["Spoils of war"--losses of the Berlin Veterinary Medicine Library in 1945].

All the German veterinary libraries suffered heavy losses during World War II and its aftermath, but the Berlin Veterinary Faculty, whose library was known until 1945 as the biggest veterinary book collection of the world, was exceedingly affected. The reports on the damage during these years note losses of up to 35,000 or 43,000 of nearly 60,000 books. Actually, diverse papers did mention this fact but they concealed the underlying causes of the losses or simply referred to effects of war. However, new evidence allows to claim, that most of the losses have been caused by a very different measure: the confiscation of parts of the library by units of the Soviet Army in May and June 1945 as spoils of war. Eye witnesses and unpublished official as well as unofficial reports show that the choice as to what books should be seized was purposefully made according to special criteria: the most modern specialists' literature (journals and books) and the rare books of bibliophilic value. The library lost important parts of its stock: medical books, parts of the irreplaceable historical collection in veterinary medicine, the foreign language books, the biggest part of the natural science literature (physics, chemistry, biology with botany and zoology) and books on adjacent fields of interest (geography and travel literature, belles lettres, history, philosophy and so on). This contribution deals with the events during the weeks before and after VE day and the course of measures taken in selecting and expropriating the books mentioned above. It is intended to invite additional contemporary witnesses who might bei knowledgeable about these events to help in specifying them more precisely and clearing open questions, which still remain.