A long-lost piano believed to have been played by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart has been found in Germany.

Public broadcaster SWR said the instrument was built in 1775 and acquired in the 1980s by piano manufacturer Martin Becker in the southern German city of Baden-Baden from an antiques dealer in Strasbourg, eastern France.

When Mr Becker decided to auction off the fortepiano, a music historian noticed the offer and “had a hunch that it could be the same long-lost instrument that Mozart played whenever he was in Strasbourg,” SWR said.

“I had the idea to offer it on (online auction site) eBay and maybe get between 30,000 and 40,000 euros for it,” Mr Becker told the radio station.

A historic oil painting in Vienna shows the composer Joseph Haydn, a Mozart contemporary, playing what may be the same instrument.

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The Fortean Times has posted an interesting article investigating who the story of the Pied Piper of Hamelin.

In the year of 1284, on the day of Saints John and Paul, the 26th of June, 130 child ren born in Hamelin were seduced by a piper, dressed in all kinds of colours, and lost at the calvary near the koppen.”

The town of Hamelin hasn’t forgotten this loss. The street where, supposedly, the children were last seen is called Bungelosen strasse: street without drums”. Even so many years after the event, no one is allowed to play music or dance there. Oral tradition preserved and enriched the story until the Brothers Grimm included it in their compil­ation of German legends, Deutsche Sagen (1816–18).

In the Grimms’ version, mediæval Hamelin is hit by a plague of rats. A seemingly hero-like figure appears, in the shape of a mysterious stranger dressed in red and yellow clothes. He promises to rid the town of the vermin, and the townsmen promise him money in exchange. The rat-catcher has a strange, almost supernatural gift: he plays a tune on his pipe that lures the rats into the river Weser, where they all drown. But, blinded by their greed, the townsmen refuse to honour their promise and pay the Piper his fee. The Piper leaves the town, plotting his revenge. When he returns to Hamelin, he wears the attire of a hunter. He plays a melody that hypnotises the children, who follow him to the mountains, never to be seen again.

The cruelty of the denouément strikes us doubly, because it surpasses our expect ations. What initially looks like a classic ‘Overcoming the Monster’ plot turns into a nightmarish tale of disproportionate revenge. The Piper’s retribution oversteps the boundaries, suggesting society’s ultim ate taboo: child murder. This twist is so shocking that many versions have been tempered, with the Piper orchestrating the disappearance of the children only to get the money he is owed; the children go back to Hamelin and the townsfolk learn their lesson. Far from simplifying the story, this presents the Piper as a more interesting hero, a complex, modern one – someone who has to challenge the establishment in order to survive in difficult times.

And yet the tale’s elements of greed, revenge and infanticide send us back to the Middle Ages, a violent period of deep contrasts. The legend contains enough material to have inspired the popular and the poetic imagination for centuries – but what really happened on that fateful day in 1284, and who was the mysterious Pied Piper?

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An auction house in Germany is putting up on the block a collection of 500 documents from the prison which held Adolf Hitler in 1924. [Thanks Frank!]

The papers were discovered by a Nuremberg man among the possessions of his late father.
Hitler spent nine months in prison after an abortive coup attempt known as the Munich beer hall putsch.
Among the documents is a letter from Hitler to a Mercedes dealer asking for a discount on a 40-horsepower 11/40 model.

The future Nazi leader, who brought Germany to defeat and ruin in World War II, explains that his book, Mein Kampf, is not yet finished and he is unsure how much money it will make.
“I am forced to obtain an advance or loan from somewhere. So a few thousand marks makes a big difference,” he writes.

The auction house, Werner Behringer, says the bulk of the documents are official prison cards listing visitors, including more than 30 people who celebrated his birthday on 20 April.

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Three people trying to diffuse an unexploded World War II bomb in Germany were killed when the bomb blew up.

Germany is mourning the loss of three bomb disposal experts killed yesterday by a 2,000lb World War II aerial mine.

Three others were seriously injured by the explosion which occurred when a bomb disposal team was cutting through the acid fuse of the bomb buried 24ft down in the university city of Goettingen.

Fire brigade spokesman Frank Gloth said, ‘Evacuation measures were far advanced for 7,200 people in a wide radius from where the bomb lay.

‘Work was proceeding with a water cutter to get through the fuse of the bomb when it went off. It was due to be defused at 10.30pm but detonated at 9.45pm.

‘Altogether, there were 13 bomb disposal workers in the area.

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A couple of hungry pigs in Germany have dug up a World War II anti-tank weapon.

Police said Friday the two pigs found the single-shot “panzerfaust” on private land southwest of Dresden. The pigs’ owner secured the animals in their stall then called police who were able to remove the weapon and destroy it.

The inexpensive and easy-to-operate panzerfaust was used extensively during the defense of Germany and through the rest of the war. Such finds are still relatively common, even 65 years after the end of the war.

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