On Mon, 17 Apr 2000, n. brown wrote:
> Many problematic factors complicate the matter of "ownership" for the
> collection of Schliemann's artifacts. Scandalous gathering of the objects
> and unethical transmission of the collection aside, I would like to
> consider a solution presented by D.F. Eaton in Antiquity Magazine
> suggesting an internationally sanctioned site in "Troy"(Turkey) for
> permanent keeping of the objects. Do any cooperative museums like this
> exist nationally or internationally? Would the
> German/Russian/Greek/Turkisk representatives be able to cooperate?
> This is a nice "let's put history behind us" attitude, but is it possible?
>
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There are two very different issues here.
First, there seems to be little doubt that Schliemann took the so-called
King Priam Treasure to Germany illegally, either by direct smuggling or by
trickery, and either way was in fact fined by the Turkish authorities for
doing so, and ordered to return the material. As I recall things, it the
fine was 40,000 Turkish pounds, while Schliemann's response was from then
on to claim that he'd bought the stuff from Turkey for that price(!) -
but my detailed notes are in the University at the moment.
The second issue is the removal of the Schliemann collection to the Soviet
Union in 1945.
The Soviet authorities always claimed that in the course of the Berlin
(Potsdam) Peace Conference of 1945, the Allies all agreed that in view of
the USSR's enormous losses at the hands of the Nazi invaders (some
hundreds of thousands of registered items just from public museums and
galleries alone), the USSR was both entitled under established
international law (e.g. following the Vienna and Paris Treaties of 1814-15
and the Versailles etc. Treaties of 1919-20), and explicitly authorised by
the other parties to Potsdam, to take works of art and collections
belonging to German public museums as "war reparations" (frequently
mis-translated by the Soviet side in the Potsdam records as "war
trophies" - something VERY different, and a cause of great confusion
even today).
Though it had, of course, suffered no such cultural losses from its own
territory, in 1945-46 the United States similarly took as part of its "war
reparations" very large amounts of German library and archive material,
and many important works of art, (alongside e.g. much scientific equipment
and materials - the "V2" rocket technology being the best known). This
seems to have been justified under the Versailles precedent of charging
Germany with at least part of the cost of fighting the First World War.
Of course, if Schliemann had acquired the material illegally in the
first place, as the Turks have always claimed, then Berlin in turn could
never have acquired a valid title to it - at least under the Common Law
tradition, where the "nemo dat" principle traditionally provides no time
limitation on the right of the legitimate owner to recover stolen or
otherwise mis-appropriated property.
The logical end of the road for that line of argument would therefore be
that the Schliemann collection was not the legal property of the German
State museums, and therefore could not form part of any otherwise
legitimate "war reparations" compensation in 1945.
It is I think quite significant in this context that when the existence
of the Schliemann collection was finally acknowledged in the period of
"Glasnost" just before the break up of the Soviet Union, there was a very
serious proposal by some of the USSR authorities to send it to Turkey,
rather than back to Berlin.
Patrick J. Boylan
(Professor of Heritage Policy and Management)
City University, London,
Department of Arts Policy and Management
Frobisher Crescent, Barbican, London EC2Y 8HB, UK;
phone: +44-20-7477.8750, fax:+44-20-7477.8887;
Home: "The Deepings", Gun Lane, Knebworth, Herts. SG3 6BJ, UK;
phone & fax: +44-1438-812.658;
E-mail: [log in to unmask]; Web site: http://www.city.ac.uk/artspol/
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