Max Sachs

In 2022, two loose bookplates by Max Sachs were offered for restitution and entrusted by the heirs to the Zentral- und Landesbibliothek Berlin for safekeeping.

The ex-libris were clearly assigned to Max Sachs in cooperation with colleagues at the SLUB Dresden and the Freie Universität Berlin.

Max Sachs was born in Breslau on 23 September 1883. After school, he trained as a commercial assistant and studied economics in Leipzig and political science in Tübingen. In 1907 he received his doctorate with a dissertation on the health insurance system in Stuttgart. He joined the SPD in 1906 and worked mainly as an editor of regional Social Democratic newspapers. In 1911 he took over the editorship of the business section of the newspaper Dresdner Volkszeitung. In Dresden, Sachs also took on political offices, including serving in the Saxon state parliament for the SPD from 1922 to 1926.

In Nazi Germany, Max Sachs was persecuted both politically and as Jewish. He was deported to Sachsenburg concentration camp on 25 September 1935 and murdered there on 5 October of the same year.

Max Sachs' daughters Edith and Klara (later Claire) Sachs were able to escape to the USA via the Netherlands, France, Spain and Portugal and thus survived the Holocaust.

Based on the card to which these two bookplates are affixed on the front and back, it is clear that they are from the so-called Treptow Collection, which was taken over by the Berlin City Library in the mid-1950s and in which Nazi looted property has already been identified on several occasions. This can be recognized by the handwriting of Hans Pohl on the card, who had created the collection.