Priam's treasure

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Priam's treasure

The treasure of Priam (also gold from Troy or Priam's treasure ) is a deposit that Heinrich Schliemann discovered during his excavations in Troy . It was named after the mythical Trojan King Priam , to whom it cannot be assigned due to the temporal context. The find includes around 8,000 items.

In 1881 Schliemann's treasure was given to the German people and from 1885 it was kept in the Völkerkundemuseum Berlin, which later became the Museum of Prehistory and Early History . After World War II , it was brought to the Soviet Union as looted art . His stay there was kept secret and was not confirmed until 1993. Priam's treasure is still in Russia today; in Berlin there is only one replica that is true to the original.

Find

Heinrich Schliemann

Heinrich Schliemann made the deposit, which became famous as the “treasure of Priam”, during excavations in Troy on May 31, 1873. The German archaeologist was convinced that ancient Troy was under the hill of Hisarlik and dug there for the remains of the city . In search of an extraordinary find, however, Schliemann dug his way through the stratum of the city, which according to the chronological order could have been Priam's Troy, and instead came across the remains of a city that dates back to around 2450 BC in April 1873. Chr. Had fallen victim to a fire disaster. Schliemann found two large entrances of a double gate system, a stone ramp and the remains of a building that he identified as the palace of Priam.

A few weeks later, on May 31, Schliemann said he found a broken copper vessel on a wall near the gate at a depth of about 8.50 meters, behind which he discovered gold:

“Behind the last [wall] I exposed the Trojan curtain wall at a depth of 8 to 9 meters from the Skaeic Gate and, while digging further on this wall and immediately next to Priam's house, I came across a large copper object of a very curious shape, which was all the more so caught my attention more than I thought I saw behind the same gold. On the copper object rested a 1½ to 1¾ meter thick stone-solid layer of red ash and calcined debris, on which the aforementioned 1 meter 80 centimeter thick, 6 meter high fortress wall, which consisted of large stones and earth and from the first period after the Destruction of Troy must have come. In order to withdraw the treasure from the greed of my workers and to save it for science, the greatest haste was necessary, and, although it was not yet breakfast time, I immediately had 'paidos' [...] exclaimed while my workers were eating and rested, I cut out the treasure with a large knife which was not possible without the greatest effort and the most terrible danger to life, because the great fortress wall, which I had to undermine, threatened to collapse on me at any moment. But the sight of so many objects, each of which is of immeasurable value for science, made me foolhardy and I thought of no danger. "

- Heinrich Schliemann : Trojan antiquities

Although there was a risk of collapse, he continued to dig and discovered other objects made of precious metal. Schliemann brought the finds to his wooden hut, where he hid and organized them. Some of the objects were bent and plugged into one another. Among the objects were a shield , a shallow kettle, daggers and spearheads made of copper , a goblet , three vases and knife sheaths made of silver, and a bottle, a beaker and two small goblets made of gold . The largest silver vase contained gold jewelry, including two tiaras , a narrow headband, four earrings, six bangles, 56 earrings and 8,750 small buttons and rings.

story

Sophia Schliemann with the large hanger ( Pendilien ) from the so-called "Treasure of Priam"

After the find and exhibition in Germany

For fear of confiscation and division of the find, Schliemann did not report it to the Ottoman authorities, although he was obliged to do so by the excavation permit. Instead, he broke off the excavations on June 17, 1873 and secretly brought the treasure across the border to Athens . From here Schliemann sent to the major scientific societies of Europe dispatches in which he announced his discovery. The Hohe Pforte sued Schliemann in a Greek court for the surrender of half of the finds. The one-year trial ended with the judgment on the payment of 10,000 gold francs by Schliemann. As a goodwill, however, he paid 50,000 gold francs to the Imperial Museum in Constantinople and ceded some less significant finds.

Schliemann originally planned to build a private museum in Athens for the treasure and future finds at his own expense, but could not agree on extensive excavation rights for Olympia and Mycenae with the Greek government , which was demanded in 1873 , so he bought the French find for the Louvre offered, which however refused.

After Schliemann had unsuccessfully offered the treasure to the Hermitage in St. Petersburg for purchase, he exhibited it in the South Kensington Museum in London from 1877 to 1880 , where there had been great scientific and public interest in Schliemann's Troy campaign for years. On the initiative of his friend Rudolf Virchow , who personally took part in Schliemann's excavations in Troy in 1879, Heinrich Schliemann finally gave the find in 1881 "to the German people for perpetual possession and undivided storage in the imperial capital". At the same time he became an honorary member of the Berlin Society for Anthropology, Ethnology and Prehistory and received honorary citizenship of the city of Berlin. Kaiser Wilhelm I thanked Schliemann in a personal letter and decided that Priam's treasure should be on permanent display in the Museum für Völkerkunde Berlin, which is currently under construction .

In December 1880 Schliemann dismantled his Troy finds in London's South Kensington Museum, where they were on loan, and transferred them to Berlin. In 1881 he set them up in two halls of the newly built arts and crafts museum , today's Martin-Gropius-Bau in Prinz-Albrecht-Straße, where they were opened to the public in February 1882. In the same year Schliemann added further finds to the collection. In 1885, as planned, he finally relocated it to the prehistoric department of the Museum of Ethnology. Schliemann enriched its holdings in 1886 by repurchasing the parts of the finds from Troy that had fallen to Turkey in accordance with the contract, which he in turn set up himself, and in 1887 by donating Egyptian antiquities. By virtue of Schliemann's will, his widow Sophia Schliemann transferred the holdings still in her home in Athens in 1891, and in 1893/1894 finds were brought in by the management of the Ottoman Museum with which the Schliemann Collection in Berlin was finally expanded. Until 1895 it was shown in the excavator's arrangement order. From 1896–1900 it was cataloged and reorganized by Hubert Schmidt (1864–1933), who had participated in the final excavations in Troy in 1893/1894 under the direction of Wilhelm Dörpfeld . The collection remained in the Schliemann Halls in a side wing of the Völkerkundemuseum Berlin until the outbreak of World War II in 1939.

In World War II

When the outbreak of war was foreseeable in 1939, the Berlin museums were instructed to move their holdings to safety. The exhibits from the Prehistoric Department of the Ethnographic Museum were also brought to the cellar for safety. Priam's treasure was stored with other precious metal objects considered irreplaceable in three suitcase-sized wooden boxes with inventory lists. The boxes were moved to the underground safe of the Prussian State Bank in January 1941 to protect them from air raids . At the end of 1941 another relocation to the flak tower at the Tiergarten followed , where the museum had been allocated two rooms to store the works of art. The treasure found there remained until the end of the war, although in March 1945 the Fiihrer issued an order to transport the art treasures out of Berlin to the West in order to prevent Russian access to them. The director of the Museum of Prehistory and Early History, Wilhelm Unverzagt , partially resisted this order and withheld the three boxes. He stayed with the boxes until the Red Army had captured Berlin and occupied the flak tower and the city commander of Berlin, Nikolai Erastowitsch Bersarin , assured the director during a tour of the tower that the treasure would be brought to safety.

Looted art

Wilhelm Unverzagt and two of his employees prepared the art treasures in the flak tower for removal, and from May 13th these were then transported away by truck. The gold from Troy was finally picked up on May 26th, after Unverzagt only wanted to hand it over to a high Soviet personality. The group that then appeared included the art historian Viktor Lazarev (1896–1976) and the deputy head of the art committee responsible for the removal of the works of art , Andrei Konstantinov . On June 30, 1945, Priam's treasure arrived at Vnukowo Airport on the first looted art flight from Berlin and was taken to the Pushkin Museum on July 10 . There the treasure of Priam was kept and his stay there kept secret. So it was generally thought to be lost or destroyed.

The existence of Schliemann gold in the Soviet Union only became known again in September 1987, when Grigori Koslow examined some files in the Ministry of Culture that were supposed to be destroyed. Among them, he discovered a document entitled “Unique objects from the 'Great Treasure of Troy', Berlin, Ethnological Museum”, which had been signed by Nora Eliasberg , then Chief Custodian of the Pushkin Museum . This proved that Priam's treasure still existed and must be in the Pushkin Museum. On the first publications on the secret depots looted art responded Irina Antonova , director of the Pushkin Museum, angry and justified the retention of information. In October 1991, Minister of Culture Nikolai Gubenko claimed at a press conference that he did not know where Schliemann's gold was and instead suggested that the treasure might be in the possession of the Western allies. Koslow had friends who knew about archival work continue to research the Trojan gold in the Central Archives for Literature and Art, and one of them found all the related documents. Some of them were published in an issue of ARTnews magazine . Officially, however, the whereabouts of the treasure in Russia continued to be contested.

After the rediscovery

On October 26, 1994, Irina Antonova, together with Vladimir Tolstikov , head of the archaeological department of the Pushkin Museum , showed four museum representatives from Berlin, among them Klaus Goldmann , who had been looking for the gold treasure of Troy for 25 years, some gold vessels in their office the find in front of a camera on Russian television. Tolstikov then led the Germans into a room under the roof, where they were shown the trays with all the pieces of the gold treasure.

The return of the treasure was subsequently repeatedly refused by the Russian side. However, it was made available to the public again. In 1996 there was a major Schliemann exhibition in Moscow, where he was presented. Since then, Priam's treasure has been on display in the permanent collection of the Pushkin Museum. Turkey is now trying to get the treasure back to Troy.

In the Schliemann Hall of the Museum of Prehistory and Early History in Berlin , which is located in the Neues Museum building, important parts of the treasure have been on display since 2009 as copies, as well as the few original parts that were returned from the Soviet Union to the GDR and from Russia to Germany in 1992 , for example silver dishes including the large silver vase (the top one in the picture) in which Schliemann found the main treasure made of gold jewelry.

  • Schliemannsaal in the Neues Museum

  • Silver dishes from Priam's treasure

  • The hanger in the Pushkin Museum

literature

  • Irina Antonova, Vladimir Tolstikov, Mikhail Treister: The Gold of Troy. Searching for Homer's Fabled City . Thames & Hudson Ltd, London 1996, ISBN 0-500-01717-4 .
  • Konstantin Akinscha, Grigori Koslow: booty art. On a treasure hunt in Russian secret depots . Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, Munich 1995, ISBN 3-423-30526-6 .
  • Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation, Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts: The Troy Treasure. Heinrich Schliemann's excavations . Leonardo Arte, Milan 1996, ISBN 88-7813-707-3 , (exhibition catalog, Moscow, Pushkin Museum April 16, 1996 - April 15, 1997).

Web links

Commons : Priam's Treasure  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ K. Akin saddle, G. Koslow: Looted Art , p. 20
  2. ^ Report on the excavations in Troy. (JPEG) Heidelberg University Library, August 21, 2011, p. 289 ff. , Accessed on August 21, 2011 (excavation report of June 17, 1873).
  3. ↑ : K. Akin saddle, G. Kozlov Beutekunst f, p. 20
  4. ↑ K. Akin saddle, G. Koslow: Looted Art , S. 22nd
  5. ^ Alfred Brueckner:  Schliemann, Heinrich . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 55, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1910, p. 179.
  6. ^ Heinrich Schliemann after a hundred years: Symposium in the Werner Reimers Foundation Bad Homburg in December 1989 . Vittorio Klostermann Verlag, Frankfurt a. M. 1990, p. 382.
  7. ^ Deutscher Reichsanzeiger and Royal Prussian State Gazette of February 7, 1881 .
  8. ^ Reimer Hansen, Wolfgang Ribbe , Willi Paul Adams: History in Berlin in the 19th and 20th centuries . Verlag de Gruyter, Berlin 1992. p. 108.
  9. ↑ K. Akin saddle, G. Koslow: Looted Art , p. 23
  10. ↑ K. Akin saddle, G. Koslow: Looted Art , S. 98th
  11. ↑ K. Akin saddle, G. Kozlov: Beutekunst , p.59 f.
  12. ↑ K. Akin saddle, G. Koslow: Looted Art , p. 18
  13. ↑ K. Akin saddle, G. Koslow: Looted Art , S. 287th
  14. ↑ K. Akin saddle, G. Koslow: Looted Art , S. 303rd
  15. ↑ Dieter Bartetzko: The most beautiful legend of modern science . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 63/2007, March 15, 2007, p. 33. Accessed on September 26, 2009.
  16. ↑ Turkey wants Priam's treasure: Minister of Culture announces contacts with Russia . AFP announcement on welt.de , September 5, 2012.
  17. ↑ Priam's treasure: Turkey wants Troy gold back . At n-tv , September 5, 2012
  18. ↑ Peter Dittmar: The silver treasure of Priam briefly in Berlin . In: Die Welt , April 23, 2009