A couple of links:
- The building housing the archives of the city of Cologne has collapsed. “Two or three” people may have been killed; the material destroyed includes the “minutes of all town council meetings held since 1376” and the papers of Heinrich Böll.
- And a fresh episode of horror in Zimbabwe….
The Edge of the American West 
4 comments
March 6, 2009 at 6:13 pm
Charlieford
I was going to say, “That’s what happens with 14th c. buildings.” But 1971! Sheesh, I’m older than that building, and I haven’t collapsed yet.
March 6, 2009 at 7:02 pm
acdeeker
Böll – most famous outside Germany for his novel Group Portrait with Lady
I’m no Böll scholar – I try to avoid him as much as possible, actually – but huh. I’ve never heard of this book.
March 6, 2009 at 7:34 pm
Vance
I haven’t read Gruppenbild — the one I remember best is Billard um Halbzehn. It was fun to read while learning German, but stiflingly moralistic. If I knew German better, I would probably have had a better idea where to look for books. In any case, the irony here (perhaps in the Morrissettian sense) is that his heirs had gone to great trouble to get his papers transferred to Cologne, from Boston.
Apparently the collapse was precipitated by other construction in the area, as if the foundations had given way. Whatever the mechanism, the building looks as though it had been bombed.
March 6, 2009 at 9:40 pm
Anderson
Oy, that’s terrible.
And I started to read the Billiards book but never “got into it.”
… Morrisette got a bad rap b/c everyone enjoyed hating her. Being too afraid to fly, & then crashing your first time, *is* ironic. People think verbal irony is the only kind.