Bibliophiles and bibliothieves : the search for the Hildebrandslied and the Willehalm Codex / Opritsa D. Popa ; with a preface by Winder McConnell.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Popa, Opritsa D.

Series:

Cultural property studies.

Cultural property studies = Schriften zum Kulturguterschutz

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

World War, 1939-1945--Germany--Art and the war.

World War, 1939-1945.

World War, 1939-1945--Destruction and pillage--Germany.

Art treasures in war--Germany.

Art treasures in war.

Cultural property--Germany.

Cultural property.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (284 p.)

Edition:

Reprint 2015

Place of Publication:

Berlin ; New York : W. de Gruyter, 2003.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

In Bibliophiles and Bibliothieves, Opritsa Popa has documented what might justifiably be described as the most celebrated case of looting of two German cultural treasures by a member of the U.S. Army at the end of World War II and their subsequent odyssey across both an ocean and a continent: the pilfering from a cellar in Bad Wildungen of the ninth-century Liber Sapientiae, containing the two leaves of the oldest extant German heroic poem, the Old High German Hildebrandslied, along with the fourteenth-century illuminated Willehalm codex, both of which had been removed from the State Library in Kassel for protection from bombing raids.

Contents:

Front matter

Preface

Contents

List of Illustrations and Captions

Introduction and Acknowledgments

Liber Sapientiae and Willehalm Codex, 1939-2002 - A Chronology

Chapter 1: “They’ve sown the wind and now they reap the whirlwind”

Chapter 2: “Habent Sua Fata Libelli” - Books Have Their Own Destiny

Chapter 3: Countdown to Surrender

Chapter 4: “Protect and Respect These Symbols...”

Chapter 5: Of US Safe keepers, Soviet Trophy Commissars and Marauding Allied Soldiers

Chapter 6: “Enjoy the War, the Peace Is Going to be Terrible!”

Chapter 7: Hope Deferred

Chapter 8: Going, Going, Gone!

Chapter 9: “Belle of the Books”

Chapter 10: The Professor

Chapter 11: The Countess of Camarillo

Chapter 12: Ardelia

Chapter 13: From the Ashes of the Phoenix

Chapter 14: Return of the Wounded Warrior

Chapter 15: Eyewitness

Chapter 16: Ten Years Later... Proof, Proof and More Proof

Chapter 17: To Err is Human, to Admit, Divine

Chapter 18 : The Owl of Minerva

Chapter 19: “The Last, the Worst, Dull Spoiler, Who Was He?”

Appendix

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references (p. [241]-254) and index.

ISBN:

9786612195600

9781282195608

1282195603

9783110201901

3110201909

OCLC:

476107960