[CPProt.net] Reciprocity Plea Over Trophy Art

[Museum Security Network / Cultural Property Protection Net (Ton Cremers)]

Reciprocity Plea Over Trophy Art 

By Vladimir Kovalev 
STAFF WRITER 

Handing over a replica of the famous Praying Boy statute to the Peterhof
museum on Thursday, German officials expressed hopes that Russia would
change its policy regarding cultural items taken from Germany at the end of
World War II and resolve the issue of returning the treasures on a mutual
basis.

Russia would only gain from cooperating with Germany in restoring cultural
items left untouched for decades in museum storage facilities across the
country, they said.

"As a way to solve this problem the two sides signed an agreement in 1992 to
return cultural heritage [to both countries]," German Culture Minister
Christina Weiss said at the handover ceremony of the Praying Boy statue. 

"But negotiations on the matter were stuck and frozen after a new law on
returning cultural items, which could not be accepted from a judicial point
of view in Germany, was passed in 1998. 

"This law makes our work to be more complicated ... as a person and as a
culture minister I feel shame for the fact that items of Russian culture
were destroyed during the war, but should today's and modern Germany refuse
its cultural identity in this case?" the minister said.

The statue of the Praying Boy has gone a long way between Russia and Germany
since the 19th century. The original replica, of a 300 BC Greek sculpture,
was presented by Prussian king Friedrich Wilhelm IV to his sister Charlotte
after she married Russian Tsar Nicholas I and wanted to have something in
St. Petersburg that would remind her of home. 

That replica was destroyed in the war, while the original statue made in 300
BC was taken by the Soviet army from Sansoucci palace in Potsdam in 1945 and
returned in 1958 as "a gesture of good will" from the Soviet Union to East
Germany.

"This statue is a symbolic element that links our people and our histories.
We have common cultural roots and these roots should be visible not only
when it's necessary for political or economical reasons," Weiss said.

The idea of exchanging historical items taken from both counties in the war
is regarded negatively within certain segments of Russian society,
especially among patriotically oriented people.

"See, they didn't give us the real statue, but slip us a fake one," an
unidentified Russian businessman said at the ceremony.

Klaus-Dieter Lehmann, the president of the Prussian Cultural Heritage
Foundation, said Russia should open its secret storage facilities so that
foreign experts can boost the amount of restoration, which is slowing down
due to a shortage of specialists and lack of financing. 

The foundation donated the Praying Boy to Peterhof.

"There are thousands of items stored in the museums, but only about 500 of
them have been restored in all these years," Lehmann said at the ceremony.

"Foreign experts should be given access to the facilities to examine the
works together with Russian specialists to find out what is there and what
is not, to form a list of items," he added. "Then they could conduct
restorations together."

Weiss criticized Russian officials over delays in returning the Anhalt
silver collection. Duke Ernst Anhalt was a member of anti-fascist movements
who suffered from two regimes. He was put in Dachau concentration camp for
his activity against Adolf Hitler and after the war ended up in a Soviet
concentration camp in Siberia, where he died in 1947.

The German government is trying to convince Russian authorities to transfer
Anhalt's silver collection, which is in the State Hermitage Museum, to his
son, on the grounds that the father was rehabilitated and his property
should be returned according to Russian law.

An obstacle to the return lies in the stance of Hermitage director Mikhail
Piotrovsky who has said that the State Duma should approve any return of the
silver. 

Earlier this year he said if the silver was returned "this would be a big
loss for the Hermitage."

Lyudmila Narusova, a senator in the Federation Council, said Piotrovsky
should become more civilized.

"I love the Hermitage and I know how museum employees treat their items, but
in any case they should become more tolerant to this problem," Narusova said
in an interview Thursday. "This is a different question. This is not about
returning confiscated items, but about giving back the property of a person
who was illegally put in jail." 

Narusova expressed hopes that the State Duma would change its approach to
the whole question of returning confiscated items sometime in the future.

"I believe the State Duma deputies should finally understand that they
should quit working with their fists fighting each other and rather work
with their brains," she said. 

http://www.sptimes.ru/