Hanseatic archives in post-war Leningrad: to what extent was the transportation of German cultural valuables to the USSR a planned action

For almost twenty years, displaced archival documents and library manuscripts from the German cities of Hamburg, Lübeck and Bremen were preserved in the premises of the State Public Library (modern-day National Library of Russia) in Leningrad. Materials from these three Hanseatic cities, which belonged to the Allied occupation zones, ended up at the disposal of the Soviet authorities, since during the war they were evacuated by the Germans to the territory of the future GDR. Subsequently, they were transferred to Moscow and, more than two decades later, returned to Germany in exchange for another displaced archive. The study of the “Leningrad” years in the fate of the Hanseatic materials is important not only as a subject of purely archival studies. A detailed examination of such case sheds light on more general issues related to the policy of the Soviet authorities concerning displaced German cultural goods: was the transportation of German cultural heritage thoroughly planned from beginning to end, to what extent were the actions of various authorities coordinated, what were the goals of the transportation of cultural treasures (in our case, library and archival materials) to the USSR? It was discovered that the process of transporting and distributing of the Hanseatic fonds was largely a spontaneous action: at the last moment they were sent to Leningrad, and not to Moscow, and this was done without clear coordination of actions with the host library, which was forced to keep especially valuable fonds in insufficiently good conditions for a long time.