Labour and Socialist International

In 2024, two books from the library of Labour and Socialist International were restituted to the International Institute for Social History (Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis, IISG) in Amsterdam.

Founded in 1923, Labour and Socialist International (LSI, German: Sozialistische Arbeiter-Internationale, French: Internationale ouvrière socialiste) was an international organization of socialist and social democratic parties. It existed until the German occupation of France in 1940.

The Austrian social democrat Friedrich (Fritz) Adler (1879-1960), secretary of the LSI since its foundation and responsible for its archives, negotiated with the librarian of the IISG, Anna Adama van Scheltema-Kleefstra (1884-1977), as early as 1939 about a provisional transfer of the LSI holdings to the Paris branch of the IISG (in the event of war). This was implemented, and only parts of the secretariat's library, which seemed easily replaceable, remained in the SAI offices in Brussels alongside reserve stocks of SAI's own publications. The handwritten additions "reference library" in the two books mentioned above are indications that the volumes were left behind in Brussels. In order to trace the actual route of the books from (presumably) Brussels to Berlin, there is, as things stand today, no in-depth examination of the DAWI libraries or better documented examples of looted objects.

After the war, at Adler's suggestion, the known and traceable LSI holdings were transferred to the IISG Amsterdam, where they are still held today, in agreement with the Socialist International, which sees itself as the successor organization to the LSI.

Both volumes originate from unprocessed stock of the Berlin City Library ("Berliner Stadtbibliothek", BStB). They were never part of the active stock of the library and were therefore never processed, which is why no information on their accession is recorded in the BStB's acquisition journals.

The included markings of the Foreign Policy and Foreign Studies sub-department of the German Institute for Foreign Studies ("Deutsches Auslandswissenschaftliches Institut", DAWI) point to the Bergungsstelle für wissenschaftliche Bibliotheken (Salvage Office for Academic Libraries), specifically recovery assignment 153, as a possible supplier.

Since its foundation in 1940, the DAWI served as a research institute and documentation center for the closely interwoven and almost identical faculty of foreign studies at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-University of Berlin. Together with the faculty, which functioned primarily as a diplomatic school, the institute had the task of indoctrinating people in Nazi ideology about the relations of foreign states with Germany. It also served as a foreign information center for party and government bodies.

The DAWI libraries (central and seminar libraries) contained several hundred thousand volumes. An unknown number of these were book gifts from the Reich Main Security Office ("Reichssicherheitshauptamt", RSHA).

We would like to express particular gratitude to Christian Maiwald, provenance researcher at the Friedrich Ebert Foundation in Bonn, for his helpful assistance with this restitution.