WORLD : Priceless Ancient Gospels, Lost 45 Years, to Return to Germany
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FRANKFURT, West Germany — A priceless 9th-Century manuscript of the Gospels that disappeared near the end of World War II will return to Germany, a government-run foundation said today.
The manuscript, called the Samuhel-Evangeliar in German, disappeared in April, 1945, in the town of Quedlinburg, apparently after U.S. military forces discovered an underground cache of artworks.
“The manuscript is now in Switzerland,” said Erika Lancelle, an official with the foundation. It represents “one of the masterpieces of Carolingian (8th- to late 9th-Century) book illumination,” the foundation said.
Lancelle said there will be a formal ceremony in Berlin to mark the reacquisition of the manuscript, the name of which she translated as Samuhel Gospels. It comes from the year 842 and is named after the scribe who wrote and elaborately decorated it.
Lancelle said that a German antique dealer bought the manuscript from an American lawyer and that the priceless Gospels were then bought by the foundation. The foundation called the $3 million it paid a “finder’s fee.”
It was not explained how the lawyer acquired the Gospels.
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