Edith and Ruth Capauner

In 2023, the Stiftung Neue Synagoge Berlin - Centrum Judaicum and the ZLB were able to jointly return six books from the libraries of Edith and Ruth Capauner.

Ruth Capauner was born in Cosel near Bautzen on 22 March 1899 as the daughter of the merchant Heinrich Capauner and Johanna née Goldstein. Her younger sister Edith was also born in Cosel on 7 January 1904. The family moved to Berlin in 1910, where Heinrich Capauner died just one year later at the age of only 45.

Ruth Capauner graduated in 1920 and then studied dentistry in Berlin, receiving her approbation in 1925. In the same year, she found employment at the dental clinic of the "Ortskrankenkasse für das Buchdruckgewerbe" (local health insurance for the printing trade). In 1933, she was dismissed due to the Gesetz zur Wiederherstellung des Berufsbeamtentums (Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service). She then initially treated patients privately until her approbation was finally revoked in 1939. Ruth Capauner then fled to Great Britain where she survived the Holocaust.

Less is known about Edith Capauner. She lived in Berlin with her sister Ruth and her two mothers Johanna, first at Wichmannstraße 22 and later at Motzstraße 43. Edith Capauner also emigrated to Great Britain in 1939 as a domestic servant. According to an index card for foreign internees in Great Britain during World War II, she had previously been a social worker.

Johanna Capauner, born on 8 October 1876 in Lipine/Lipiny (Silesia), worked in Berlin as an office manager. She lived on Motzstraße until her deportation in 1941, lastly together with her sister Paula, who was married to Heinrich Capauner's brother Hermann (1859 - 1932), and thus was also named Capauner. Both were deported to the Litzmannstadt Ghetto, where Paula was murdered on 17 June 1942. Johanna Capauner was further deported to Kulmhof concentration camp and murdered there on 7 September 1942.

Two of the three books restituted by the ZLB are from storage holdings of the Berlin City Library, the third was recorded as a gift in 1945. The supplier "Kulturamt" (Cultural Office) listed in the accession book was frequently used from 1945 onwards for Nazi looted objects that were already in the library and had previously been purchased from the Städtische Pfandleihanstalt (Municipal Pawnshop) in 1943. The biographies of the two previous owners also suggest that all three books originate from this purchase, by which the Berlin City Library acquired ~40,000 books from Berliners who had been persecuted as Jewish.