Whereas Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code (2003) was a fictional account with some historical trappings, Popa's highly detailed study of how the manuscripts of the Old High German Hildebrandslied and Wolfram von Eschenbach's Kassel Willehalm Codex disappeared from Germany at the end of the Second World War and how they were eventually retrieved in the United States and returned to the library in Kassel represents a truly fascinating and highly innovative investigation touching upon many different disciplines. The author combines solid knowledge of medieval history and manuscript studies with her impressive understanding of the history of WWII and the postwar period. Anyone who ever wanted to read a sequel to Brown's book, but one truly based on facts, will be fully satisfied with this publication.

Popa titles her second chapter "Habent sua fata libelli" ("Books have their own destiny"), and this is truly the case with the texts discussed here. I know of no other investigation that would have so intimately combined the history of the American war campaign in Germany in 1944 and 1945 with the history of some of the most important medieval German manuscripts. Whereas the Hildebrandslied has survived only in two fly-leaves at the beginning and the end of a liturgical manuscript, the Willehalm has been preserved in 72 manuscripts, among which the Kassel codex belongs to the most beautifully illustrated. Both literary documents were among the spoils of numerous American soldiers, but after decades of painstaking research and countless efforts by scores of researchers, museum directors, politicians, diplomats, businessmen, and others, it was possible to return these bibliophile treasures to Germany, first the Liber Sapientiae containing the second leaf of the Hildebrandslied, in 1955, and then the second leaf in 1972, along with Wolfram's Willehalm.

The bare-bone data do not do justice to the thrill which the reader experiences when plunging into this marvelous book, which is written almost like part novel, part scholarly study. Popa has done an excellent job in researching all the relevant documents, tracing every possible person involved, and revealing, as much as the surviving testimonies allow her to say, their interests, activities, and decisions, which at the end amounts to a true detective story. Bibliophiles and Bibliothieves is as much about the concrete situation of Germany in the last year of WWII from the perspective of libraries and librarians, as about the American reaction to the plunder of German art works and manuscripts by American soldiers, as about medieval manuscripts and their preservation, recovery, and storage in public libraries, archives, and personal safes, and other storage areas. Moreover, this is a book about international diplomacy, postwar Germany and the United States, the world of rare book collectors, and international trade in medieval and other manuscripts. I never would have imagined that a book about the oldest literary document in the history of German literature (Hildebrandslied) could be so full of drama, excitement, and would offer so much in-depth and reliable information.

Of course, there is also the danger that Popa might read more into her documents than would be permissible, particularly since she is often adding considerable fictional color to an otherwise mundane and glum account of war destruction, rescue efforts by librarians, search operations, criminal investigations, and financial transactions. But the plethora of notes confirms how carefully the author has carried out her research, and we can trust her even down to the minutiae, although sometimes she writes in the style of an eyewitness account, whereas she has only drawn her information from secondary sources. The volume concludes with biographical sketches, a bibliography, and an index. With this monograph, we might say, the case of the lost Hildebrandslied and the Willehalm Codex has been closed.