Czechs reclaim Mendel paper from Germany

Prague, Feb 9 (CTK) - The Czech Republic has regained a manuscript of Versuche ueber Pflanzen-Hybriden (Experiments with plant hybridisation) by Johann Gregor Mendel, founder of genetics, from 1865, after a 25-year effort, the Czech Foreign Ministry told CTK yesterday.

It was a ground-breaking work from the beginnings of genetic research. Mendel, an Augustinian friar, summarised the results of his research of plant inheritance in it.

Before being deposited in the Mendel Museum in Brno, the valuable manuscript was presented by Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg in Prague this afternoon.

"It is a crucial scientific work. He was really one of the most significant scientists of his era. If we now watch researches such as of DNA, we must not forget that he was the great grandfather of this scientific branch," Schwarzenberg said, referring to Mendel.

Mendel (1822-1884) was born in Brno to a German-speaking family.

Spending most of his life in a monastery in Brno, he discovered what was later called Mendel's Laws of Inheritance.

The manuscript is returning to the Czech Republic symbolically, at the time of celebrations of Mendels' year on the occasion of the 190th anniversary of his birth.

The return of the manuscript was not an easy matter. According to earlier information in foreign media, there was a dispute over it between Mendel's descendants, the Augustinian order and Austrian, Czech and German authorities.

The Foreign Ministry strived for the manuscript's return at the request of Brno abbot Evzen Martinec a couple of years ago. The minister addressed the government of Baden-Wuerttemberg, where local experts were planning to declare the manuscript a piece of German cultural heritage.

The Brno monastery was abolished by the Czechoslovak communist regime in 1953 and its most valuable documents were secretly hid by the Augustinian Order members. In the latter half of the 1980s they had the Mendel manuscript temporarily deposited at the Augustinian headquarters in Vienna, from where it was transferred to Germany for making a facsimile.

In Germany it was gained by the Mendel family with whom the Brno Augustinians unsuccessfully negotiated until 2010.

After a legal analysis proved that the manuscript belongs to the Brno monastery, the Czech Foreign Ministry intervened, Germany stopped its effort to declare the manuscript a piece of German heritage and the manuscript was finally returned to the Czech Republic.

The Mendel Museum, where it will be deposited, is seated in the Augustinian Abbey in Brno where Mendel used to live and make his famous experiments with pea.

Museum director Ondrej Dostal said the manuscript concerned is a rarity because none of Mendel's other manuscripts provides direct evidence on his key experiments.

"It is a crucial work that started the whole genetics," Dostal told CTK.

He said the manuscript is priceless,

The museum is yet to decide to what extent and how often it will make the manuscript available to the public, Dostal added.

Mendel made his experiments with crossing plants, mainly pea, in the monastery's garden for ten years from 1858. He published his conclusions in a local natural science journal in 1865, but with no acclaim.

Only around 1900, three renowned foreign researchers (de Vries, Correns and Tschermak) came to the same conclusions, separately of each other. They recognised Mendel's primacy as modern genetics' founder.