Determination of the longitudinal proton structure function F(L) at low Q**2 at HERA

An extraction of the longitudinal proton structure function FL(x,Q2) from H1 data at low Q2 (about 1 GeV2) and low Bjorken x (about 0.00005) is reported. The analysis is based on the data collected in a dedicated low Q2 running period in 1999 and during shifted vertex runs in 2000. Two methods of extracting FL(x,Q2) are discussed and shown to give consistent results. Theoretical predictions are compared with the data.