Authors

Discussion

During the Great War, On 22 January 1917, the Romanian Academy was occupied by a platoon of German military police under the command of a Bulgarian lieutenant who seized the Slavonic manuscripts. A total of 607 volumes were stored on the premises of a German-Romanian bank. Following the protest letter of the Romanian government's guarantor, Lupu Kostaki, submitted to the German Field Marshal Mackensen, the latter immediately ordered an investigation to be started, and after seven days (29 January 1917) the Slavonic manuscripts were returned and put back in their place. But not for long. In February 1917, Professor L.K. Goetz of the University of Bonn, accompanied by the Prefect of the Bucharest Police (Al. Tzigara- Samurcaş) and Lieutenant Valk of the German military police, arrived at the Academy. The German scholar took up residence in a room in the library, where he carefully placed the mountain of manuscripts under lock and key, working with the Romanian Slavic scholar Ioan Bogdan to inventory them. After this preliminary training, Professor Goetz returned to the Academy in mid-June, accompanied by Baron Welser, Chief of the Administrative Staff. At that time 305 volumes, chosen from a total of 607, were collected and placed at the disposal of two Bulgarian officers . The minutes stated that the confiscated manuscripts would be sent to Sofia for study (Studienzwecke) and that legal ownership would be determined at a later date. The German command had been called upon to arbitrate a Romanian-Bulgarian dispute with an obvious cultural undercurrent, and featuring national pride and uncontrollable ambitions. Protesting, the Romanian side claimed patrimonial rights to the confiscated property in accordance with the Convention on the Laws and Customs of War on Land adopted at the Second International Conference in The Hague (1907). Despite the insistence of the Romanian Academy, the manuscripts collected and sent to Sofia were not returned until after the war. Under the Neuilly Peace Treaty (September 1919), Bulgaria undertook to return to Romania all documents and heritage objects confiscated during the war. In early May (1920), 307 Slavic manuscripts were recovered from the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences and transferred to Bucharest. My paper traces the unfolding of the German "arbitration" in terms of a political affair within which the parties involved (Romanians and Bulgarians) argued oftentimes using evidence of their cultural belonging. This presentation can also be understood as an opportunity to debate the issue of the protection of cultural artefacts in the situation of modern warfare and the uncontrolled exercise of power in the territories under military administration.