conference materials - summarises the events, unravels their preliminaries, presents the consequences, and describes the motives of those involved. It describes the statements made by Russian librarians regarding whether or not the books in question should be returned. In 2006 a symposium was held on the topic under the title "Libraries and cultural goods taken away during World War II". A joint manifesto was issued that emphasised: no agreement on essential issues had been reached between German librarians and Russia and Poland respectively. German librarians do no longer fight for a practical restitution of books, but for the cataloguing, making accessible and preserving the collections taken away. However, they have not given up the objective of getting back the books, but this question needs a more differentiated professional approach. Currently the discussions deal with two different approaches: one supporting the universal access to digitised texts, the other maintaining that the books in this dispute are parts of a city's, region's or a country's collective memory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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