Fifteenth-Century Book looted in WW2 returned to Polish Museum

The item in question is a collection of religious texts published in the late 1400s by Martin Flach, a Swiss printer, in the form of an incunabulum, an early type of printed book. It includes works by Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventure, and Nicholas of Błonie, a Polish theologian.

By the early 20th century, the item had come into the possession of Jan Sobczyński, a Polish priest and book collector in the city of Kalisz. Sometime before 1930, he donated it, along with other parts of his collection, to the district museum in the city.

However, during the subsequent German occupation, Kalisz, like other parts of Poland, saw its cultural holdings decimated by destruction and looting. In the first year of the war, over 80% of the collections of the city’s museums were destroyed.

Later, in 1942, German soldiers threw thousands more books from local libraries, museums and private homes into a canal. A monument now stands in the city centre commemorating that act of destruction.

This particular incunabulum was among the books that disappeared during the war. However, last year it appeared at an online auction run by a Warsaw antique shop.

The item was noticed by Przemysław Pawlak, deputy head of the literary department at the National Theatre in Warsaw, who informed the ministry of culture and national heritage.

After confirming the provenance of the item, ministry employees contacted its owner, artist Krzysztof Burnatowicz, who, after learning of its origin, decided to return it to the museum in Kalisz.

No information has been released as to how the book came into Burnatowicz’s possession or of what happened to it during and after the war.

“Negotiations with the owner of the item were not easy because the museum’s prewar inventory of books is missing and there was no easy way to prove that it was part of our collection,” the museum’s director, Marcin Magdziński, told the Gazeta Wyborcza daily.

However, a local newspaper article from 1930 was discovered that mentions the work as being in the library’s collection. The book itself also contains a handwritten note saying that it belonged to the collection of Sobczyński.

The item was returned last week to the museum, which plans to display it to the public on 17 May during the annual “Night of Museums”, a nationwide initiative in which cultural institutions open their doors to the public at night and put on special events and exhibitions.