Library Destruction
Whether intentional or accidental, library destruction has occurred almost as long as libraries themselves have existed. Libraries can be accidentally destroyed by natural disasters, or from within by student and staff negligence, theft, or corruption. Stephen Blumberg justified his thefts in part by a claim that he was “saving” books from libraries. The external destruction of libraries is often much more controversial and often connected to war or violent conflict. UNESCO recognizes libraries as sites of “documentary heritage” which need to be preserved. Armed conflicts which aim to destroy the opponent’s ethnic or cultural heritage frequently target institutions, like libraries, which house the relics and evidence of that heritage. The 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection for Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict protects “cultural property” and criminalizes its destruction. This “cultural property” includes manuscripts, collections of books or archives, and the buildings which house them. Policies like the Hague Convention represent the international response to the unprecedented number of libraries deliberately destroyed as an act of war in the 20th century.
Library of Alexandria: Internal and External Vulnerability
The most famous lost library prior to the 20th century was the Library of Alexandria. Written evidence confirms that this library was certainly threatened internally, while its external destruction continues to be debated. There are claims that the “outer library” contained over 42,000 papyrus rolls, with the royal collection consisting of 400,000 “composite rolls” and 90,000 “single rolls.” This collection aspired to represent every written work from every place, from the entire history of written language. The enormity of this collection birthed many of the first registration, classification, and cataloguing methods seen in libraries today. However, texts were often inaccurately rewritten during translation. Efforts to classify and identify works led to their being mistaken for others. Forgers profited off Alexandrian librarians’ ambition by falsifying the works of classical authors. A variety of rumors and stories over the centuries have attempted to account for the library’s external destruction. Contemporaries describe the burning of the library during Caesar’s war with Alexandria around 47/48 B.C. Over time, the number of books supposedly lost in the flames has grown from 40,000 to 700,000. Other sources, however, discuss the fires but not their impact on the library; still others describe the library after its rumored burning. The library could have been destroyed by any number of events, since the period immediately following Caesar’s civil war is noted for its instability. (Heller-Roazen, 2002).
Hundreds of libraries around the world were destroyed in the centuries after Alexandria. Here are just a few notable examples.
Between 1536 and 1540, King Henry VIII, intent on destroying Catholicism in England, erased hundreds of monastic libraries from the map. In 1562, Franciscan friars in the New World burned ancient indigenous records which documented family lines and property as well as the lunar cycles tracked for agricultural purposes. In the war of 1812, British forces seized the U.S Capitol and burned the north wing of the congressional library. Thomas Jefferson replaced the lost books by selling his vast personal collection to Congress after a new library was constructed. (Ovenden, 2020).
Library Destruction in the 20th Century
Hundreds of libraries were destroyed in the 20th century; there is no way to describe each event. The destruction of libraries by the National Socialist regime cannot be overlooked. In addition to book burnings, Nazis purged their domestic libraries and destroyed those of their enemies, such as the library at the Belgian University of Louvain and the Royal State Archive in Naples. In Nazi-occupied areas, librarians sometimes bargained with Nazi ideals for their own survival, assuming an important role in the cultivation of the Reich’s ideology. Individuals also burned personal libraries in order to avoid being caught in the event of an unexpected home raid.
One of the most notable events of library destruction took place in Bosnia during the Yugoslav Wars. In 1992, Serbian nationalists shelled and burned Bosnia’s National and University Library on the Sarajevo riverfront. The library housed 1.5 million volumes and 155,000 rare books and manuscripts. It held the country’s national archives, newspapers, and university collections. The library burned for three days. Civilians managed to rescue a small number of precious books, but the remaining relics of national heritage were, with the library, reduced to ash. In the same year, nationalists bombed the Archives of Herzegovina, the University of Mostar Library, and many other libraries throughout the city of Mostar. Only three months prior, Sarajevo’s Oriental Institute was burned. Lost within the flames were 5,263 bound manuscripts, 7,000 Ottoman documents, five centuries worth of Bosnian history, and 200,000 other Ottoman-era documents. This eradication of documentary heritage served the nationalists’ aim of eliminating all evidence of the country’s diverse history. Both the Nazis and Serbs carried out library destruction for the purpose of ideological, cultural, or ethnic cleansing. (Battles, 2004).
UNESCO
The devastation of cultural heritage in the former Yugoslavia prompted UNESCO, for the first time in its history, to weigh in on an armed conflict. The updated Hague Convention of 1999 imposed criminal responsibility for violations of the international law that protected documentary heritage. The problem, however, is enforcement. How can a convicted criminal compensate for injuries to victims whose cultural property has been destroyed? Sanja Zgonjanin argues, “without efficient and speedy prosecution of the individuals responsible explicitly for the crimes of library and archive destruction, the assault on the documentary heritage of the world will continue.” Unfortunately, these words have proved true, with continuing attacks on libraries and archives in the 21st century, including in Iraq, Mali, and Afghanistan, among other places.
Blumberg and Libraries
Blumberg participated in the destruction of libraries from the inside-out through theft. He despised libraries, as well as “the establishment,” and targeted them out of revenge. He mourned the loss of his historic nineteenth-century mansion in Minneapolis and stole rare books from the era during which it had been built as a way of reclaiming his home. In contrast, his legal team argued that Blumberg sought to save Americana from libraries that neglected it. His words and actions reveal that he did not aim to acquire relics of the past for public benefit, rather for himself. He abhorred the modernizing of library collections and saw himself as a representative of a lost age. After he mentioned his collection of works by nineteenth-century historian Robert Clarke, Blumberg’s interviewer Philip Weiss interjected, “but Robert Clarke is dead, isn’t he?” Blumberg nodded and said “but isn’t it nice we can talk about him? Most of the librarians wouldn’t even know who he was or what significance he had. We haven’t forgotten about him.” By stealing books from libraries across the United States, Blumberg deprived readers from having access to them at all, at least for a time.