Professional Documents
Culture Documents
PDF Books Across Borders Unesco and The Politics of Postwar Cultural Reconstruction 1945 1951 Miriam Intrator Ebook Full Chapter
PDF Books Across Borders Unesco and The Politics of Postwar Cultural Reconstruction 1945 1951 Miriam Intrator Ebook Full Chapter
https://textbookfull.com/product/biota-grow-2c-gather-2c-cook-
loucas/
https://textbookfull.com/product/a-cultural-history-of-postwar-
japan-1st-edition-frattolillo/
https://textbookfull.com/product/europe-s-postwar-
periods-1989-1945-1918-writing-history-backwards-martin-conway/
https://textbookfull.com/product/the-politics-of-pain-postwar-
england-and-the-rise-of-nationalism-first-american-edition-
european-union/
International Management Managing Across Borders and
Cultures Text and Cases Helen Deresky
https://textbookfull.com/product/international-management-
managing-across-borders-and-cultures-text-and-cases-helen-
deresky/
https://textbookfull.com/product/transmediations-communication-
across-media-borders-1st-edition-niklas-salmose-editor/
https://textbookfull.com/product/the-unesco-convention-on-the-
protection-and-promotion-of-the-diversity-of-cultural-
expressions-explanatory-notes-1st-edition-sabine-von-schorlemer-
auth/
https://textbookfull.com/product/narrating-the-global-financial-
crisis-urban-imaginaries-and-the-politics-of-myth-1st-edition-
miriam-meissner-auth/
https://textbookfull.com/product/translating-across-sensory-and-
linguistic-borders-intersemiotic-journeys-between-media-
madeleine-campbell/
NEW DIRECTIONS IN BOOK HISTORY
Series Editors
Shafquat Towheed
Faculty of Arts
Open University
Milton Keynes, UK
Jonathan Rose
Department of History
Drew University
Madison, NJ, USA
As a vital field of scholarship, book history has now reached a stage of
maturity where its early work can be reassessed and built upon. That is the
goal of New Directions in Book History. This series will publish mono-
graphs in English that employ advanced methods and open up new fron-
tiers in research, written by younger, mid-career, and senior scholars. Its
scope is global, extending to the Western and non-Western worlds and to
all historical periods from antiquity to the twenty-first century, including
studies of script, print, and post-print cultures. New Directions in Book
History, then, will be broadly inclusive but always in the vanguard. It will
experiment with inventive methodologies, explore unexplored archives,
debate overlooked issues, challenge prevailing theories, study neglected
subjects, and demonstrate the relevance of book history to other academic
fields. Every title in this series will address the evolution of the historiogra-
phy of the book, and every one will point to new directions in book schol-
arship. New Directions in Book History will be published in three formats:
single-author monographs; edited collections of essays in single or multi-
ple volumes; and shorter works produced through Palgrave’s e-book
(EPUB2) ‘Pivot’ stream. Book proposals should emphasize the innovative
aspects of the work, and should be sent to either of the two series editors.
Editorial Board
Marcia Abreu, University of Campinas, Brazil
Cynthia Brokaw, Brown University, USA
Matt Cohen, University of Texas at Austin, USA
Archie Dick, University of Pretoria, South Africa
Martyn Lyons, University of New South Wales, Australia
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer
Nature Switzerland AG 2019
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of
translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval,
electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now
known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information
in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the pub-
lisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the
material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The
publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institu-
tional affiliations.
This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
Switzerland AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
To my family for their love, support, and inspiration
Acknowledgments
vii
viii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
funders: the Social Science Research Council for the 2011–2012 Mellon/
ACLS International Dissertation Research Fellowship; the Graduate
Center History Department for the 2010–2011 Sponsored Dissertation
Fellowship; the Center for Jewish History for the Lillian Goldman
Fellowship (special thanks to Nancy Sinkoff, Hilit Surowitz-Israel, and
Judy Siegel); the American Jewish Archives for the Jacob Prinz Memorial
Fellowship (special thanks to Kevin Proffitt, Dana Herman, and Nathan
Tallman); the Rockefeller Archive Center for the Grant-In-Aid (special
thanks to Michele Hiltzik); and the Graduate Center’s Center for Jewish
Studies (special thanks to Jane Gerber) for the Goldie and David Blanksteen
Award, the J. & O. Winter Fund, and for additional support and funding.
My fellow librarians and archivists were of enormous assistance and I
thank them all. Those who went above and beyond include, at the
UNESCO Archives, former Chief Archivist Jens Boel and archivists Adele
Torrence, Alexandre Coutelle, and Eng Sengsavang; Cheryl Fox at the
Library of Congress; Karen Robson at the University of Southampton;
Eva-Maria Jansson at the Danish Royal Library; Marek Swiezewski at the
University of Warsaw Library, and Marcin Drzewiecki and Dominika
Stępniewska at the Polish National Library.
A heartfelt thank you to Kathy Peiss and Dana Herman for their gener-
osity as researchers and for their careful reading of the manuscript and
excellent suggestions that greatly helped to improve the final product.
Warm thanks to Rachel Jacobe at Palgrave Macmillan for her indispens-
able assistance throughout this process.
I trace my professional and personal path to librarianship, the study of
history, and the writing of this book to my grandparents’ and parents’
experiences and losses during World War II and to their resilience and
achievements in its aftermath. I will never be able to thank my family
enough for the inspiring example they provide and for their unwavering
strength, patience, enthusiasm, and support.
Chris, our life together is still new and much of it has been spent with
me working on this book. Thank you for never complaining, for support-
ing me in everything I do, and for making every day better, fuller, brighter.
I dedicate this book to the memory of David Carr, Hadara Perpignan,
Joseph and Alma Bamberger, and Szymon and Gitla Intrator, and to the
love of my parents, my sister and her family, my husband, and my step-
daughter, who in one way or another all made it possible.
Praise for Books Across Borders
ix
Contents
Index269
xi
Abbreviations
xiii
xiv ABBREVIATIONS
Fig. 1.1 Library, Douai, France, before and after the war, from
Book of Needs, volume 1, published by UNESCO in 1947 12
Fig. 1.2 Unidentified Library, Poland, from Libraries in Need, published
by UNESCO in 1949 30
Fig. 2.1 Cover of Libraries in Need, published by UNESCO in 1949 67
Fig. 3.1 UNESCO Book Coupons brochure, undated 89
Fig. 5.1 Portrait of Jacob Zuckerman, UNESCO/R. Lesage, 1957 142
Fig. 7.1 Public Library Manifesto brochure, English 238
Fig. 8.1 Inside the war-damaged Valognes Library, circa 1950 253
Fig. 8.2 Scandinavian students cleaning and repairing books, Valognes
Library, 1950 or 1951 255
xv
CHAPTER 1
The Nazi regime fully recognized the power of culture. During the lead-
up to and throughout the World War II years the Nazis strategically
employed elements of culture, including books and libraries, as instru-
ments of propaganda and targets of calculated violence. To understand the
degree to which culture played a critical role in fascism’s rise and spread,
one need look no further than the familiar images of Hitler’s followers
ransacking libraries and throwing confiscated books onto raging bonfires
in Berlin’s Opernplatz in 1933. The Nazi book burnings and the devasta-
tion they portended, both concretely and symbolically, constitute the
starting point for this story of reconstruction.
The Nazis’ “centrally directed program of cultural conquest,” which
paved the way for what historian Benjamin Martin recently described as
“the Nazi-Fascist cultural New Order,” constituted only one element of
UNESCO brought individuals into communication from all over the world,
most of whom were not native speakers of English or French, the main languages
of the organization during its first years. Although in some cases it makes for
awkward wording, most errors of orthography, grammar, usage, and so on, have
been kept as they appear in the original documents.
To reflect current practice, UNESCO is used throughout this book and any
quotes containing historic or French usage of Unesco have been changed for
consistency.
the unprecedented carnage of World War II.1 The details and extent of
that carnage have been expertly covered by many; of interest here is the
aftermath. Reversing Nazism’s pervasive abuse and misuse of books and
libraries became a specific and urgent goal for those dedicated to postwar
cultural reconstruction. The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and
Cultural Organization (UNESCO) served as a centralizing force in those
efforts. This book outlines the ways in which UNESCO, via its dedicated
Libraries Section, sought to repair and transcend the myriad wartime
wrongdoings perpetrated upon and using books, libraries, and informa-
tion, within the early postwar-Cold War context.2
Tragically, World War II presents neither the first nor the last time that
culture has been targeted in times of war or other conflict. Far from it.3 As
recently as 2017, previous UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova argued
that, “with culture at the frontline of conflict, it should move to the front-
line of all efforts to build peace.”4 UNESCO has attempted to do just that
since the signing of its Constitution in November 1945. Indeed, that objec-
tive is expressed in the most famous line of the Preamble to UNESCO’s
Constitution: “That since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds
of men that the defences of peace must be constructed.”5 The author of the
Preamble was American poet and former Librarian of Congress Archibald
MacLeish, whose name and contributions, along with those of numerous
other librarians and library officials, will appear again throughout this book.
One of the most important library figures in this work is Edward
J. Carter, the first head of the UNESCO Libraries Section. Carter described
“the euphoric mood of planners and government immediately after the
war,” a mood that energized his efforts and those of others involved in
1
Grayson Kefauver and Carl M. White, “Library Situation in Europe,” Library Journal 70
(1 May 1945), 387; Benjamin G. Martin, The Nazi-Fascist New Order for European Culture
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2016).
2
Byron Dexter, “UNESCO Faces Two Worlds,” Foreign Affairs 25:3 (April 1947):
388–407.
3
See Erik Nemeth, Cultural Security: Evaluating the Power of Culture in International
Affairs (London: Imperial College Press, 2015); Gill Partington and Adam Smyth, eds.,
Book Destruction from the Medieval to the Contemporary (London: Palgrave Macmillan,
2014); Rebecca Knuth, Burning Books and Leveling Libraries: Extremist Violence and
Cultural Destruction (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2006); Knuth, Libricide: The Regime-Sponsored
Destruction of Books and Libraries in the Twentieth Century (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003).
4
Irina Bokova, “UNESCO’s Role in Emergency Situations: What Difference Can Soft
Power Make in Times of Crisis?” Journal of International Affairs 70:2 (Summer 2017): 64.
5
UNESCO Constitution, 16 November 1945.
1 INTRODUCTION: THE UNESCO LIBRARIES SECTION 3
Thus, from its founding, UNESCO has pursued a soft power approach,
seeking to effect change through attraction and persuasion via coopera-
tion and information rather than through political, economic, or military
force, long before Joseph Nye coined the phrase in 1990.8
6
Edward Carter, The Future of London (London: Penguin Books, 1962), 16.
7
John Marshall to Rockefeller Foundation colleagues, November 1947. Rockefeller
Archive Center (hereafter RAC), RG 3 Series 900 Box 24 Folder 191, 900 Program and
Policy – Literature Aid 1945–1955.
8
Joseph Nye, Bound to Lead: The Changing Nature of American Power (New York: Basic
Books, 1991), 31–32. See also Nye, “Soft Power: The Origins and Political Progress of a
Concept,” Palgrave Communication (21 February 2017).
4 M. INTRATOR
Soft Power
UNESCO’s soft power approach is exemplified in the overarching ques-
tion asked of the Libraries Section at the time: “what kind of a library
program will make the maximum contribution towards building a lasting
peace?”9 The question magnifies the postwar challenge facing all of
UNESCO through the lens of those most concerned about books, librar-
ies, and information. According to political economist J.P. Singh, “all del-
egates accepted early on that cultural issues would play a role in the
organization’s future. This was as much due to the denunciation of ideas
of racial and cultural purity that existed in Nazi Germany as in the need
felt for creating a new culture of peace.”10 Libraries, as primary means for
storing, circulating, and preserving books and information, were essential
tools in both negative and positive, wartime and postwar, efforts to influ-
ence knowledge, understanding, and people. The overarching and inter-
related goals—to overcome the damaging influences of fascism and to
forge a healthy and enduring peace—defined the reconstruction and reha-
bilitation activities of the UNESCO Libraries Section.
During its first years the UNESCO General Conference categorized
the organization’s program into eight General Projects and Activities,
with Reconstruction and Rehabilitation listed first, and then into
eight Other Projects and Activities, with Libraries listed second.
Reconstruction and Rehabilitation contained six subsections, including
Reconstruction in the Field of Libraries, Exchange and Distribution of
Publications.11 Through an in-depth examination of the interconnections
between UNESCO’s Libraries Section and Reconstruction Program, this
9
Ralph R. Shaw, Department of Agriculture Library, 21 August 1946. American Jewish
Archives (hereafter AJA), Marshall Papers, Box 31 Folder 11, UNESCO [U.S. Natl
Commission First Conference] 1946–1947. For a recent reflection see Tessa Blackstone,
“Notebook: The Soft Power of Libraries, a Chinese Jane Eyre, and My Dreams of a Day at
the Races,” New Statesman, 22–28 June 2018, 31.
10
J.P. Singh, United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization: Creating
Norms in a Complex World (London: Routledge, 2010), 5.
11
The Programme of UNESCO for 1947. UNESCO Archives, General Conference, First
Session. ∗ NOTE about the UNESCO Archives. Unless otherwise noted all UA citations are
from AG 8/2.2 REG, UNESCO, Bureau of General Services, Registry & Mail Division,
Index of Inactive Correspondence Files, Series 1946/1956. Within that collection material
is filed by a combination of numbers, letters, and symbols, followed by a title, and is some-
times further subdivided into parts or dated subsections. UA citations that include volume
numbers refer to bound volumes of minutes and documents.
1 INTRODUCTION: THE UNESCO LIBRARIES SECTION 5
14
“The story of the six million [murdered Jews] is also the story of the One Hundred
Million. That is the toll of books destroyed by the Nazis throughout Europe in just twelve
years.” Jonathan Rose, ed., The Holocaust and the Book: Destruction and Preservation
(Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2001), 1.
15
UNESCO Memory of the World Program, Lost Memory: Libraries and Archives Destroyed
in the Twentieth Century (Paris: UNESCO, 1996), 1.
16
Reichsleiter was the highest position attainable in the Nazi regime, reporting directly to
Hitler. See Jürgen Matthäus and Frank Bajohr, eds., The Political Diary of Alfred Rosenberg
and the Onset of the Holocaust (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015); Sarah
Gensburger, Witnessing the Robbing of the Jews: A Photographic Album, Paris, 1940–1944,
trans. Jonathan Hensher (Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2010).
17
Max Weinreich’s pioneering 1946 text on Nazi scholarship on the Jews, originally pub-
lished in Yiddish, is still considered authoritative. Weinreich, Hitler’s Professors: The Part of
Scholarship in Germany’s Crimes Against the Jewish People (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1999).
1 INTRODUCTION: THE UNESCO LIBRARIES SECTION 7
In the American zone, these were amassed in central collecting depots from
where the original owners, whether individuals or institutions, could be
identified and restitution carried out whenever possible.18
The millions of displaced books recovered after the war developed into
one of the most sensitive aspects of postwar reconstruction. The recov-
ered materials included looted Jewish texts, confiscated non-Jewish texts
deemed un-German, rare books considered to be rightful German prop-
erty, and, on the opposite end of the spectrum, fascist publications confis-
cated postwar by the Allies. From UNESCO’s perspective, access to and
study of Nazi publications was necessary to formulating an understanding
of the regime important to preventing future fascist or militaristic take-
overs; access to and study of Jewish texts was necessary to developing
tolerance among non-Jews for difference in order to prevent future resur-
gences of violent antisemitism. To UNESCO’s surprise, its view of the
fate of these two categories of books, in particular, proved quite
controversial.
Moments of controversy and encounters with resistance to its programs
or approach often came as a surprise to those with total faith in UNESCO’s
impartiality and honest attempts to formulate a fair- and right-minded
agenda. When it came to resolving postwar debates about book and library
issues, those who viewed the organization as a neutral, transnational, cen-
tralizing body believed it could and should serve as international arbiter,
functioning above, beyond, and unimpeded by national borders or ideo-
logical conflicts. Such an idealistic perspective was not always attentive,
however, to the complex and emotional realities of competing interests,
agendas, and ideologies of the early postwar-Cold War world.
The sheer numbers involved heightened postwar emotionality over the
role, fate, and future of books and libraries. Writing in 1945, Polish liter-
18
There is an extensive body of research on Nazi looting and restitution. Originally these
studies focused on art. See especially Lynn H. Nicolas, The Rape of Europa: The Fate of
Europe’s Treasures in the Third Reich and the Second World War (New York: Knopf, 1994).
The past decade or so has seen a turn to books and libraries as well. For some recent and
important examples, see Anders Rydell, The Book Thieves: The Nazi Looting of Europe’s
Libraries and the Race to Return a Literary Inheritance (New York: Viking, 2017); David
E. Fishman, The Book Smugglers: Partisans, Poets, and the Race to Save Jewish Treasures from
the Nazis, The True Story of the Paper Brigade of Vilna (Lebanon, NY: ForeEdge, 2017);
Mark Glickman, Stolen Words: The Nazi Plunder of Jewish Books (Philadelphia: The Jewish
Publication Society, 2016); Michael J. Kurtz, America and the Return of Nazi Contraband:
The Recovery of Europe’s Cultural Treasures (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).
8 M. INTRATOR
ary scholar and librarian Maria Danilewicz, who was also involved in the
founding of UNESCO, articulated what was at stake: “During the six
years of war […] not only human beings were killed, destroyed, and dis-
persed but also their silent friends – books.”19 Danilewicz was far from
alone in imbuing books with human qualities and experiences during and
in the aftermath of the war. That she and others would go so far as to
equate the suffering and the fates of the two illustrates people’s emotional
connection to books and to their significance in people’s lives and
memories.20
The equivalency extended to libraries as well. Polish librarian Helena
Więckowska referred in 1946 to the National Library of Warsaw as “a liv-
ing body,” and argued that reconstruction efforts had to treat it as such,
with great care and attention. She continued:
A library is not solely a given quantity of books. The most beautiful collec-
tion of books is not necessarily by itself a library. A library is a living organ-
ism, made up of parts and limbs, and functions according to certain laws like
a living being. It is only under these conditions that a library may live its real
life. Its limbs are its departments and sections, and its constitution is the
pivotal idea of its policy; the inventory or register of entries gives an exact
idea of the library’s assets, while the catalogue makes it possible to have
access at any moment to its most distant and most essential cell – the book.21
For Więckowska, books are living beings that bring life to the libraries in
which they are housed, accessed, and used. In her poetic description,
books and libraries need each other as well as the people who work in and
use both, to survive and thrive. The emotional, practical, symbolic, and
intellectual relationships of individuals, institutions, and organizations
with books and libraries are fundamental to this history.
In the early aftermath of the war the UNESCO Libraries Section faced
an overwhelming landscape of wreckage, disruption, and demand. In
19
Maria Danilewicz, “The Post-War Problems of Continental Libraries,” Journal of
Documentation 1 (1945): 81–88, reprinted in 61:3 (2005): 334.
20
For a fascinating examination of people’s relationships with material objects after trauma
in a different context see Jonathan Bach, What Remains: Everyday Encounters with the
Socialist Past in Germany (New York: Columbia University Press, 2017). For a powerfully
moving description of the postwar significance of a single surviving book see Rydell, The Book
Thieves, ix–xiii.
21
Helena Więckowska, “The Rebirth of the National Library of Warsaw,” The Library
Association Record (October 1946), 246.
1 INTRODUCTION: THE UNESCO LIBRARIES SECTION 9
order to make sense of the scope of the issues it organized the causes
behind that impact into three broad categories: “destruction, looting,
neglect.”22 Destruction encompassed losses due to physical war damage,
ranging from pulping and burning to bombardments; looting covered
losses due to mass theft, pillaging, confiscation, and other plunder carried
out by the ERR and similar bodies; and neglect referred to losses due to
the long isolation between countries and the long-term effects of insuffi-
cient resources and support.
The severity of the impact fed directly into what UNESCO identified as
“the world’s book starvation.”23 Postwar requests for access to reliable and
current information as well as for pure pleasure and leisure reading were
urgent and extensive. Books and libraries needed rescue, repair, restitu-
tion, restocking, relocation, and other attention, existing book and library
culture as well as the systems facilitating the global sharing, exchange, and
acquisition of books and other printed materials across and between bor-
ders also needed to be revived, improved, and expanded. An early memo-
randum submitted to UNESCO’s predecessor body hinted at what would
be required to meet the extraordinary postwar needs: “This war has shown
the necessity for large-scale and long-term planning. It has taught us that
the most difficult problem can be solved by cooperative effort. This new
attitude naturally extends to the library world.”24
Every element of the Libraries Section’s work pivoted around the convic-
tion that “the free flow of information, the exchange of views, the raising of
educational standards, cultural instruction and reconstruction, all play a fun-
damental role in UNESCO’s battle for international understanding and co-
operation, and they are all dependent on the printed word.”25 For UNESCO
it was only through the free flow of information and ideas “that people
everywhere may gain a truer and more perfect knowledge of each other’s
lives.”26 As people gained that knowledge, the thinking went, the world
would inevitably become a more tolerant and peaceful place. Knowledge and
22
UNESCO Bulletin for Libraries II:4 (April 1948), 120.
23
L.J. Lind to Secretary, Permanent Bureau of International Publishers Association, 27
October 1947. UA, Cheap Books.
24
Undated memorandum by Mr. Theodore Besterman on a Proposed International
Library Clearing-House. UA, AME/B/26.
25
“UNESCO and Cheap Books,” p.3, 5, [28 February 1948]. UA, 04 A 335, Cheap
Books.
26
Julian Behrstock, “Free Flow of Information: UNESCO’s World-Wide Program,”
Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 26:4 (December 1, 1949): 453.
10 M. INTRATOR
information at the time were still almost exclusively recorded and preserved
in books, periodicals, and other printed materials. Libraries were necessary to
ensure that the “free flow,” that is, the physical circulation and dissemination
of these materials, was cost-free to the largest possible communities of users.
As Gail Dexter Lord and Ngaire Blankenberg point out in their important
study Cities, Museums and Soft Power, museums today are looking to learn
from libraries and their history because “libraries exercise significant soft
power in promoting literacy, social inclusion and community collaboration.”
What’s more, they do this “all for free.”27 Thus the interconnections between
planning and cooperation, the free flow of books and information, progress
toward peace, and the role of libraries therein, came to define the reconstruc-
tion and rehabilitation program of the Libraries Section.
The policies and initiatives of UNESCO’s Libraries Section can be bro-
ken down into three broad thematic goals. First, to eliminate restrictions
to the free flow of publications and information across borders. Second, to
facilitate the global distribution of publications whose circulation had
stagnated almost completely during the war years. Third, to create forums
through which those active in the cultural realm, including librarians and
their supporters, regardless of belief or background, and extending to
both sides of the deepening Cold War chasm, could cooperate to advance
culture, knowledge, and understanding, despite existing or intensifying
divisions between their respective countries. These themes, all character-
ized by cooperation and exchange, reflect a specific vision articulated
by Edward J. Carter: “We are laying down an intricate pattern of commu-
nications. No library, no institution, no technique can be justified, in the
terms of our mandate, except as part of this pattern of communications.”28
More broadly, the Libraries Section described its stance in a 1947 report:
“libraries are conceived essentially as local and specialist centres in a world-
wide network of communications, in which no library is totally
self-sufficient, or independent of other libraries, or of other branches of
education, science, and culture.”29
The need for a worldwide network of inter-reliant libraries was very
real. There was nowhere near enough monetary or other material resources
27
Gail Dexter Lord and Ngaire Blankenberg, Cities, Museums and Soft Power (Washington,
D.C.: American Alliance of Museums, 2015), 208.
28
UNESCO Preparatory Commission, The Libraries Programme, Opening Remarks by
the Counsellor, 31 May 1946. UA, Preparatory Commission, Vol. V Program Committees.
29
UNESCO Libraries Progress Report for 1947, 26 September 1947, AJA, Marshall
Papers, 30/2.
1 INTRODUCTION: THE UNESCO LIBRARIES SECTION 11
30
Tom Allbeson, “At the Crossroads of Cultural Memory and Utopian Thinking:
Photography, Architecture and the Establishment of UNESCO,” International Society for
Cultural History Annual Conference, Oslo, 3–6 August 2011. See also Allbeson, “Ruins,
Reconstruction and Representation: Photography and the City in Postwar Western Europe
(1945–58),” PhD Dissertation, Durham University, 2012.
12 M. INTRATOR
Fig. 1.1 Library, Douai, France, before and after the war, from Book of Needs,
volume 1, published by UNESCO in 1947
31
Robert Darnton, “What is the History of Books?” Daedalus 111:3 Representations and
Realities (Summer 1982): 81.
32
Chloé Maurel, “L’UNESCO: une plate-forme pour les circulations transnationales de
savoirs et d’idées (1945–1980),” Histoire@Politique. Politique, culture, société 15 (septem-
bre-décembre 2011): 1.
1 INTRODUCTION: THE UNESCO LIBRARIES SECTION 13
33
UNESCO Executive Board, Committee for Cultural Reconstruction, 3rd Session, 1
October 1947, Minutes of the 1st Meeting, p.11. UA, 361.9 A 20, Reconstruction Needs
General.
34
Nye, Bound to Lead, 255–257.
14 M. INTRATOR
Reconstruction
Before going any further, it is necessary to consider how we are defining
the term reconstruction. Frequently interpreted rather literally as an
attempt to reconstruct what previously was, this suggests looking back-
ward and returning to the past. Indeed, as historian Mark Mazower has
pointed out, “talk about reconstruction begged the question of which
past people wanted, or thought they wanted, to reconstruct.”35 Another
question is, how did those involved in and impacted by reconstruction
define it at the time? Thinking about books and libraries, in 1946 American
lawyer John Marshall, Associate Director of the Humanities at the
Rockefeller Foundation in New York and a friend to UNESCO, addressed
the question directly. He wrote, “It has been sometimes said that the best
means of filling the gaps which the war left in the collections of the world’s
major libraries is to bring the international book trade ‘back to normal.’
But ‘back to normal’ is a misleading phrase.” It was misleading because,
35
Mark Mazower, “Reconstruction: The Historiographical Issues,” Past and Present 210
Supplement 6 (2011), 26.
1 INTRODUCTION: THE UNESCO LIBRARIES SECTION 15
to what extent would trying to return to a prewar normal have been pos-
sible, or in some cases even desirable?36
Rather, many viewed 1945 as a tabula rasa moment in which to learn
and gather inspiration from the past with an eye to constructing a new and
improved future. That was certainly the perspective taken by the Libraries
Section. As Carter explained, “reconstruction does not imply simply the
distribution of gifts, important as those may be: it is much more important
to assist in the creation and development of agencies and in the develop-
ment of techniques which will be continuing and effective means of assur-
ing the free flow and the proper use of materials on education, science and
culture.”37 In the creation and development of those new agencies and
techniques UNESCO had no intention of helping libraries recreate their
past by seeking only to replace or reproduce what had been damaged,
destroyed, or lost. On the contrary, UNESCO insisted that libraries
requesting its support and assistance develop a new vision for the future,
for change, modernization, and expansion:
The present and future system as envisioned by UNESCO and its support-
ers required reconstructing and rehabilitating war-impacted libraries in
the short term, and “selling” the public library idea worldwide in the long
term. In the true sense of reconstructing something new the Libraries
Section’s concern was “not with libraries in the traditional sense of collec-
tions of books, but with library services – with emphasis on the word
36
For additional discussion on the question of normality and a return to normality postwar
see Richard Bessel and Dirk Shumann, eds., Life after Death: Approaches to a Cultural and
Social History of Europe during the 1940s and 1950s (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2003): 5–6.
37
Edward J. Carter, “A Reply to Dr. Sigerist’s ‘Open Letter to UNESCO,’ ” Bulletin of the
History of Medicine 22 (March–April 1948): 834.
38
Emphasis in original. UNESCO Preparatory Commission, Committee on Libraries,
Museums, Publications and Special Projects, Memorandum on Problems and Policies,
Section I Preamble. UA, Preparatory Commission, London-Paris 1945–1946, Vol. V
Programme Committees.
16 M. INTRATOR
39
UNESCO Preparatory Commission, The Libraries Programme, Opening Remarks by
the Counsellor, 31 May 1946. UA, Preparatory Commission, Vol. V Program Committees.
40
John Marshall, Report prepared for use in connection with the 1946 President’s Review.
Rockefeller Archive Center (hereafter RAC), RG 3 Series 900 Box 24 Folder 191, 900
Program and Policy – Literature Aid 1945–1955.
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
Psykologiaa täydellä höyryllä. Kiitävä kolmivaljakko. Prokuraattorin
puheen loppu.
— Loppusumman laski.
— Väärin, väärin.
Toisessa ryhmässä:
— Hermostunut mies.
Kolmannessa ryhmässä:
— Vanha haaska.
— No, sanoipa hän mitä tahansa, niin ei hän saa meidän moukkia
mukaansa temmatuksi.
— Niinkö luulette?
Neljännessä ryhmässä:
— Kuinka niin?
— Valetta.
10.