Odesa customs officials successfully prevented the illegal export of two books from the XIX – early XX century from Ukraine. This was reported by the customs press service.
The incident occurred at the «Reni-Dzhurdzhulesht» border crossing. During a customs inspection of a bus heading to Bulgaria, officials discovered an entire collection of works by German poets Friedrich Schiller, printed in 1883 in Stuttgart, and Eduard Mörike, published in 1904 in Dresden, in the suitcase of a Ukrainian passenger.
The customs service also noted that the stamps and markings indicate that both books were part of the collection of the Odesa Regional Universal Scientific Library named after M.S. Grushevsky.
«This is one of the largest and oldest libraries in Odesa, established in 1875. The library operated even during the occupation of Odesa in World War II, as evidenced by a stamp in Romanian», the statement reads.
The books were confiscated under a protocol for customs violations, with an expert evaluation to determine their status as cultural and historical values.