US family returns 500-year-old book
Culture
After 77 years, a book that disappeared in 1945 and is around 500 years old is now returning to the University of Salzburg – from the south of the USA. At the end of the Second World War, much of a valuable collection was lost, including manuscripts, graphics and prints.
Now the family of Jill and Ronald Rogers in Texas is returning the valuable book to Salzburg. She had received it from an inheritance. A soldier in the US Army, which also liberated Salzburg from the National Socialists’ reign of terror, took the book to the USA in the 1940s. It is part of a whole collection of missing items.
Nazis moved collection to Hallein
The valuable cultural assets include medieval manuscripts, illuminated book illumination and old prints with woodcuts. In 1942 it was to be protected from bombing raids. Nazi authorities shipped the material to the Wolf-Dietrich tunnels on the Dürrnberg near Hallein (Tennengau).
Prints from 1510 and 1516
At 15 centimeters high and ten centimeters wide, the book is small, but fine, experts say. It keeps two prints between its covers. The first part consists of “42 rules that a Christian person should follow” – from the year 1510. The second part is illustrated with many woodcuts and contains “The Life and Miracles of Saint Wolfgang” – from the year 1516.
The saint is said to have worked many miracles in the Salzburg region – the last of which is perhaps this return of the book to the university library.
Disappeared in spring 1945
When the Allies invaded in May 1945, troops from the American Rainbow Division found these treasures from the Salzburg Study Library. In unobserved moments, the cultural asset changed hands. Some came back to Salzburg in the 1950s – sent from the USA in an anonymous package. Much remained and remains but further disappeared.
Ceremony at the university on Thursday evening
In rare cases of luck, lost magnificent works turn up at auctions or inheritances – this is also the case with the most recently returned treasure. A book was found in the legacy of a Rainbow Division soldier who recently died of very old age, and the existing owners in Texas now want to return it.
The return of the 500-year-old work, which is now returning to the Salzburg University Library after 77 years, will be celebrated at a ceremony on Thursday.