Posted September 24, 2004.

Weimar Fire Losses Rise to 50,000 Books

Curators of the Duchess Anna Amalia Library in Weimar, Germany, now put the number of volumes destroyed September 2 in a devastating fire at 50,000, some 20,000 more than their original estimate and approximately 20% of the entire collection. An additional 62,000 burned or waterlogged books have been taken to the Center for Book Preservation in Leipzig for deep-freezing, the Thüringer Allgemeine reported September 21.

The library has established on its website a searchable database of rare books known to have been destroyed in the fire, in the hopes that collectors might donate replacements.

Hellmut Seeman, president of the Weimar Classics Foundation that administers the library, estimates that restoring the most severely damaged books will cost at least 2600 Euros ($3,190 U.S.) per volume. He said a realistic figure to restore the entire collection and repair the damaged library could go as high as $73 million.

Posted September 24, 2004.