TO
P^ L
EFT:^ APPHOT
O;^ TOP
RIGHT
:^ ©^VO
LKER^ LAN
NERT/UNI-
BO
NN
;^ BOTTOM:^
CO
RB
IS^ VIA^ GETTY^ IMAG
ES14 WORLD WAR II
RARE BOOK EXPERTS AT SOTHEBY’S quickly detected some-
thing suspicious about an assortment of old volumes that had been
brought in for inspection. Their bindings and title pages were often
missing—a troubling sign, as that’s where library markings are typ-
ically found. They also noticed that the library stamps had been
removed, either scraped off or scoured by chemicals.
But there was still enough remaining evidence to connect the
priceless books to the library at Germany’s University of Bonn.
Sotheby’s detective work ultimately led to the return of 600 vol-
umes that had gone missing from the university’s library during
World War II’s chaotic aftermath—apparently looted by occupying
troops from Belgium.
Michael Herkenhoff, the library’s curator of manuscripts and old
books, told Britain’s Guardian newspaper that the return of the
books came as a “huge surprise.”
Among the recovered volumes are a 13th-century edition of com-
edies by the Roman play wright Terence; an elaborately illustrated
17th-century prayer book; and a copy of John J. Audubon’s The Birds
of America from the 1840s. (A nother copy of Audubon’s book report-OVERDUE LIBRARY
BOOKS RETURNED
edly sold for $10 million last year.) The univer-
sity celebrated the books’ return with an
official ceremony on April 11.
The war devastated the library’s collection:
180,000 volumes were lost, most of them
destroyed in an October 1944 Allied bombing
raid. Others were taken by occupying troops,
one of whom was the book-loving father of a
Belgian woman named Tania Grégoire. In
2017, she took 150 volumes to Sotheby’s,
hoping to sell them. Once their provenance
was traced, Grégoire led investigators to
another 450 volumes. For her help, she was
paid a finder’s fee.
“We need to clean many of the works, and
to repair and catalogue them anew,” Herken-
hoff said. “But this is a luxury challenge to
have because we really never thought we
would see these volumes again.”The Hawaii memorial that includes the wreck of the USS
Arizona is getting a new name: “Pearl Harbor National
Memorial.” A law signed in March undoes a 2008 decision
to lump Pearl Harbor together with a World War II battlefield
in Alaska and a Japanese-American internment camp site in
California under the unwieldy name “World War II Valor in
the Pacific National Monument.”DISPATCHES
University of Bonn curator Michael
Herkenhoff (far right) studies volumes
that had been looted at war’s end from
the school’s bomb-damaged library.