Prague Floods Devastate City’s
Library and Archives
The worst flooding in Central Europe in 175 years has destroyed cultural treasures throughout the Czech Republic. As waters from torrential rains began to recede in mid-August, libraries and museums began assessing their losses. The worst damage occurred to special collections in Prague’s Municipal Library, where hundreds of books, including a 1488 Prague Bible—the first in the Czech language and one of only 12 copies worldwide—were soaked.
Rare Book Librarian Pavla Pursova lamented that many of the books had been moved for safekeeping, but the waters had risen much higher than expected. “This is a terrible blow,” she said in the August 22 New York Times. “I want to believe that these books can be at least partly saved, but when I look at them I doubt it.”
Librarians shipped the rare books to a frozen-food processing plant near Mochov that has large freezers for temporary storage, the Associated Press reported August 22. Director Tomas Rehak said an employee had located the facility in the yellow pages. “I knew the name from the back of frozen vegetables,” Rehak said.
Floodwaters from the Vltava River also damaged the archives of the Czech ministries of transport and agriculture, the Military Historical Archive, the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, the Academy of Science, and the Czech Statistical Office. “The damage can be calculated in kilometers, which means tens of thousands of shelves with unique and irreplaceable documents,” Miroslav Kun of the National Central Archive told the Czech news agency August 22.
The Czech National Library in Prague’s Klementinum lost electrical power and heat, but books stored on the upper floors were untouched.
Early reports from Germany indicate that the lower floor of the Technical University in Dresden has been flooded and the city libraries of Pirna and Bad Schandau have been seriously damaged.
Posted August 26, 2002.
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