"What a wonderful discovery! It is great news to our friends in Lithuania. We are happy together with them," the German Foreign Ministry said in a comment forwarded to BNS by officials of the ministry and the German Embassy in Vilnius.

According to the press release, the ministry's Political Archives immediately started analyzing the document and identified it as "the resolution signed by the Council of Lithuania during the Feb. 16 1918 council that unanimously decided to send a letter with a request to recognize Lithuania's statehood to Germany and other countries."

The document featuring signatures of signatories was discovered by professor Liudas Mažylis of the Vytautas Magnus University in archives in Berlin on Wednesday. Lithuanian diplomats are currently working to establish the legal status of the document and the possibilities of turning to Germany for its return to Lithuania.

Whereabouts of other copies of the Lithuanian Independence Act is not known.