Bruno Heymann

Dedication to Bruno Heymann by his brother Adolf: "tarassei tous anthropous ou ta pragmata, alla ta peri ton pragmaton dogmata Epiktet. Encheir. X Adolf Heymann s.l. Brother Bruno. 1895". It is a quotation by Epiktet from his Enchiridion (manual of Stoic ethical advice), first sentence of chapter 5: "Not the things themselves, but the opinions of the things worry people".

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

Prof. Dr. Bruno Heymann, born in Breslau on 1 July 1871, was a physician and professor at the Institute of Hygiene at the University of Berlin. He is the author of a fundamental biography of Robert Koch.

In 1935, Bruno Heymann was forced into retirement as a result of the Nuremberg Laws. He died on 8 May 1943 in the Jewish Hospital in Berlin, to which he had been admitted after being deemed unfit for transport for his scheduled deportation. Bruno Heymann's apartment at Hektorstr. 3 in Halensee was sealed by the Gestapo after his death and the inventory 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). A specific salvage location is mentioned in only one case; it came from a depot of the Reich Security Main Office ("Reichssicherheitshauptamt", RSHA) at Eisenacher Str. 11-13 in Berlin Schöneberg. 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.

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