[CPProt.net] The art of revenge. Germany says that Russia holds no less than 250, 000 items defined as displaced cultural treasures

[MSN CPPnet]

The art of revenge 
June 30, 2005

MOSCOW. (Anatoly Korolev, for RIA Novosti.) -- The recent celebration of the
end of World War II noticeably soured cultural relations between Russia and
Germany, as the latter used the occasion to issue a list of lost art works.
Germany says that Russia holds no less than 250,000 items defined as
displaced cultural treasures.

Russia has also been criticized at international conferences such as "Spoils
of War. World War II and Its Aftermath" held in New York in January 1995.
This conference was probably the most scandalous of all, and its main motif
was that the Russian mentality contradicts European and American museum
ethics. 

Unfortunately, the opposite is actually the case. Practically all large
world museums have to fend off claims continually, and every year courts
have full agendas of complaints from those claiming museum works of art. The
director of one American museum could not leave the U.S. for six years,
because the French were demanding that Interpol arrest him for having bought
a picture spirited out of France. New York's Metropolitan Museum, after
returning to the Bavarian State Museum precious stones stolen by an American
GI at the end of the war, requested that its name should not be mentioned.
In other words, returning art is as dangerous as accepting it. 

To return to the national mentality, Russian museum experts are
unfortunately not so prudent. 

Stripped of the Communist yoke, happy and naive, Russians dropped the old
practice of secrecy. The magazine Trofei ("Spoils") appeared, showing a mass
of art works that made their way to the country after the war. Archives were
thrown open. The Poles, for example, have published a tome on cultural
treasures appropriated by the Soviet Union. This book resulted from Russia's
open-door policy, under which the Poles were allowed access to the
declassified archives. 

Russia thought its noble actions would be appreciated. But this was a gross
miscalculation. Unfortunately, it was mainly Russia's fault for creating
this situation, that same mentality was to blame. Khrushchev's dictatorial
gesture of returning Dresden museum masterpieces to the GDR in 1955 was in
fact a personal act of a leader, a self-willed despotic decision taken by a
party top man, a gesture that was never discussed either by the people, or
society, or experts. 

The details show that Khrushchev was least of all interested in legality or
any norms then in existence. No: By returning the pictures to the East
Germans, he only wanted to spite the West Germans. The noble deed turned
into a shadow of a political action. But to say that the gesture lacked
noble motives is to forget the high emotional pitch of that move. 

The Dresden masterpieces were unveiled in 1955 at Moscow's Pushkin Museum of
Fine Arts, and the crowds of smitten people who came to see - and say
good-bye to - Rafael's Sistine Madonna, Giorgione's Venus and Titian's
Caesar's Money sealed the act as something holy and willed by the people. 

The Soviet Union returned 1,240 works of art to Dresden. In total, 1,850,000
art works were returned to the GDR, plus 71,000 books and 3 million archive
files. And now, years later, even the decision on Dresden masterpieces is
all but held against Russia. 

How else can we explain the German point of view once expressed by W.
Schmidt, director general of the Dresden state art collection, that the
canvases had been neatly stacked in underground mines near Dresden and
allegedly needed no restoration? 

But let us recall the true story of how the Dresden treasures were
uncovered. The prelude was the nightmarish British bombing of Dresden. In
the early hours of February 14, the British carried out a raid with 1,400
bombers, which dropped 3,749 tons of bombs on the city, 75% of them
incendiary. The first wave was followed three hours later by a second air
strike, and a third attack eight hours after that. Dresden was no more.
Casualties totaled 135,000 dead. The Zwinger Museum (home of the collection)
suffered, too, with 197 pictures perishing in the flames. Other masterpieces
were hidden elsewhere, in particular in deep stone quarries, where a railway
car with pictures was taken. Schmidt gave an assurance that the mines were
an ideal place for the pictures. Absurd!

Memoirs written by Soviet officer Lev Rabinovich, who discovered the cache,
and the reminiscences of Marshal Konev tell a different story. True, in the
mine gallery, behind two doors a light was on, and there were special
thermal control units installed.

"But," Konev writes, "those who hid the pictures probably presumed that the
stone recess would be dry. Unfortunately, ground water filtered through
occasional cracks, the air temperature varied widely, and the climate
installations were no longer working. The pictures were stacked in a random
fashion, some wrapped up in parchment, others nailed up in crates, and still
others simply set down leaning against the walls." When the pictures were
taken to Moscow, restoration took a total of 10 years, from 1945 to 1955,
the moment they were sent back. 

In the intervening period they were secretly kept in the storerooms of
Moscow's Pushkin Museum. And now we can see that since that time the
museum's name has assumed a negative coloring in Germany (first in West
Germany). Perhaps our mentalities are indeed too different? 

A recent sensation complicated the situation. On the eve of the 60th
anniversary of Allied victory over Nazism, the museum opened an exhibition
called "The Archaeology of War: Return from Oblivion" and featuring a
collection of antique art never previously shown. 

The organizers did not conceal, but on the contrary, stressed the fact that
this was a formerly famous collection of antique artifacts from Berlin
museums. The exhibition caused a shock among the German cultural community. 

It was believed that the collection, purchased by Berlin Kurfurst Friedrich
III of Brandenburg in 1698 from Rome's chief antiquarian Giovanni Bellori,
who served under Pope Clement X, was lost when the Russians stormed Berlin
in May 1945. But all of a sudden an amazed public was presented with 350
exhibits, including three great masterpieces: A bronze figurine of Zeus from
Dodona with a pomegranate in his hand, and two vases depicting a battle
between Hercules and Poseidon, the god of the sea, and a scene with Hermes
dancing in the company of goat-legged satyrs.

And imagine: Representatives of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation
expressed regret that the Pushkin Museum launched the project "without
informing and involving Berlin museums", and that the Russian side
persistently turned down all requests from German experts for access to
storerooms holding captured art. 

Central to the decision to show trophy art was Irina Antonova, the museum
director. For more than forty years she has been ruling the country's
biggest museum with a hand of iron, and as an open public figure takes a
tough stance. 

For example, she may publicly admit the fact that her museum bought works of
art from private owners that were most likely stolen by Russian soldiers in
Germany. But in that situation, Antonova says, the museum was far more
concerned for the fate of a masterpiece in awful disrepair and likely to
crumble, rather than other moral subtleties. Such an answer must be credited
for its honesty and courage. As should Antonova's correctness. 

The antique collection is, however, a special case, and the museum
deliberately took the step in order that no secrets and mysteries remain in
the vaults between Germany and Russia. The noble impulse behind the
exhibition could be missed only deliberately. Russia demonstrated to Europe
that any omissions, secrets and lies are outdated in the common European
home. 

Most importantly, those who visited the show saw that the articles on
display were glued together from hundreds of small pieces. In other words,
they were the result of painstaking efforts to restore miniature artifacts.
What had been left of the Berlin collection in May 1945 was a heap of
fragments. Bronze, ceramic, bone and terracotta articles were all covered in
mud, tar and ash, disfigured and broken. Each of the tens of thousands of
fragments!

Also importantly, at first and for a long time no one suspected what these
fragments were. These ruins could have been ignored and trodden down, but
this was not done. On the contrary, the entire terrible-looking mass was
dispensed into packages, and stowed in wooden crates, which were then taken
to Russia and held until better times at a special museum fund in Zagorsk
outside Moscow. 

The new democratic Russia ended the fallacious practice of keeping art under
wraps years ago, with a unique collection of gold artifacts from Troy going
on public view in 1996. This time, the Pushkin Museum displayed the
Friedrich and Bellori collection. But it was a special case.

The collection took two years of back-breaking work to take shape. Each
fragment was scrutinized, described and scrubbed clean - especially
difficult was the restoration of bone articles - and then using modern
techniques was first assembled on a monitor and then put together by hand.
The first inkling that the restorers were dealing with the antique
collection from Berlin museums came when the early articles regained their
original form and shape. Before that it would have been impossible.

Would it have been better if everything had remained lying in the ruins? 

German museum experts are in fact nostalgic for the Iron Curtain, when the
whole of Russia was one complete enigma. 

Antonova was one of those who made Russia an open country. Sometimes,
perhaps, it looks too open, and museum curators in many countries dislike
this.

"We have already returned everything of prime interest," Antonova believes.
"Together with the Hermitage museum we have returned to Germany about 1.5
million exhibits. Our museum colleagues in France and Britain are following
this process anxiously. They keep asking us all the time if we are going to
give away more. Why? Because they fear that this may set up a precedent and
start an avalanche of mutual claims rolling. This they do not need. The
principal museum treasures, they say, were redistributed in the course of
the past century, and all collections are now formed and complete."

Worse still, occasionally the Russian side gets the impression that the
spirit of revenge is lurking behind the not-so European policy of "getting
everything back", and the ghosts of the Third Reich are hovering over
Russia's museums. 

Hitler himself ordered German museum experts to draw up a secret list of
works of art and valuable articles that left Germany since 1500 to become
foreign property. The Third Reich planned to cover as many as 400 years of
European history under the plan. But democratic Germany broke decisively
with Nazism, and Russia is well aware of that. 

In a word, it is high time to put paid to mutual claims. Otherwise, they
will never end and flood the whole of Europe, if not the world. 

Russia has in recent years finally been moving from stonewalling to an
offensive on this issue. It prepared several volumes of a general catalogue
of Russian cultural treasures lost during World War II, although no complete
list yet exists. It should at least be made public.

Topping this list of losses is the Church of the Assumption at Bolotovo Pole
outside Novgorod, demolished by the Germans. Today this can be struck off
from the list, as it has been restored through joint efforts by Germany and
Russia. A week ago, President Putin handed out 2004 state awards in the
Kremlin. Among the recipients were the architects who restored the church,
Viktor Krasnorechyev and Ninel Kuzmina. This is one example of a real
solution to problems existing between the countries in the delicate sphere
of restitution. 

Anatoly Korolev is a writer and journalist. The opinions expressed in this
article are those of the author and not necessarily those of RIA Novosti.


http://en.rian.ru/