Uneasy Fate of the Baron Ginzburg Collection

Abstract

The article describes the history of appearance of the Baron Ginzburg Collection in the holdings of the Russian State Library. This Collection of Jewish and Arabic books and manuscripts of Baron Ginzburg is considered to be one of the treasures of the Russian State Library. The manuscript part of the Collection consists of 1913 units of the 14th - 19th centuries. In 2010 the Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu during his official visit to the Russian Federation raised the issue of transfer of the Ginzburg Collection to Israel “as a reciprocal gesture of good will” (the building of St. Sergius Metochion in Jerusalem was returned to the Russian Federation at the end of 2008). The search of documents relating to the fate of the Baron Ginzburg Collection in Russia held in the Russian archives produced unexpected results. After the First World War the Society of Friends of the Jewish National and University Library in Jerusalem (JNUL), created in London, got interested in the Ginzburg Collection. At the beginning of the 1920s representatives of JNUL claimed that Baronesse M. Ginzburg had been paid in advance and there had been drawn the act of purchase and sale of the Collection. However, they did not submit any documents which could confirm the version of sale of the Collection. By that time books and manuscripts were nationalized as scientific treasures and got held at the Rumyantsev Museum. The Museum leadership and Soviet Jewish community objected the idea of transfer of the Collection. Director of JNUL G. Leve appealed to V. I. Lenin, to A. Lunacharsky, the People’s Commissar of Education, and to other leaders of the Soviet Russia to solve the matter concerning the transfer of the Collection to Jerusalem. The request was supported by the famous scientist Albert Einstein. His letters to A. Lunacharsky are published for the first time.