“For the best part of a decade, the heirs of German writer and Nobel prize laureate Heinrich Böll worked on hammering out a deal with the city of Cologne over the transfer of his private papers to the state archives.
“Three weeks ago, city officials held a special ceremony to mark the historic handover: for €800,000 (£712,000), the Cologne archives took possession of hundreds of boxes containing items ranging from Böll’s school reports to scripts of his radio plays, novels and essays by Germany’s most popular post-second world war writer, who died in 1985 at the age of 67.
“But his papers and unpublished works may have been lost for ever after the collapse of the archives building this week. . . .
“The Böll documents are just a small part of the losses to the archives which contained almost 30km of files, including articles written by Karl Marx, letters by Georg Hegel, writings by composer Jacques Offenbach and edicts issued by Napoleon Bonaparte, as well as the minutes of city council meetings going back to 1376, which offer a fascinating portrait of medieval Cologne.” (more @ The Guardian)
A video of the post collapse excavations can be viewed here. (via Books, Inq.)
The 'Not-So-Rough' Guide 
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