Hitler’s jail rant among 3,000 books to go AWOL

A COPY of Adolf Hitler’s prison-penned memoir Mein Kampf is among 3,000 items missing from the National Library of Scotland.

As well as the Nazi leader’s infamous combined biography and political manifesto, several guides to sex have also gone astray, library bosses said.

A number of songs and letters by Robert Burns – and the Scottish Bard’s family tree – are listed as unaccounted for as well.

The National Library in Edinburgh is one of the biggest in the UK, containing 124 miles of shelving for books, newspapers, manuscripts and journals.

Library chiefs insist that nothing of particularly great value is miss430,000 ing, as those items have much stricter security.

It is possible that the books have been taken by members of the public and will not be traced.

A National Library spokesman said: ‘We have more than 26 million publications, so the total misplaced items make up 0.014 per cent of our holdings.

‘Given we have 200km of shelving, this can make it harder to locate them. It goes without saying that particularly rare or valuable items are not on this list as they are subject to much stricter security protocol.’

It isn’t the first time that copies of Hitler’s autobiographical manifesto – written while he was in prison in Bavaria following a failed attempt to overthrow the German government – have gone missing.

In 2018, 23 copies were among overdue books at libraries across Scotland.

It is not just books that have been reported missing – last year it was feared dozens of valuable artworks had been stolen from Glasgow’s Museums Collection.

More than 150 paintings, prints, drawings and sculptures were said to be missing from museums in the city, including 30 which were believed to have been taken by thieves.

Among the pieces that are classed as ‘unlocated’ is a painting of Billy Connolly’s banjo, which was created by Scottish artist John Byrne. The work depicted the comedian and singer’s banjo against a wall with his shadow arching over it.

Works by artists such as Carlo Maratti, Sebastien Vrancx, Cornelis Vroom and Giovanni Paolo Pannini, were noted as missing by experts during an inventory.

Pieces which date as far back as the 1600s were also among those believed to have been stolen, including a landscape painting by David Teniers the Younger, or David Teniers II, an artist from Brussels.

A number of photographs were also part of the list of unlocated items from the city’s Museums Collection.

Last year, an internal audit carried out by Aberdeen City Council found that hundreds of items were missing from its art collection.

At the time, 92 pieces were logged as stolen, as archivists tried to ascertain the whereabouts of 525 other artworks.

Their location was classed as ‘to be confirmed’ in a report put together by a council expert.

A spokesman for Aberdeen City Council, which owns the items, had said it was trying to determine whether they had been misplaced or stolen.

‘Rare items are not on the list’