9. The Ledreborg Collection - disappeared without trace and recovered intact

Shortly after the year 1800 The Royal Library acquired a large number of rare prints at auctions, i.a. Luther-prints which originated from the library at Ledreborg Castle, collected by count Johan Ludvig Holstein (died 1763) and his father.

In library circles the manuscript collection, however, was considered to be lost - sold off after the death of the count by 'a faithless secretary' - until the historian T.A. Becker in 1844 unexpectedly recovered the entire collection stored away in the library hall at Ledreborg Castle.

The manuscript collection turned out to consist of about 1,000 numbers, including important Icelandic and Danish legal manuscripts, and the so-called Hanse-recesses 1361-1405 in the original negotiation protocol from the time of Valdemar Atterdag and Queen Margrethe. The collection is very important in connection with studying Danish and Nordic history, particularly that of the 1700s, and with a few exceptions - i.a. the Hanse-recesses - the entire collection was in 1925 donated to The Royal Library by count Josef Holstein-Ledreborg. But being in want of money the realm was not able to receive the gift in quite the proper way, and to this day about 30 metres of documents are still stored in the same insufficiently protected fashion as was the case eighty years ago when they arrived.