Treasures of the National Library in the Trash

Already toward the end of the war, Polish museum professionals were gathering information about the fate of cultural property removed to the west. As Dr. Robert J. Kudelski determined, in many cases it came
from the Germans themselves.

The most valuable works of Polish literature were found at a landfill. The Russians took them over, and there is no certainty that they returned all of them to Poland.

Bogurodzica regarded as the first state anthem, a religious song was found in early 1945 in Goerbitsch (Garbicz) near Frankfurt (Oder), where the Germans had evacuated it ahead of the Soviet offensive. It survived by a miracle, because it was lying in the trash.

This manuscript came from the Holy Cross Abbey on Łysa Góra, but after the November Uprising the Russians took it to St. Petersburg. It returned to Poland after the Treaty of Riga in 1921.

In the same place, the “Chronica Polonorum” (Polish Chronicle) by Vincent Kadłubek, the Bishop of Kraków, written in Latin and dating from the turn of the 12th and 13th centuries, was also found. It is precisely there that the still-famous legend of Queen Wanda appears who, according to Kadłubek, drove off the army of a Germanic leader. The chronicle also returned to Poland from Russian captivity after the war with the Bolsheviks ended, and toward the end of World War II it was taken to a German town on the Oder.

Also found in Goerbitsch was the “Geographia” of Claudius Ptolemy. Renaissance maps based on the 2nd-century treatise “Geographia,” made on parchment and decorated with gold leaf, were dedicated in the second half of the 15th century to Pope Paul II. According to family accounts, Chancellor and Grand Hetman of the Crown Jan Zamoyski (1542–1605) received this richly illustrated work from Pope Gregory XIII. It ended up in the Zamoyski family archive, but in 1944 it was taken west by the Germans. A similar fate befell the autograph manuscript of Jan Kochanowski’s poem “Dryas Zamchana,” written for the arrival of King Stefan Batory to Jan Zamoyski’s estate in Zamch in 1578. The manuscript formed the basis of the first printed edition; the second word of the title in the header was added by Zamoyski. Later, the manuscript rested for two and a half centuries in the family archive. It was rediscovered only in 1874 by Józef Przyborowski, the librarian of the Zamoyski Entailment Library.

The manuscript of Jan Kochanowski’s “Pieśń świętojańska o Sobótce” (St. John’s Eve Song of Sobótka), dated to the 1570s–1580s and added in 1869 to the collection of the Zamoyski Entailment Library, also ended up in a German locality. Thrown into the trash as well was the “Catalogue of the Archbishops of Gniezno” by the 15th-century historian and chronicler Jan Długosz, also from that collection. There was also the first in a series of three 16th-century “Lithuanian Statutes,” which codified the laws of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The first part covered civil and criminal law; judicial procedures combined customs and old privileges with elements of Roman, Magdeburg, and Polish law. This monument of legislation, in a leather binding, was written in the West Ruthenian language, which was the official language of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.

Another treasure of Polish writing was found on the Oder as well the 15th-century “Seven Deadly Sins.” Among the Latin sermons, it contained Polish rhymed Decalogues, a song for the feast of Pentecost, and a profession of faith. During the war, it lay in the basements of the Blue Palace in Warsaw, the seat of the Zamoyski Entailment Library. This artifact escaped the fire that consumed the collection, because earlier it had been taken to Goerbitsch.

Already toward the end of the war, Polish museum professionals were gathering information about the fate of cultural property removed to the west. As established by Dr. Robert J. Kudelski, the author of the book “Lista Grundmanna 2. Losy dzieł sztuki na Dolnym Śląsku po II wojnie światowej” (Grundmann’s List 2: The Fate of Works of Art in Lower Silesia after World War II), in many cases it came from the Germans themselves.

The removal of Warsaw museum collections to Lower Silesia was reported to Stanisław Lorentz, the director of the National Museum in Warsaw, by the German commissioner Dr. Alfred Schellenberg.

“Polish officials therefore had sufficient knowledge to, at the moment Upper and Lower Silesia were taken by Soviet forces, undertake efforts to reach the depots where the works of art had been stored. Preparations to search for cultural property removed from Poland by the German occupation authorities began in early 1945,” writes Dr. Robert J. Kudelski.

The Red Army’s offensive in January 1945 provided the impulse to organize an expedition into the occupied territories. The Ministry of Education undertook preparations for the recovery of library and archival resources. As early as February 1, 1945, the Head of the Main Political and Educational Directorate of the Polish Army was informed by Bronisław Biedowicz, then undersecretary of state in the education ministry, of the locations where the removed cultural property was supposed to be found. “The list included several places in Lower Silesia, including Goerbitsch (Garbicz) and Kuhnau (Kunów) in the municipality of Sobótka. The Ministry asked the staff of the Polish Army to ‘ensure that these collections are taken into care by our military authorities and to inform the Ministry in what condition they were found,’” Kudelski wrote.

However, despite these preparations, the treasures of Polish writing fell into Soviet hands. Those found in Goerbitsch were transported by the Russians to Moscow. Then came the arduous period of restitution of these priceless artifacts. Poles had to prove that they were their owners. The process involved, among others, Bohdan Korzeniewski a theater historian, bibliophile, member of the resistance during the German occupation, and later a director. The first batch of works looted by the Germans returned to Poland in 1947, and the next only in 1958. Today, the national book repository cares for them.

Did the Russians return everything? There is no such certainty. To this day, they have not returned many artifacts they should have handed over under the Treaty of Riga of 1921. We know that they still keep bibliophile treasures originating from the Załuski Library.