National pride in the interest of science? The Strasbourg mathematical library between Germany and France

The paper outlines the history of libraries at the Strasbourg Universities between the 1880s and post WWII, and focusses on the history of the Strasbourg mathematics library, in particular on its unlikely enrichment during the second WW. The German period of Strasbourg ended with the German defeat in 1918. The subsequent French period was disrupted by the 1939 evacuation of Strasbourg and the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine by the Nazi government in 1940. When Strasbourg was liberated in November 1944, most of the mathematical library was put up elsewhere, a large part of it at Oberwolfach.