Provenance Research :

Herbarium Hamburgense (Hamburg Herbarium)

Archive
Herbarium Hamburgense (Hamburg Herbarium)

Research into Nazi-confiscated property in the herbarium's collection
The Herbarium believes it holds no looted material.

Research into property missing from the herbarium
The Herbarium was placed in wartime storage in 1943. Approximately a quarter of it was taken to Schloß Mutzchen (Mutzchen Castle) near Dresden from where it was removed by Soviet authorities in 1945. In the 1960s the material was taken to East Berlin. After long efforts to achieve the return of the material and extended negotiations, the entire collection, bar one or two bundles of orchids from the genus Odontoglossum, was finally returned to the Herbarium from East Berlin in 1988.

Contact Details
Dr. Hans-Helmut Poppendieck
Curator of Phanerogams
Herbarium Hamburgense (HB)
Institut für Allgemeine Botanik
Ohnhornstr. 18
22609 Hamburg
Tel: +49 (0) 40 428258
Fax: +49 (0) 40 428261

Source
Central Registry Archives,  Correspondence, 26 September 2002  

H-H. Poppendieck, 'A Botanical Odyssey: the evacuation of the Hamburg Herbarium 1943-1990', in B.S. Rushton, P. Hackney and C.R. Tyrie (eds) Biological Collections and Biodiversity (2001)