On Monday, 2 June 2014 at 6 p.m., Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier will receive from Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili two books removed from Germany during the Second World War. The artefacts are being returned during a ceremony in the Bode Museum honouring cooperation projects between Georgia and the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation.

The two 18th‑century volumes originate from German public and private collections. They were discovered in the University Library in Tbilisi in 2006 among up to 70,000 books of German provenance removed during the war. After several years of work on the part of the Federal Foreign Office, the Georgian Government has now smoothed the way for the return of these stocks.

The handover in the Bode Museum is the symbolic prelude to the return of the entire collection. A date for the handover of the rest of the books has not yet been fixed.