Fahrenheit 451 - burning libraries and the destruction of cultural heritage

Libraries Destroyed In Mosul, Burning Thousands Of Rare Books, Manuscripts and Artifacts

The Mosul Public Library, a city landmark and cultural treasure, was destroyed by ISIS forces. Sadly, this loss comes after the painstaking recovery and restoration of the library after being partially destroyed and looted during the Iraq war in 2003. Locals had saved and bought back many of the lost contents. This time, flames and explosions destroyed both the building and its contents. Destroying over 8,000 manuscripts, rare printed books, newspapers, and historical artifacts. This is not the first instance of ISIS destruction of libraries and other cultural and historic sites. The Mosul University’s Central Library and several Coptic and Christian churches previously met similar fates.

Inquisitor Article

http://www.inquisitr.com/1872585/isis-destroys-library-in-mosul-burning-rare-man...

In the modern age there should be a general policy to digitize rare texts as a campaign of preservation. Unfortunately funding is scarce as well as local motivation when displaced populations are fighting to survive.

This just makes me ill to think of it.

I feel sick and saddened by the thought of this. I don't subscribe to any particular religion but the mere thought that someone can be persuaded to believe that they have the right to destroy a countries cultural heritage and erase its history by burning books and manuscripts and to destroy landmarks is beyond me. It sickens me. No one has the right. They should do themselves a favour and jump into the flames.

It is not uncommon when one is doing research in German libraries and archives to find catalogue entries marked, "Kriegsverlust"--"Lost to war."

A friend of mine who is on the faculty at the University of Bonn recently posted this anecdote from a tour by the rare-books librarian:

We weren't allowed to go into the room where the manuscripts are stored but we did get a look at the print books, underground. There is a card catalogue of Kriegsverluste, books burned when Bonn was bombed. The library was in the main palace back then, basically where I now work, and the books that happened to be stored offsite -- law, medicine, literature -- basically survived. The books still in the palace then, like linguistics or classics, are gone. The old catalogues were also destroyed, but apparently in 1943 Ernst Robert Curtius' wife was tasked with photographing them. The photographs survived and have been reprinted and bound, but she was not really a photographer and many of the pages are out of focus.

Does it get any more Borgesian?

ETA: One of the great tragedies of Kriegsverlust for students of medieval women is that two of the 12th-century's greatest illuminated manuscripts, both designed by women (Herrad of Hohenburg's "Hortus Deliciarum" and Hildegard of Bingen's Rupertsberg "Scivias"), have been lost -- the Hortus to the siege of Strassburg by the Prussians in 1870, and the Scivias after its evacuation (for safe keeping!) to Dresden in early 1945. (There is hope for the latter, however: it turns out the other major manuscript from Hildegard's abbey, the Riesenkodex, was kept in the same bank vault in Dresden; and it DID survive, having been repatriated to Wiesbaden from the Soviets in 1947. I suspect that the lost manuscript may be hiding in the Hermitage in St. Petersburg!)

>4 ironjaw: No one has the right. They should do themselves a favour and jump into the flames.

In Susanna Clarke's remarkable novel Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, "Book Murder" is an actual crime, punishable by hanging.

I believe it was in Dresden a few years ago where I saw a bust that had come through the firebombing. Even though it was stone the heat from the fire had caused it to crack so all detail was destroyed and all you could see was a hunk of burned stone with what appeared to be an open mouth. They had pre-war photos along with it for the before and after. It had been exquisite with amazing detail. It certainly made you stop and think about the cost of war. And now I'm going to have to do research to remember who the bust was of. Seemed to be some sort of cleric with suitable attire and a little flat topped hat. If anyone knows the piece I'm think of please let me know.

The destructions are so sad and a loss for all of us. I have been to the Gutenberg Museum in Mainz and would hate to see it destroyed.

Yes.

Think of it: the wanton destruction of public monuments simply because a group finds them ideologically offensive.

But that's par for religious fanaticism. Islamic fundamentalists are ruled by a dogmatic view of life and the world which leaves them intolerant of anyone and anything which deviates from their dogma. Where they can gain the power of official authority, they use it to destroy and supress what they do not approve; where they lack that authority, they use outlaws' force of violence.

Such is what free nations and free peoples have, from long struggles through misery and strife, learned to leave behind.

For them, none of this sort of stuff:


(Photograph by Youssef Badawi, EPA/Cobis)
(The National Geographic) Here Are the Ancient Sites ISIS Has Damaged and Destroyed | Shocking destruction in the Syrian city of Palmyra is part of the militant group's ongoing campaign against archaeology.