A medieval document taken during the First World War by a German soldier has been returned to the State Archives in Bruges. A German man found the document in a house he had bought and first attempted to sell it. The Bruges state archivist travelled to Stuttgart to meet the anonymous man in a hotel lobby.
State archivist Hendrik Callewier received an email from an anonymous German who had found an important document from 1433-1438 from the Abbey of Mesen in West Flanders. He wanted to sell it for at least €20,000.
“We know that the abbey was completely looted by the Germans during the First World War,” said Callewier. “So we replied that the document was in fact the property of the Belgian state and that selling it would be illegal.”
Nothing happened for months, until the seller had a sudden change of heart. “He wrote that he was having a crisis of conscience,” says Callewier.
“He ultimately wanted to donate it, but it had to be done anonymously. His email address was anonymous; he only introduced himself as Herr Robert. He wanted to meet in a hotel lobby in Stuttgart on a specific day and at a specific time. I decided to take a chance and go there.”
Callewier emailed a photo of himself so the man would be able to recognise me. “And sure enough, just before 6pm, at the agreed time, a middle-aged man entered the lobby with a briefcase. He addressed me with the words ‘Sind Sie Herr Callewier?’. And then he took the medieval register out of his briefcase. In the end, we chatted for a while.”
The man introduced himself as Mr Robert, which turned out to be his real name. He had found the documents in his new house after buying it at a public auction. The previous owner had debts, had disappeared without a trace and left everything behind. The man felt he had paid too much for the house, so he tried to sell the documents to recoup some of the money.
Through experts and auction houses, he learned that it came from Mesen, or Messines, and not from Messina in Sicily, as he had first thought.
“From the photos of the document he sent in his first email, we knew immediately what it was,” says Callewier. “These are accounts from the 1430s. That may sound boring, but it’s of great historical importance. It says a lot about the history of the region and the abbey.”
Mesen was destroyed in 1914. German soldiers took manuscripts from the ruins of the abbey back to Germany and archivists are trying to recover as many as possible. Callewier: “Sometimes we need a bit of luck, as in this case.”