Bruno Heymann

Since 2015, 14 books from Bruno Heymann's library have been returned.

Bruno Heymann was born on 1 July 1871 in Breslau, the son of Edmund Heymann and Anna Heymann, née Kraemer. He had four siblings: Heinrich (1866-?), Minna (1868-1938), Moritz (1870-1937) and Adolf (1874-1947). Bruno Heymann studied medicine in Freiburg im Breisgau and in Breslau, where he received his licence to practise medicine in 1896 and qualified as a university lecturer in 1904. He then worked as an assistant and private lecturer at the University of Breslau until he was appointed associate professor at the Institute of Hygiene at the University of Berlin in 1914. Bruno Heymann is also the author of a fundamental biography of Robert Koch. 

In 1900, Bruno Heymann married Martha Cohn, who had been born in Görlitz in 1872, in Glatz in Lower Silesia (now Kłodzko). The couple had three children: Rudolf Eduard (born in 1901 in Breslau), Karl Gerhard (born in 1903 in Breslau) and Charlotte Rosa (born in 1904 in Breslau). 

Martha Heymann, née Cohn, died in Berlin in 1940. Both Rudolf and Karl Gerhard Heymann managed to escape from Germany to the British Mandate of Palestine in time. Charlotte Rosa Heymann was deported from Berlin to the Auschwitz concentration and extermination camp on 29 January 1943 and murdered.

Bruno Heymann was forced into retirement in 1935 due to the “Nuremberg Laws”. He died on 8 May 1943 in the Jewish Hospital in Berlin, where he had been admitted as a prisoner of the police after being deemed unfit for transport for the scheduled deportation. Bruno Heymann's flat at Hektorstr. 3 in Halensee was sealed by the Gestapo after his death and his belongings were confiscated.

According to the Berlin City Library's acquisitions book, the restituted books were delivered by the "Cultural Office," the in-house book depository, or the Bergungsstelle (salvage office). As the salvage location a depot of the Reich Security Main Office ("Reichssicherheitshauptamt", RSHA) at Eisenacher Str. 11-13 in Berlin Schöneberg could be determined. The RSHA had collected looted books from all over Europe there. Large parts of these books were given to the Berlin City Library by the salvage office after the end of the war in 1945.