PRAGUE (AP) — A musical manuscript handwritten by Ludwig van Beethoven is getting returned to the heirs of the richest family in pre-World War II Czechoslovakia, whose members had to flee the country to escape the Holocaust.
Museums, archives and libraries in the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Poland and the United States currently have almost 300 pages of the entire autograph in their possession.
The family tried but failed to send the manuscript abroad by mail in March 1939 during the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia, drawing the attention of the Gestapo. The lie could have cost him dearly, but it worked; the museum was allowed to keep the piece. However, the Nazis seized most of the Petschek family’s assets and possessions, which Czechoslovakia’s Communist regime nationalized after the war.From his new home in the United States, Franz Petschek, who had run the family’s mining businesses in Czechoslovakia, tried to get the piece back but was unsuccessful due to the post-war division in Europe and creation of the Iron Curtain.
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