From Dumas fils to Rothschild:
the story of a unique copy
A special copy of Alexandre Dumas fils‘ theatrical works signed and dedicated to Madame Rothschild is plundered by the Nazis then taken to the Soviet Union by Red Army trophy brigades.
The looting of books and archives by the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg was even more extensive than its looting of art in the many German-occupied countries. Among the libraries seized in France was that of Baron Edmond de Rothschild (1845-1934), member of the famous Jewish banker and philanthrophic family and early supporter of the Zionism. As early as the 1870’s, the Baron started to support the Zionist cause, partially influenced by La Femme de Claude, a play by Alexandre Dumas fils, that advocated the return of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel. He began in the 1880’s to support Rishon le-Zion and other settlements and became known as “Ha-Nadiv ha-Yadu’a” (“the Well-Known Benefactor”).
Dumas fils was aware on his influence on Baron with whom he maintained a personal connection. He wrote to him the following in 1873: “It has often been said to me since, that I was mistaken about the ambitions of the Israelites, that they no longer thought of these reprisals, that their ideal was to live in peace with the different nations, which gave them this right and that they gave up finishing their days in a home of their own. Too bad for them, if it’s true. It is good to have an ideal, even when it is unachievable. This is my dear friend, as briefly as possible, my ideas about your fellow believers. They have always inspired me with the sentiments that their courage, their perseverance, their misfortunes, their efforts of all kinds should inspire spirits of good faith and selfless consciences.“
Dumas fils even had specially printed, dedicated and signed the first copy of the first edition of his complete theatrical works to Madame la Baronne Edmond de Rothschild. (Dumas, Alexandre fils, Complete Theater. Paris: Calmann-Levy, 1882-1893. Volumes 1-7.) For a long time, the unique copy seemed to have been lost in World War II.
The plunder
Two spoliation lists by the ERR include the library of Edmond de Rothschild seized as a legacy from Garde-meuble Chenue at 5, rue de la Terrasse in the 17th Arrondissement of Paris on November 15-16, 1940. As presented by Patricia Kennedy Grimsted in the originals and in her “List of Individual Library Seizures by the ERR in France,” Edmond de Rothschild was characterized by the ERR as “youngest son of the founder James and lived from 1845 to 1935, he mainly financed Zionism.” The ERR description of what was taken was 117 crates of books and catalogues. (See also here and here)
After the war, starting in 1947, the French government issued a multi-volume series, Répertoire des biens spoliés en France durant la guerre 1939–1945, with the added English title List of Property Removed from France during the War 1939–1945 based on postwar claims submitted to the government Office des biens et intérêts privés (OBIP – Office of Private Property and Interests). The seventh volume, devoted to Archives, manuscripts and rare books, listed for Baron Edmond de Rothschild a library of 110 to 120 crates of manuscripts, design albums, incunabula, old and modern books of great value, autographs and manuscripts of modern and contemporary authors – but without further details.
In her study of French libraries during the war based primarily on claims files, Martine Poulain in Livres pillés, lectures surveillées, les bibliothèques françaises sous l’Occupation noted the return of only 12 incunabula belonging to Edmond de Rothschild. This information also appears in the database available on the website of the Mémorial de la Shoah.
Trophy Brigades
Research by Dr. Grimsted has shown that many of the hundreds of thousands of books seized by the ERR from France were found by a Red Army trophy brigade (units tasked with collecting cultural objects) in 1945 in warehouses near an abandoned ERR research and library center in Silesia. That trophy brigade also found many books in the same place that the ERR had seized from the Soviet Republic of Belorussia. In the fall of 1945 a Soviet convoy of 54 railroad freight cars carried an estimated 1.2 million books directly to Minsk. While perhaps two-thirds of the books were from libraries in Belorussia and the Soviet Baltic republics, a third or more of them were books from France and other countries of Europe. The largest number of the looted books of foreign provenance are still today held by the National Library of Belarus.
In 2011 the Belarus Library published a CD ROM entitled (in Russian) French Autographs in the Holdings of the National Library of Belarus, displaying the title pages of 66 books from Paris with autograph dedications by and/or to famous French politicians, writers, and other cultural leaders. Among others, the title page the “Rothschild” copy of Dumas fils’ theatrical works appears on the list.
Sources
http://epelorient.free.fr/dumas_fils.html
National Archives and Records Administration (College Park) Microfilm Publication, T-501, roll 362 [earlier foliation 295k–306k at bottom right; lacking or not legible on some pages])(#3). “Gesamtaufstellung der bisher vom Arbeitsgebiet Paris verpackten Büchereien” (Paris, 23 March 1941)[Complete list of libraries already packed by the Paris Working Group]
(TsDAVO, fond 3676, series [opys]1, file 172. (#6). “I. Positive Einsatzstellen Paris”[Positive operational sites in Paris](TsDAVO, fond 3676, series [opys]1, file 172, folios 277–282)
“Combined Charts of ERR French Library Seizure Victims”
http://www.culture.gouv.fr/documentation/mnr/RBS/T_7.pdf
https://www.errproject.org/docs/ERRParisLibraryLists2017.03.01.pdf