Looted property in the Hanover City Library Not only works of art, but also individual books or entire private libraries came into the possession of archives, museums and libraries as “Nazi-confiscated cultural property” – including Hannover City Library. The latter makes intensive efforts, in accordance with the criteria of the “Washington Principles” adopted in 1998…
Stolperstein for Heinrich Börner The family of the farm labourer Heinrich Börner lives in Hanover’s Altstadt [Old Town]. When he changes jobs and works elsewhere, he remains registered with the police at this address. At the start of the Second World War, the twenty-year-old is drafted into the Wehrmacht [armed forces]. The following year, a…
Kurt Schumacher: Re-founder of the SPD The former SPD [abbreviation for Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands, the Social Democratic Party of Germany] member of the Reichstag Kurt Schumacher is sent to Hanover in 1943 after being imprisoned in a concentration camp. Immediately following the liberation of the city, he begins to rebuild the party. For a few…
Klagesmarkt: Contentious meeting place In the Middle Ages, the site of the present-day Klagesmarkt – by the Steintor [now a pedestrian precinct] and the city walls of Hanover – was used for public executions. Later on, it took on its historical role as a trading venue, a tradition that continues to this day: it hosted…
Stolpersteine for the Jewish Bloch family The Bloch family moved to Hanover from what is now Poland in 1905 and thus belonged to the approximately 20 per cent of Jews in Hanover’s Jewish population that had East European roots. Between 1903 and 1906, the Jews in Russian Poland suffered devastating pogroms. A baker’s family In…
The Technical University and Theodor Lessing A castle turned university: the main building of present-day Leibniz University not only looks like a castle, it was actually built as a Guelph palace. However, after the war against Prussia was lost in 1866, the Kingdom of Hanover ceased to exist. Hanover became the Prussian provincial capital. Shortly…
Memorial at the site of the New Synagogue “In the German Style”: in 1870, the New Synagogue, designed by the eminent Jewish architect Edwin Oppler, is inaugurated at its location on an open square in Calenberger Neustadt. Its scale and architectural style express a new self-confidence and the belief that as Jews they are now…
Stolen artefacts in the Museum August Kestner The Museum August Kestner is the oldest museum in Hanover. In 1884, Hermann Kestner donated the sizeable collection of Ancient Egyptian antiquities and art belonging to his uncle August Kestner, his own private art collection and that of his father Georg Kestner to the city of Hanover…
The Laveshaus on Friedrichswall: Municipal health department 1935-37 The building was constructed during 1823-24 by the renowned court architect and town planner Georg Ludwig Friedrich Laves, who lived there until his death. In 1855, the adjacent annexe was added for use by his son as his studio and living quarters. From 1908 onwards, the buildings…
State Tax Office [Oberfinanzpräsidium]: Legislated robbery After the liberation from National Socialism, very few perpetrators from the top echelons of the Party, Gestapo, SS, industry and judiciary were punished. However, the repression and robbing of the Jewish population had many accomplices in public office and administrative departments: pen-pushing perpetrators. Terror and bureaucracy went hand in…