Eberswalder gold treasure
The Eberswalde treasure is a gold treasure weighing 2.59 kg. It was discovered in 1913 in Heegermühle , today a district in the west of Eberswalde , Brandenburg . It is considered the most important Central European Bronze Age find and is the largest prehistoric gold find in Germany . He is part of the looted art in Russia .
The treasure possibly represents a merchant's camp; However, new research assumes that the treasures were once owned by a high-ranking personality. The treasure is dated to the 10th or 9th century BC. Dated, so it falls into the period of the Central European Late Bronze Age .
The deposit was stored in a bulbous clay vessel with a lid. It contained eight golden bowls, which in turn contained 73 gold objects. The bowls are thin-walled, embossed gold vessels with numerous ornamental decorations . The other finds were neck rings, bracelets, clasps and 60 spiral bracelets (wires). 55 double spirals were tied into bundles. A gold bar, a metal piece in the shape of a crucible and two smaller pieces apparently served as raw materials.
The hoard was discovered during excavation work on the site of the brass works settlement , a then still independent community near the community of Heegermühle . In 1913 the company "Hirsch, Kupfer- und Messingwerke AG" commissioned the renowned Berlin architects Mebes and Emmerich with various new buildings and conversions in the brass works. The shaft work began even before the official building permit for the first project, a workers' house on today's Gustav-Hirsch-Platz. In the afternoon on Friday, May 16, 1913, a worker came across a clay pot with a lid at a depth of 1 meter with a spade. This broke and shiny gold objects came to light. The mason foreman reported the find to the company management. At first, the Eberswalder gold treasure is exhibited in the brass works settlement, ten visitors at a time can see the splendor of a distant time.
The senior boss, Aron Hirsch, who lives in Berlin, notified Carl Schuchhardt , the director of the prehistory department of the Royal Museums in Berlin , who was inspecting the treasure. Schuchhardt registered 81 pieces, he estimated the value of the treasure at 20,000 gold marks. So that the treasure could belong entirely to him, Aaron Hirsch paid the finders - consisting of the bricklayer foreman, his relatives and the remaining workers of the column - a total of half of the estimated value.
Kaiser Wilhelm II has the gold treasure shown by Aaron Hirsch and seizes the archaeological find by means of imperial power. In June 1913 the treasure was exhibited in the Berlin City Palace; the archaeologist Schuchhardt kept it for research in the Ethnographic Museum . The bureaucratic struggle between the researcher and the imperial administration is suddenly interrupted by the First World War. In 1918, after the emperor's abdication, the gold treasure was transferred to the State Museums; from 1922 onwards it was shown in a permanent exhibition of the Völkermuseum in the Martin-Gropius-Bau . At the beginning of the Second World War, the Eberswalder gold treasure was initially stored in the Prussian State Bank , and from November 1941 in the Flak Tower Zoo.
Museum director Wilhelm Unverzagt was forced to hand over the Eberswalder gold treasure, Priam's treasure and other cultural assets to the Red Army after the end of the war in 1945 . The Soviet Union returned a number of pieces between 1956 and 1958. For decades, the Soviet side denied that the treasures were transported to the Soviet Union as spoils of war by the Red Army . They are considered lost or destroyed.
After Boris Yeltsin had granted possession of Priam's treasure , possession of the Eberswalde treasure was no longer denied. A reporter from Spiegel TV found the lost gold treasure from Eberswalde in 2004 after several months of research in the Moscow Pushkin Museum in a secret depot. With the Looted Art Acts after 2005, Russia asserted this looted art as a reparation payment. Negotiations are still ongoing about the return of the looted art .
The replicas come from the Eberswalde metal sculptor Eckhard Herrmann . Further replicas of the bowls and duplicates of the remaining individual pieces made by the Angermünder goldsmith Wilfried Schwuchow can be found in the Eberswalde Museum .
Another copy of the gold treasure has been on display on the third floor of the Neues Museum on Berlin's Museum Island since October 2009 .
For the first time since 1941, the original Eberswalder gold treasure was exhibited in 2013 as part of an extensive Bronze Age exhibition in the Hermitage in Saint Petersburg .
literature
- Gustaf Kossinna : The gold find from the brass factory near Eberswalde and the golden cult vessels of the Germanic peoples . Kabitzsch, Leipzig 1913, (Gustaf Kossinna: The Germanic gold wealth in the Bronze Age 1), ( Mannus Library 12).
- Carl Schuchhardt : The gold find from the brass factory near Eberswalde . Verlag für Kunstwissenschaft, Berlin 1914.
Web links
- Zeit online article exhibition "Graben für Germanien" - Archaeologists as Ideologists . Time 11/2013
- Nazi gold, blue tooth treasure, Ellwanger coins: Germany's most spectacular treasure finds on Focus Online from June 20, 2018
supporting documents
- ^ Süddeutsche Zeitung: Eberswalder Schatz. Retrieved March 24, 2020 .
- ^ Museum-digital Brandenburg - Museum Eberswalde - Collection: "Goldschatz von Eberswalde" . museum-digital brandenburg. October 27, 2016. Archived from the original on October 27, 2016.
- ↑ Märkische Oderzeitung, October 24, 2006
- ↑ Boris Kruse: “Goldtag” applies to both original and fake , Märkische Oderzeitung, May 14, 2013, accessed on May 16, 2013
- ↑ Frauke Hinrichsen: Goldschatz von Eberswalde: An old pot full of gold . Berlin newspaper. June 30, 2013. Archived from the original on June 30, 2013.
Coordinates: 52 ° 50 ′ 46.26 " N , 13 ° 43 ′ 22.79" E