Workers managed to save some 6,000 books—including a 1534 Martin Luther Bible and travel papers by naturalist and explorer Alexander von Humboldt—stored in the upper floor by passing them along hand to hand, according to an Associated Press report.
Officials suspected an electrical short-circuit had caused the fire, although the investigation was still underway the next day. “We were always aware of that risk,” Library Director Michael Knoche said in the September 3 Thüringische Landeszeitung, adding that many of the books were not covered by insurance because they were irreplaceable. Curators had already begun moving the collection to a nearby underground facility in preparation for the building’s renovation, scheduled to begin in five weeks.
“Tonight we came within a hair’s breadth of completely losing the sources of our national classical culture,” said Hellmut Seemann, president of the Weimar Classics Foundation, the cultural organization that administers the library, which contains the world’s largest collection of materials on German playwright Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Faust.
Posted September 3, 2004.