Books stolen by Nazis to be returnedBerlin library to return books confiscated from Germany's Social Democrats during the Third Reich, among them an edition of The Communist Manifesto thought to belong to Friedrich Engels
German socialist Friedrich Engels. Photograph: Time & Life Pictures/Getty Image
Almost 70 books stolen from the Social Democratic party by the Nazi regime will be returned in a ceremony at the end of August, Berlin's Central and Regional Library has announced.
The books, which include an 1883 English edition of The Communist Manifesto thought to come from the library of Friedrich Engels, who wrote the original with Marx, were confiscated by the Nazi party. The Social Democrats, Germany's oldest political party, was outlawed after the Nazis came to power in 1933.
The return of the books on 31 August is part of a larger project by the Berlin library to rehome Nazi "loot". In April, it gave 10 books and three journal volumes back to the Jewish Community of Berlin.
"We have a project searching for books in our library which were stolen in the Drittes Reich by the Nazis from Jews or institutions such as the Social Democratic party," said Dr Annette Gerlach from the Berlin library. "We have a very great project to look for the traces in the books. We have to look into 200,000 books."
Alison Flood guardian.co.uk
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