A collection of manuscripts by the German composer Johann Sebastian Bach and his sons is to be returned to Germany by Ukraine after a long battle for custody of them.
The archive was taken by the Soviet Union's Red Army at the end of World War II. The decision to return the music was announced to coincide with a visit by Ukraine's President Leonid Kuchma to Germany.
President Kuchma formally presented the German Chancellor, Gerhard Schroeder, with the first manuscript on Friday.
The Bach archive is described by musical scholars as priceless and irreplaceable.
The collection includes unpublished work by JS Bach himself, although much of it is by two of his sons, one of whom - Carl Phillip Emmanuel - was himself a noted composer.
Scholars say the work provides an important dimension to the study of 18th Century music.
Spoils of war
The story of the Bach archive reads like a Cold War novel. It was moved by the Germans from the famous Berlin Singakademie to Silesia, now part of Poland, to save it from bombing campaigns during the World War II.
The documents then fell into the hands of the KGB - the Soviet secret police - and were feared lost for more than 50 years. They were unearthed two years ago in Ukraine's state museum.
The decision by the Ukrainian authorities to return the archive to Germany is controversial.
President Kuchma, dogged by domestic corruption scandals, is keen to forge connections with Western Europe, and particularly Germany, as it is the country's biggest foreign investor.
But many Ukrainians are unhappy about it. A lot of cultural treasures were taken from Ukraine by German troops during World War II. But some have been returned to Russia instead, and Ukrainians argue that they would like to see their art treasures returned to them first.