Warburg Institute: library saved from Nazis awaits its fate. Collection could be broken up in legal action over 1944 deed of trust Source: The Warburg Institute Looming threat: the Warburg Institute’s 350,000 volumes could return to Hamburg or be absorbed into Senate House The future of a “unique and extraordinary” library saved from Nazi Germany lies in the balance after the University of London launched a legal action to challenge its deed of trust.
The Warburg Institute, which holds about 350,000 books in its Bloomsbury premises, was originally established in Hamburg by Aby Warburg (1866-1929), an intellectual whose brilliance has been compared to that of Sigmund Freud. Born into the German-Jewish Warburg banking dynasty, he famously forfeited his right to a share of his fortune on condition that his younger brother Max would buy him any books he required. The Book No One Can Read.
David A. Bell: The Bookless Library. THEY ARE, in their very different ways, monuments of American civilization.
The first is a building: a grand, beautiful Beaux-Arts structure of marble and stone occupying two blocks’ worth of Fifth Avenue in midtown Manhattan. The second is a delicate concoction of metal, plastic, and glass, just four and a half inches long, barely a third of an inch thick, and weighing five ounces. The first is the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, the main branch of the New York Public Library (NYPL). The second is an iPhone.