Historic German library badly damaged by fire

[Kellanved]

BERLIN (Reuters) - One of Germany's most historic libraries has been badly damaged by a fire, police say.

A police spokesman said the fire, reported by a tourist at 7:30 p.m. British time on Thursday, had destroyed at least two thirds of the roof of the Anna Amalia library in Weimar.

...
According to its Web site, the library houses some one million works, including 2,000 rare manuscripts from the Middle Ages, a collection of bibles from the 16th century, a papal edict issued against Martin Luther and letters of Germany's first chancellor, Otto von Bismarck.


http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsPackageArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=575943§ion=news


Reuters forgot about the largest collection of Goethe's Faust editions and one of the world's largest collections of Shakespeare originals.

[DrWeird]

1. Somewhere there's a time-traveling Oragutang...

that saved all those manuscripts a second before they went up in flames.

So no worries.

[Kellanved]

2. Yeah, but what good are these at U-U?

At least there is hope that the damage did not reach the lower levels.


That is the problem with keeping historic documents in historic buildings.

monkey

[sasquatch]

3. Dammit! I hope all of the historical documents are OK

Espically the Papal edict against Martin Luther that is a document of HUGE importance to western civilizations history.

[Kellanved]

4. update

The damages is still being assessed. The medieval Bibles (including the Luther Bible) were saved, the music library lost (including the Bach, Haydn, Mozart, ... originals).

The state of the Kafka, Schiller and Goethe origial scripts, as well as of the Shakespeare collection is still unknown.

http://www.spiegel.de/video/0,4916,3203,00.html

http://www.expatica.com/source/site_article.asp?subchannel_id=26&story_id=11389