German fire destroys 30,000 rare books...Congratulations to all the agents involved and thanks to our German allies.
 

With this success we have pushed back the darkness for - hopefully - a long time.

Be seeing you,

Alphonse


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WEIMAR, Germany (Reuters) - A fire in one of Germany's most historic libraries has destroyed up to 30,000 rare books.

"The destruction of many thousands of books, particularly from the 16th to 18th centuries, is an irreplaceable loss to the city's UNESCO World Heritage legacy," the eastern city's mayor, Volkhardt Germer, said on Friday of the fire at the Anna Amalia library.

A spokeswoman for the library, which was founded in 1691 and houses almost 1 million books in several buildings, said the cause of the Thursday evening blaze was still unclear.

"The market value of the stocks damaged and destroyed cannot be estimated, because the stocks were unique and thus there was no insurance cover -- the damage to the building is of a seven figure order," Weimar city council said in a statement.

Around 330 fire fighters battled the blaze in the upper stories of the library's main building, which contains the famous Rococo Hall and holds around 120,000 books. The fire was brought under control shortly before midnight, the council said.

Weimar is one of 788 sites around the globe on the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization's World Heritage List, which seeks to protect and preserve locations deemed to be of outstanding value to humanity.

The library spokeswoman said some 25,000 to 30,000 works including many musical texts had probably been lost, although she added Luther's writings and the library's Bible collection were saved.

Rescuers saved 50,000 of the remaining 90,000 books. The rest were unaffected by the blaze, which has now been extinguished. However, the spokeswoman said water had damaged around 40,000 of the books rescued, some of them severely.