An International Scandal

French President Emmanuel Macron, during an official visit to the Vatican, gave Pope Francis the first edition of Immanuel Kant’s work entitled “Projet de paix perpétuelle” (“Perpetual Peace”) from 1796. When the photos of this small but very valuable book were released into the world, a scandal broke out on an international scale. On the title page of the work there is a stamp of the Academic Reading Room in Lviv, which proves that the old print comes from Polish collections and suggests that it may have been looted.

The office of the French president announced that the first edition of Kant’s work was legally purchased in one of the French antiquarian shops. How did a book from Lviv end up in Paris? Let’s go back for a moment to the second half of the 19th century. The Academic Reading Room in Lviv was established on April 1, 1867, as the first Polish scientific academic society. It operated until 1939.

The beginning of the 20th century is a dramatic period in the history of Lviv, initiated by the outbreak of World War I in 1914. For almost 6 years of constant fighting and occupation, the city passed from hand to hand. At that time, the first edition of Kant’s “Perpetual Peace” could have found its way into the hands of Russians, Austrians, Ukrainians… However, it turned out that the book had already found its way outside of Poland.

A French antiquarian firm said it had owned Kant’s work since 1906. “This book, apart from the stamp from Lviv, has a mark with a record of the sale by Lucien Bodin, a French specialist in esoterics, which took place at the beginning of the 20th century at the latest,” said Dr. Łukasz Kamiński, director of the National Institute of Ossoliński, in an interview with Polsat News. At that time, other old prints from the Reading Room in Lviv also hit the market. Evidently the administrators of the time felt it necessary to sell some of the old works and acquire newer items. A copy of Kant’s treatise, which the pope received, was bought for 2,500 euros, and the book itself has been in France since the beginning of the 20th century, so it is clearly not a “Polish war loss”.

In this case, the matter became clear. But by the way, it is worth recalling that since 1772 (the first partition of Poland), the partitioning powers took away from Poland huge amounts of archival and library collections, works of art and historical souvenirs. Some of them were recovered thanks to the unprecedented and courageous actions of the Mixed Special Commission and the Mixed Recovery Commission, established in 1921, whose task was to negotiate with the Russians on the return of looted cultural goods. Actions regarding the recovery of Polish cultural monuments from Russia lasted for over 15 years, resulting in the return of tens of thousands of works of art and cultural monuments to the country. However, the joy of recovering valuable collections did not last long. From September 1939 to May 1945, the Germans, together with the Russians, again engaged in the systematic looting of Polish cultural heritage. Many works lost during World War II have still not been found.

The More Than Poland Foundation deals with the search for lost works of art around the world. It is assisted by collectors, art historians, museologists, antique shops, and non-governmental organizations. If you want to report the loss or theft of a work of art – we are ready to help: +48 58 354 11 37, fundacja@wiecejnizpolska.pl