Restitution made easy

Monday, December 15, 2014

On the heels of our visit to Nuremberg for AIBM conference in September comes this story by our colleague Guido Kraus about the history of some of the rare items at the Nuremberg Public Library.

Two valuable items found their way back to Germany after having been in the United States: a manuscript of graduals, dating from 1599, from the St. Sebaldus Church in Nuremberg; and two printed texts by Johann Cochlaeus that were bound together for Willibald Pirckheimer in a cover containing elements designed by Albrecht Dürer. Both items are part of the Bibliotheca Norica Williana collection. The Pirckheimer book contains the Quadrivium grammatices (a Latin grammar) and the singing method Tetrachordum musices. Both are Nuremberg first editions from 1511. The singing method is indexed in RISM B/VI¹ (Ecrits imprimés concernant la musique, p. 227) and is held by several libraries.

In a publication for the historical society Verein für Geschichte der Stadt Nürnberg, our colleague Dr. Christine Sauer from the Nuremberg Public Library (RISM siglum: D-Nst) describes the restitution of the items. They have been back in the possession of the library since 2001. Dr. Sauer is the head of the Historisch-Wissenschaftlichen Abteilung where she is in charge of manuscripts and rare materials.

During the Second World War, the Bibliotheca Williana was put into storage. American armed forces were stationed in the city after the war and it is thought that the two books in question were taken to the United States by an American soldier. In November 1996 they were put up for auction by Swann Galleries in New York without knowing they had been stolen. Antiquarians bought the books, which were then sold to the Pierpont Morgan Library (RISM siglum: US-NYpm) the following year.

Soon after this, the musicologist Volker Schier, who was already familiar with parts of Nuremberg’s Bibliotheca Williana, was conducting research at the Morgan Library. While he was examining the graduals, he noticed their origins and after some investigating, he realized the manuscript originally belonged to the Nuremberg Public Library. William Voelkle, head of the manuscripts division at the Morgan, recalled that a bookplate in the Pirckheimer book also referred to a Nuremberg provenance. After both the libraries had been notified, the restitution process could begin. If you’re curious about how this all started and what took place, you can read about it in Dr. Sauer’s report. Her outstanding, professional descriptions of the books are especially worth reading. This case was also reported in the New York Times (April 2001).

Photo credit: Manuscript, 1599. Courtesy of Nuremberg Public Library.

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