Berlinka (art collection)

During the Second World War from September 1942 onwards, German authorities moved the material from Berlin to the seized abbey of Grüssau (present-day Krzeszów) in Prussian Lower Silesia to protect it from Allied strategic bombing.

General, in the lands taken over by Polish administration in 1945, cultural objects today often lack important parts, such as monuments and works of art, which were transported to central Poland in 1945.

Since the jurisdiction of the former eastern territories of Germany was withdrawn by the 1945 Potsdam Agreement, Poland claims that it should retain ownership of the Berlinka as compensation for Polish cultural assets destroyed or looted by Germans during the Second World War.

[1] In summer 2007, Der Spiegel magazine quoted the German Foreign Office representative Julia Gross as saying that proceedings over the disposition had reached a low point.

Among the holdings are notable letters from the large estate of Ludmilla Assing and her uncle Karl August Varnhagen von Ense, personal copies of the Deutsches Wörterbuch with hand-written notes by the Brothers Grimm[6] and original musical scores by Johann Sebastian Bach (and his sons), Mozart (Die Entführung aus dem Serail), Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms, Schumann, Haydn, Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, Paganini, Busoni, Cherubini, and Telemann.