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The Behaim Globe in Nuremberg

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Daniel Karmann / dpa

Unesco has added four cultural assets from Germany to the Memory of the World: ten manuscripts from the court school of Emperor Charlemagne with the Trier Ada Gospel Book as their main work, the Behaim Globe in the Germanisches Nationalmuseum Nuremberg, the Codex Manesse of the Heidelberg University Library and documents on the history of the Hanseatic Hanseatic League (Lübeck).

The Executive Board of the World Cultural Organization approved the inclusion of a total of 64 documents in the international UNESCO registry "Memory of the World". The decisions were announced by Unesco after consultations in Paris. "I am delighted with Unesco's decision," said Joachim-Felix Leonhard, Chairman of the German Nomination Committee for Memory of the World Register.

The Ada Gospel Book with 172 parchment pages and a precious book cover made of gold and precious stones is in the Scientific Library of the City of Trier. The other Carolingian manuscripts are preserved throughout Europe. The Trier City Library had launched the application together with the French National Library in Paris. The precious illuminated manuscripts are around 1200 years old. Most of them contain the Latin text of the four Gospels, are written in gold ink and have portraits of the evangelists.

Germany represented with a total of 28 documents

At around 530 years old, the Behaim globe is the oldest surviving globe in the world. With its hundreds of pictograms and place names, small narrative texts, images of rulers, coats of arms, mythical creatures and exotic animals, the globe conveys an encyclopedic picture of geographical and historical knowledge at the end of the Middle Ages, the German UNESCO Commission announced.

496 documents are now part of the Memory of the World worldwide, including 28 from Germany. The corresponding Unesco programme has been in existence since 1992. The aim of the international register is to "secure, make accessible and draw attention to the importance of documentary evidence of exceptional value in archives, libraries and museums," the commission said.

atb/dpa