Independent Order of B'nai B'rith. Friedrich-Lodge, Heidelberg
Durchgestrichener Stempel der U.O.B.B. Friedrich-Loge, Heidelberg
In 2018, a book from the B'nai B'rith Friedrich Lodge in Heidelberg was returned to B’nai B’rith International.
The Friedrich Lodge, founded in Heidelberg in 1894, was a German lodge of the international Jewish organisation B’nai B’rith, which had been founded in New York in 1843. The organisation’s first German branch was established in 1882; by the mid-1920s, there were approximately 100 lodges in Germany with around 15,000 members. Subject to persecution and repression since 1933, all remaining B'nai B'rith lodges in the German Reich were dissolved by order of the Gestapo in Berlin in April 1937, their property was confiscated and their leading members were arrested.
The Friedrich Lodge in Heidelberg was forcibly dissolved by 1937 at the latest. It was not re-established after 1945.
It is not known how the returned book came to be included in the collection of the Berlin City Library. The book was added to the library's stock shortly after the end of World War II in 1946. The supplier listed in the accession journal, ‘Kulturamt’, is thought to be associated with the Berlin City Council; however, this supplier designation was also used, amongst other things, for Nazi-looted property that was already in the library’s possession.