Hildegard Willoweit, who currently lives in Würzburg, decided to donate part of her late husband’s personal library to Klaipėda for several reasons. The first reason is that Dietmar Willoweit was born in this city in 1936 and spent his early youth there until 1944. The second reason is that the professor followed developments in Klaipėda and was interested in its historical research until the end of his life.
He knew Prof. Vladas Žulkas, the former rector of Klaipėda University, because they both were members of the Commission of Historians of East and West Prussia. In addition, Willoweit wrote reviews and surveys about the work of Klaipėda University historians for a German audience.
A dozen boxes of books from Würzburg arrived in Klaipėda in May this year as a gift to the library of the Institute of Baltic Region History and Archaeology at Klaipėda University. Over the summer, all the books have been added to the library’s collections and are now available to the public.
“That’s over 270 books, mostly published in German. There are not even ten books in other languages. The whole collection – from rare 19th century works to historical works published ten or more years ago – tells a story. They include scholarly works and a small number of publicist’s texts on the past of Klaipėda, Klaipėda Region, East and West Prussia, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. Some of the books we received were already in our possession, but when I found out the family’s will, I thought we should take over the whole collection. Being grateful to Mrs. Hildegard Willoweit for this decision, I see it as another symbolic bridge, posthumously built by Dietmar Willoweit to his hometown”, says Dr. Vasilijus Safronovas, Director of the Institute of Baltic Region History and Archaeology at KU.
Klaipėda University’s Institute of Baltic Region History and Archaeology, the book collections of which were replenished by the gift, has a specialized academic library. It consists of over 35,000 printed items on history, archaeology, and cultural heritage.
The collection of library holdings was initiated in 1992 by former staff of the Institute and their colleagues in Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Poland, Germany, and other countries. The rich collections of the library are used by researchers as well as students of Klaipėda University and other higher education institutions. The library is often visited by non-academics interested in history or archaeology.
Facts:
Dietmar Willoweit, the former owner of the collection, was born on July 17, 1936 in Klaipėda, which was then part of the Republic of Lithuania, into a mixed German and Lithuanian family. He started going to school there. In order to escape the advancing Red Army, the family fled to Germany at the beginning of October 1944, without their father (who, as it later turned out, had died in the war). He changed his place of residence several times and finally ended up in Aschaffenburg, where he graduated from school. From 1956 to 1961 the expatriate from Klaipėda studied law and philosophy at the universities of Heidelberg and Freiburg. He worked as a lawyer for a while, but in 1966 he defended his doctoral thesis on the history of law in Heidelberg.
After that, he regularly pursued an academic career. He held teaching positions in Heidelberg, Hamburg, Regensburg, and Münster. In 1974 he was awarded the rank of Ordinary Professor at the Free University of Berlin, in 1979 – at the University of Tübingen, and in 1984 – at the University of Würzburg. In the last two, he was several times Head of the Faculty of Law of these universities.
From 1996 to 2002, the scientist chaired the Johann Gottfried Herder Research Council, which coordinated research on the history of Eastern Europe in Germany at the time. He has been a member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities since 1988 and its President from 2006 to 2010.
The multi-award-winning scholar has been a member of numerous commissions of historians and legal historians. He visited Lithuania several times and was known to the academic community primarily as the author of numerous scholarly works on the history of constitutional law.
He died on April 24 last year in Würzburg, Bavaria, at the age of 87. He was married to his wife Hildegard Willoweit for 62 years and raised three children.
Gerhard Willoweit (1931-1994), the older brother of Professor Willoweit, also from Klaipėda, was the author of an important study on the economic history of Klaipėda Region prepared in 1968. In 1987-1989, he played an important, though now somewhat forgotten, role in the return to Klaipėda of a significant symbol of the city’s history – the monument to Simon Dach – Tarawa Anike.
