Rare books stolen from university in Poland

KRAKOW, Poland -- For serious scholars, the Jagiellonian University library evokes the heady smell of precious pages from the past -- works by such Renaissance giants as Copernicus and Galileo.

Serious thieves smelled something else in the prestigious Polish library's aging stacks: cold cash.

In an unsolved caper that has humiliated guardians of the renowned medieval collection, at least 58 manuscripts disappeared six months ago.

A few surfaced last month as they were about to go on sale at a German auction house. But that has done little to ease the embarrassment and pain at the Jagiellonian University, a 600-year-old center of learning named for King Wladyslaw Jagiello, who greatly expanded it.

The library houses more than 3.5 million works, including some of the nation's most precious manuscripts. Copernicus studied at the Jagiellonian, as did a young Karol Wojtyla, now Pope John Paul II.

Today their bags would be subject to searches and they would have to go through rigorous bureaucratic channels for permission to examine even one old title.

"This is the price that thousands of library users are paying," university spokesman Leszek Sliwa said last week. "Library patrons would skin the thief alive because now it is much more difficult to get to the books."

Library officials are not sure how much the books might bring on the antiques market, where valuation is highly subjective. One missing manuscript alone -- a 1543 copy of Copernicus' planetary motion theory -- is believed to be worth a half-million dollars.

It isn't clear how the books were smuggled out, but there are some clues.

The head of special collections, Zdzislaw Pietrzyk, said a librarian noticed some oddities last April in the library's inner sanctum: a book sticking awkwardly out of a row, another stored upside down. A frantic inventory of the medieval collection's 300,000 volumes ensued.

Most of the missing titles had been removed from protective covers and replaced with less valuable books. Library staff members make only $190 to $285 a month, leading to speculation that it would have been easy to bribe an insider.

Pietrzyk bristles at suggestions it could be someone from his select staff of 35, saying he could "not imagine" anyone among them "would try to violate the sanctity" of the library.

Prosecutors are hoping for some answers from a Bulgarian student who was arrested last month after about 60 books from the Jagiellonian were found in his Krakow apartment. So far, no evidence has emerged linking him to the missing medieval manuscripts.

Inevitably, Poland's 10-year struggle with post-communist economic reforms gets some blame for the lax security. Pleas for more money from the cash-strapped government have gone unanswered for years, said Krzysztof Krolas, head of finance at the university.

But the scandal has prompted some changes. A U.S. security system -- including remote cameras and alarms -- costing $171,000 is being installed a year earlier than planned.

Polish investigators say they have identified 18 Jagiellonian titles that were to go on sale at the Reiss and Sohn auction house in Koenigstein, Germany, including a 15th-century copy of a work by astronomer Ptolemy.

Krakow prosecutors want the books back, but prospects are uncertain. Frankfurt prosecutors have only approved the confiscation of 11 of the 18 titles claimed by Polish investigators, and say it will be up to the German courts to determine ownership.

"What has happened is that now auction houses in Germany that have a Kepler, a Copernicus or a Galileo immediately come under suspicion," said Friedrich Ziska of the Ziska F. and Kistner R. auction house in Munich.

"These people just cannot understand that there is more than one copy" of such works, he said.