Restitution: art released from captivity. Life78 counted the losses and gains of the Hermitage Russian trophy paintings in museums of Russian cities

March 20 to the president and ex-director of the Pushkin Museum. A.S. Pushkin Irina Aleksandrovna Antonova turns 94 years old.

This is only 10 less than the building itself Pushkin Museum.
These columns are only 10 years older than her, can you imagine?

Let's try to understand the secret of her longevity.

To do this, we will have to turn to the history of exhibitions and funds of the Pushkin Museum.

As you know, after the Second World War, our troops located on German territory were taken out a large number of cultural values.

M. Volodin. Rescue of paintings from the Dresden Gallery (Central Museum
USSR Armed Forces). In the foreground is the Sistine Madonna, of course; in the background is Rubens, "The Triumph of Virtue".

The painting was painted by the artist Volodin, a former eyewitness to what was happening. More of his operational sketches of the “rescue”

Lieutenant Rabinovich, who was involved in the removal, at the ruins of the Dresden Gallery in 1945 (photo)

"Special captured brigades indiscriminately removed cultural values from Soviet zone occupation to Moscow, Leningrad and Kyiv.Stalin ordered, just in case, to classify “cultural booty” as a possible political weapon for the future" ( G. Kozlov. Restitution: art released from captivity).

Photo: Americans from the group Monuments Men
(for analogy, it’s clear that you won’t find photos of Soviet soldiers in similar situations)

***

Young Irina Antonova (Artguide)

Antonova recalls how the trophies arrived at the Pushkin Museum: "For me, art is about emotions. When this avalanche of masterpieces fell on us, it made a huge impression on me. Every time I unpacked new picture, it was like a blow."

Antonova was present when restorers unpacked the Sistine Madonna. And he says that it was like a sacred rite. The painting was wrapped in white sheets, and she still remembers the shining whiteness from which the painting emerged. ()

1945: Unloading paintings from the Dresden Gallery at the Pushkin Museum (photo of the museum)

What Soviet Union, unlike the Western allies (see. documentary The Monuments Men (2014) from National Geographic; and the feature film of the same name with Clooney, Damon and Blanchett is not worth watching at all) did not return what was German to the Germans, and exposed the USSR from an unfavorable side.

10 years later " Molotov proposed not only to “save face,” but also to seize the political initiative: to solemnly return the collection of the Dresden Gallery, pretending that it was originally taken out for the sake of “salvation.”The action was timed to coincide with the creation of the Warsaw Pact Organization in the summer of 1955.

To give weight to one of its key members, the GDR, the “socialist Germans” were gradually returned not only works from the gallery, but also all the valuables from the museums East Germany. By 1960, only works from West Germany, capitalist countries like Holland, and private collections remained in the USSR.

According to the same scheme they were returned artistic values to all countries of "people's democracy", including even Romanian exhibits transferred to tsarist Russia for storage back in the First world war. German, Romanian, Polish “returns” have become large political shows and became a tool for strengthening the socialist camp, and “big brother,” emphasizing not the legal, but the political nature of what was happening, stubbornly called them not “restitution,” but “return” and “an act of good will.” . (Kozlov)

“The masterpieces of Dresden were solemnly shown in 1955 in Moscow at the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts and the crowds of shocked people who came to see and at the same time say goodbye forever to Raphael’s Sistine Madonna, Giorgione’s Venus and Titian’s Denarius of Caesar gave this humane action the sanctity of the people will.

We returned 1,240 works of art to Dresden (in 1958, to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the founding of the Dresden Museums (1960), the second stage of the transfer of works took place).

In total, 1 million 850 thousand objects of art were sent to the GDR, plus 71 thousand book funds and 3 million archival files." (RIA Novosti)

Signing the transfer deed

In addition to, you guessed it, Raphael's Sistine Madonna, we returned a lot of valuable things:

Pergamon Altar

Durer. Portrait of a young man

And a bunch of other masterpieces.

In general, in addition to Crimea, Khrushchev gave away this:

Restitutions continued for a long time and even almost to this day.
For example,
in 2002, 111 elements of Marienkirche stained glass windows dating from the 14th century, which had been stored in the Hermitage since August 20, 1946, were sent to Frankfurt an der Oder. (Long list from RIA Novosti).

Let us repeat, in total, 1 million 850 thousand objects of art were sent to the GDR under Khrushchev alone.

Now imagine how much was NOT returned, how much remained in the secret funds of the USSR?

Very for a long time Later, it began to be revealed what exactly the insidious Russians had left for themselves.

In August 1992, a special Commission on Restitution was formed, headed by the then Minister of Culture of Russia Evgeny Sidorov. Sheannounced that it was starting a series of exhibitions of “trophy” works of art.

Let us list these exhibitions in the Pushkin Museum.
***

So, in 1996, at an exhibition at the Pushkin Museum "Treasures of Troy from the excavations of Heinrich Schliemann" The world community completely SUDDENLY discovered that Priam's golden treasure did not perish half a century ago under bombs, as was thought.
And all the time it was hidden in the basements.
There was a scandal, the Germans shouted to give it back.

photo RIA Novosti

But the Russians stood their ground
(especially since Schliemann took this gold to Germany, his homeland, illegally; for good reason, he should have given it to Turkey, on whose territory the excavations were carried out. Let’s not mention that Schliemann earned money for the excavations in Russia, where he became a millionaire, a merchant of the 1st guild, had a Russian wife and children. Read his ZhZL - a real adventure novel, in fact).

Today the gold of Troy has a separate room in the Pushkin Museum.

The archaeologist's wife (the second, a young Greek woman) in a golden headdress from the treasure.

However, this was not the first exhibition - the turning point was the previous one, 1995, when the exhibition “Twice Saved... Works” took place European painting XIV-XIX centuries, displaced to the territory of the Soviet Union from Germany as a result of the Second World War."

"63 works are on display Western European painting and graphics of the XIV-XIX centuries. (which is one sixth of the “secret fund” stored in the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts and the I.E. Grabar All-Russian Scientific and Research Center). The labels of most of them say: “From an unknown collection.” Some of them once belonged to Hungarian collectors who were repressed during the war, as a result of which the items ended up in Germany. Other works had a very specific address - the Schlossmuseum in Gotha, the City Museum in Wiesbaden, the Sansouci Picture Gallery, Potsdam, the Hohenzollern Museum, the National Gallery in Berlin, the Kunsthalle Bremen and the Dresden Picture Gallery. ("Kommersant").

There were paintings by Honore Daumier "Revolt" and "Washerwomen" (from the Gerstenberg-Scharf collection), better known from the master's lithographs. Three Degas ("Woman Wiping Herself", "Nude Wiping Her Hand", "Dancer Leaning on a Bench"), two Manets ("Portrait of Rosita Maury" and "Portrait of Mary Laurent with a Pug") and two Renoirs ("Bouquet of Chrysanthemums and Japanese fan" and "Portrait of Madame Choquet at the Window"), " Portrait of a man" Tintoretto, "John the Baptist" by El Greco, "Portrait of Lola Jimenez" and "Carnival" by Goya.

Some good little things like this were found in the Pushkin Museum..

Also in 1995, the Pushkin Museum put together an exhibition from its bins "Five centuries of European drawing" from the former collection of Franz Koenigs: drawings by Tintoretto, Veronese, Rubens, Rembrandt, Holbein, Durer, Watteau, Boucher, Guardi, Tiepolo and many others - 307 works.

The Franz Koenigs collection is being asked to be returned by Holland, which has already collected its remains from other, more responsive countries. (The collection came to Germany for storage in 1941, and soon after that Koenigs was suddenly hit by a car).

More details: http://www.kommersant.ru/doc/571534

A shard from one of the glued vases was preserved in the Berlin Museum; for half a century it was a reminder of it, published long ago, and gave reason for mourning. The vase has now been found, but reunification is impossible.

The Germans were generally very angry about the exhibition. Head of the Prussky Foundation cultural heritage Klaus-Dieter Lehmann said that the Moscow exhibition represents “another attempt to distort the facts of the past.” Well, they demanded everything back, routinely and without response.

The exposition is also a little unpleasant for the Germans "The Merovingian era. Europe without borders"(2007). It’s as if we found out about an exhibition of artifacts of St. Vladimir the Saint and Princess Olga in Germany, which no one is going to return to us. Of the 1,300 exhibits, 700 are “displaced valuables.” A significant part of the exhibits comes from the collection of the Prussian State Assembly prehistoric antiquities, which later became the Berlin Museum of Ancient and early history. They left the museum, as you understand, in 1945. For more than 60 years, Germany considered them lost.

“At the end of the Second World War, these objects were discovered by Soviet soldiers in the bunker of the Anti-Aircraft Tower on the territory of the Berlin Zoo and, by decision of the Military Council of the 5th Shock Army and the brigade of the USSR Committee for the Arts, were taken to the Soviet Union. Part of the museum’s collection in 1958 was returned to the GDR, the remaining items were distributed between three museums - the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, the Hermitage and the State Historical Museum. Today, these separated collections have been united for the first time in sixty years. Moreover, not only are three Russian parts merged in one exhibition, but the “German” one has also been brought to the exhibition part of the collection, about 200 exhibits" ().

Also found in Moscow Includes 81 items (8 chased gold bowls, hryvnias, ingots and a large number of coils of gold wire) weighing a total of 2.59 kg. Refers to the late Bronze Age— X-IX centuries. BC e.

Until 1939 it was exhibited in the Berlin Collection of Prehistoric Art.

(Putin invited Merkel to the opening of the exhibition, which many considered a real mockery of this lady).

Exhibition "The Woven World of Egyptian Christians"(2010) collected Coptic ex-collections State museums Berlin and the Museum applied arts in Leipzig.
These rags are literally thousands of years old.

photo

***
Antonova, of course, adheres to a very strict and consistent position that nothing can be returned.

“Restitution is impossible, and I will tell you why,” says Antonova, “Three quarters of the works of Italian art that are stored in the Louvre came to Paris with Napoleon. We know this, and yet they remain in the Louvre. I know the place where a large painting by Veronese hung in the Vicenza monastery. It is now in the Louvre, where it will remain. The same goes for the Elgin Marbles, which remain in London." As the director of the Pushkin Museum notes, everything should remain as it is. Irina Antonova calls this fact history and says that what remains in Russia is compensation, a thousandth of compensation ()

Exhibition "The Art of Ancient Cyprus"(2014) also included trophy art. “Part of the collection of Cypriot art comes from the Fund of Displaced Valuables, where things were kept mainly from the Antique Collection of Berlin. It entered the Pushkin Museum in 1945.

The monuments located in the bunker in Friedrichshain were blown up during the fighting in the city. Many items from this Fund needed not just restoration, but complete restoration.

Among them are valuable sculptures and terracottas from the excavations of the famous German archaeologist Max Onefalsh-Richter (1850-1917) in Idalion, Limniti and Kition" ( http://ancient-ru.livejournal.com/272076.html).

Some of the restored antiquities have already been shown on “Archaeology of War”.

Photo "Rossiyskaya Gazeta"

The number of artifacts shown in these exhibitions is staggering.
As well as their antiquity and significance for world art.
The question naturally arises - what else remains unseen?
What else is hidden in the Pushkin Museum's storerooms? What else was taken from Germany and is considered lost?

Third Reich history researcher Otto E. Bernhardt points out that there remains one important artifact whose fate is still unclear.

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“The British Empire is dead. So is the era of cultural trophies,” ends an article by English art critic Jonathan Johnson in The Guardian. He is echoed by J. J. Charlesworth in Art Review: the very fact of the referendum in Scotland showed that the system of the British Empire is hopelessly outdated and it is time to abandon its political illusions, and at the same time all claims to dominance in the art sphere. Ancient Greek statues, which for the last 150 years have been in British Museum, are called nothing more than “looted trophies.” Hence the campaign that has unfolded in the country to return antiquities to their homeland.

Now a second wave of restitutions is beginning in Europe. The issue of returning art objects illegally exported from conquered countries is also acute in France and Germany. However, it would be a mistake to consider this only a European problem: Japan was also forced to return South Korea about 1400 works. This trend is explained by globalization, when national idea placed below interstate interests.

In Russia the situation is different. After World War II, Soviet troops took out great amount works from museums and private collections of the Third Reich. Later, in 1955, the USSR returned the paintings to museums in East Germany and the countries that signed the Warsaw Pact. Exhibits from Germany were kept for a long time in Moscow, Leningrad and Kyiv under the heading “Secret”, although the other winning countries had already given away most of what was exported. As a true empire, the Soviet Union did not take into account the opinion of the European public. Only in 1992 did Helmut Kohl and Boris Yeltsin begin to discuss the possibility of returning exported works to Germany. However, at this stage everything ended: in 1995, Russia imposed a moratorium on restitution.

The problem of returning works, which arises in Western Europe, applies only to the plane of post-war trophies, while in Russia everything is much more complicated. After the revolution Soviet museums enriched themselves at the expense of private “dispossessed” collections. Therefore, critics of restitution fear that by transferring things to foreign heirs, Russian descendants of collectors will be able to assert their rights. So it's safe to say that the items below in the list will remain in domestic museums forever.

"Unknown masterpieces" in the State Hermitage

Works French artists XIX - XX centuries from the collections of Otto Krebs and Otto Gerstenberg during the Second World War were hidden and then taken to the Soviet Union. Many paintings from the collection were returned to Germany, but some are in the Hermitage.

The central place is occupied by the works of impressionists and post-impressionists. These are Edouard Manet, Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, Vincent Van Gogh, Paul Cezanne - in total more than 70 paintings by first-rate artists.

Pablo Picasso "Absinthe", 1901

Edgar Degas "Seated Dancer", 1879-1880.

Baldin collection of graphics in the State Hermitage

The collection consists of more than 300 drawings by such famous Western European artists as Durer, Titian, Rembrandt, Rubens and Van Gogh. The collection was accidentally found by Soviet soldiers in one of the castles, where it was transported from the Kunsthalle in Bremen. Captain Baldin saved the precious sheets from theft and sent them to Moscow. Now they are in the Hermitage.

Albrecht Durer "Women's Bath", 1496

Vincent Van Gogh "Cypress Trees on a Starry Night", 1889

Collection of Frans Koenigs in the Pushkin Museum

Banker Frans Koenigs was forced to sell his rich collection of drawings by old masters, and by the beginning of the Second World War it was in Dresden gallery, from where it was taken out by Soviet troops. Until the early 1990s, the drawings were kept secretly in Moscow and Kyiv. Then, in 2004, Ukraine handed over the sheets it had kept to its heirs. Moscow is not inferior: 307 drawings are in the Pushkin Museum.

Drawing by Peter Paul Rubens

Drawing by Rembrandt van Rijn

"Schliemann's Gold" in the Pushkin Museum and the State Hermitage

The objects were found by the German archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann during excavations of Troy in 1872–1890. The collection consists of 259 items dating from 2400 - 2300 BC. e. Objects made of gold, silver, bronze and stone were stored in Berlin before the war. Now the most valuable of them are in the Pushkin Museum, the rest are in the Hermitage, and it is unlikely that anything will change. Irina Antonova, former director Pushkin Museum, said this about restitution: “As long as we have the gold of Troy, the Germans will remember that there was a war and that they lost it.”

Great Diadem, 2400 – 2200 BC.

Small Diadem, 2400 – 2200 BC.

Gutenberg Bibles in the Russian State Library and Moscow State University Library

European printing originated in Germany in the 15th century. Johann Gutenberg published the first book, a 42-line Bible, in the mid-1440s in the city of Mainz. Its circulation was 180 copies, but by 2009 only 47 of them had survived. By the way, one sheet of this book costs 80 thousand dollars.

Soviet troops took two Bibles from Leipzig. One of them is kept in the library of Moscow State University, and the existence of the other was announced by the authorities only in the 1990s. This copy is located in the Russian state library.

St. Petersburg celebrates a “highly artistic” anniversary - exactly 95 years ago the Hermitage halls were reopened art gallery. The exhibits, evacuated by decision of the Provisional Government, returned from Moscow. This is not the only case when main museum Petersburg gained and lost values. Thus, at the end of the 19th century, the Hermitage donated part of its works to the newly opened Russian Museum of Emperor Alexander III. There are 80 masterpieces in total, including “The Last Day of Pompeii” by Bryullov, “Cossacks” by Repin and the famous “The Ninth Wave” by Aivazovsky. Now these paintings represent the golden fund of the Russian Museum, but they were bought specifically for the Winter Palace.

After the revolution, the Hermitage was significantly enriched by private collections and a collection of works from the Academy of Arts - all the masterpieces that were stored there were nationalized. The Hermitage was replenished with paintings by great masters - Botticelli, Andrea Del Satro, Correggio, Van Dyck, Rembrandt and Delacroix. In addition, after October 1917 Winter Palace ceased to be an imperial residence and many interior items also became part of the museum’s collection. The Hermitage also received gifts that were presented to the imperial court. For example, on October 10, the ambassador of the Persian ruler Nadir Shah Afshar presented the Russian Tsar with the so-called “Treasures of the Great Mongols” - golden vessels, jewelry, weapons studded with diamonds. According to historians, the rich gifts were sent for a reason - the Shah of Persia wanted to woo the princess Elizabeth Petrovna, but the wedding did not happen, and the “Treasures of the Great Mongols” remained in Russia.

Most big museum not only was it replenished with masterpieces of art, but it also lost them. For example, the famous diamond room was transported to Moscow before the revolution, when the collection was saved from enemy troops approaching St. Petersburg. Now this is the basis of the Kremlin’s diamond fund in the armories. Symbols state power- the large and small crown, scepter and orb after the abdication of Nicholas II went to the Kremlin. The Diamond Room suffered greatly from sales when, after 1922, an audit was carried out, after which the most valuable exhibits were left and the rest were sold at foreign auctions.

In 1929 - 1934 soviet government began to sell paintings from the Hermitage at various auctions, and 48 masterpieces of world significance left Russia forever. Two paintings from the museum ended up in national gallery arts in Washington. Paintings were also sold to selected dealers. Thus, billionaire and entrepreneur Calouste Gulbenkian bought 51 Hermitage exhibits at once. Complete trade in masterpieces ceased in 1933. A year later, the director of the Hermitage was fired.

After the Great Patriotic War The Hermitage collection was replenished with the so-called “Trophy Art” - these are cultural values ​​moved to Russia from Germany and its military allies. For some time the Pergamon Altar and a painting by Raphael stayed in the Hermitage " Sistine Madonna", but then they were returned to the GDR. However, many masterpieces still remained in Russia - in particular, it is now known about 800 paintings and 200 sculptures of “trophy art” in the Hermitage vaults.

More recently, St. Petersburg and Moscow competed for a collection of impressionists and postmodernists. Previously, these paintings were in the now defunct Museum of New Western Art in Moscow. It was closed in 1948 as part of the fight against formalism in art, then about 400 paintings, the most famous of which is “Dance” by Matisse, went to the Hermitage. Despite all the losses and gains, the main museum of St. Petersburg remained in the black - by this moment it houses more than 3 million works of art.

On the very top floor of the Hermitage there is one of the museum’s “special storages”, where part of the captured works of art, exported to Russia from Germany after the Second World War, is located.

On the very top floor of the Hermitage there is one of the museum’s “special storage areas”, which contains some of the captured works of art taken to Russia from Germany after the Second World War. Until recently, only the director and the immediate supervisor of the hall had access here.

“Over the past 55 years, not a single one of the works stored there has been studied by specialists,” admitted Boris Asvarishch, curator of the department of the history of Western European art. This is a sad fact, because about 800 are stored in a special room paintings.

Most of the captured works of art are planned to be moved to the Hermitage's modern storage facility when it is completed. Experts estimate that it will take several more years if the museum finds a source of funding to complete only the half-built building.

Some of the paintings are damaged, but Hermitage experts claim that this happened during the Second World War, when the paintings were stored in German banks.

The most beautiful examples of trophy painting belong to the brushes of Van Gogh, Matisse, Renoir and Picasso. They are now on public display in the halls of the Hermitage. In addition, among the works in special storage there are paintings by El Greco, works from the schools of Titian, Tintoretto and Rubens. Most of the paintings came to the museum from private collections, for example, those of German industrialists Otto Gerstenberg and Otto Krebs.

The origin of some of the paintings has not yet been established, but some of them came to the museum from the personal collections of Adolf Hitler and other leaders of the Third Reich.

One floor below, on the second floor of the Hermitage not far from the main exhibitions, there is another special storage facility, which contains up to 6,000 items oriental art. Most of them were previously exhibited at the Museum of East Asian Art in Berlin. These works also spent the last half century in complete oblivion. Among the highlights of the collection are wall frescoes from the 8th and 9th centuries from a Buddhist monastery located in western China. All of them are still (!) stored in metal boxes that the soldiers used to transport them.

There may be fragments of frescoes removed from the Bezeklik Temple in the 1900s by the German archaeologist Albert von le Coq. Von le Coq discovered caves near the city of Turfan in Xinjiang province and transported all their contents (and this is no less than 24 tons of cargo!) to Europe in three stages. Later, British archaeologist Orel Stein also removed rarities from Bezeklik; now these treasures are stored in National Museum Delhi. After two such “successful” scientific forays, practically no work remained on the site.

If the Hermitage boxes really contain Bezeklik frescoes, then their rediscovery could have a serious impact on the further study of Asian antiquities.

There are hundreds of other pieces of art in this room. Japanese paintings on silk, dating from the 18th and 19th centuries, as well as various Japanese and Chinese decorative arts.

In the storerooms of the Hermitage lie about 400 objects from the Schliemann collection dating back to the times Trojan War. Of all 9,000 objects from the Schliemann collection, about 6,000 are again on display in Berlin, but 300 of the most valuable gold artifacts “got to” the Museum fine arts named after Pushkin. About 2,000 more are irretrievably lost.

Other art objects housed in this department date back to the Roman, Celtic and Merovingian civilizations. The latter form a significant part of a large collection of several hundred objects, which the Hermitage management plans to place together with their colleagues from Berlin, possibly as early as 2002.

The owner himself has not yet submitted any official requests, and the Poltava museum claims that they can only guess what kind of paintings they are talking about.

Identified from photographs

The conflict over art arose back in May, when in the German publication Mitteldeutsche Zeitung the director of the Dessau Cultural Foundation announced amazing find. Portraits of members of the Anhalt family that disappeared during the war were found in Ukraine, or more precisely, in the Poltava Yaroshenko Art Museum. Art historians allegedly identified the paintings from photographs on the gallery’s website.

Then this news, like a snowball, was replenished with new details. The Germans found the owner of the paintings - 73-year-old Eduard von Anhalt, the direct heir of the family. They made a complete inventory of the missing person from the family castle and accused Soviet soldiers of the theft, who Last year the war reached the city of Dessau.

How should we react to such news? The Germans immediately spoke about six paintings that were allegedly stored in Poltava, today they are already writing about seven. Maybe they want to take away the entire exhibition of Western European art from us? - says museum director Olga Kurchakova, accompanying me to the red hall.

What pictures the Germans are talking about, Poltava residents only have to guess. After all, there are no works with exactly the same names in the museum. For example, the supposed "Portrait of Princess Casemira" is signed as "Portrait of a Lady with a Dog." This painting came to Poltava in the 1950s from the exchange fund as an unnamed one. The same goes for other jobs. The Germans consider the “portrait of a man” by an unknown author to be their Frederick II, and the portrait of the sisters of the artist Vladimir Borovikovsky is generally called a double portrait of the daughters of Friedrich von Anhalt, painted by the artist Beck.

The only painting that is definitely related to the Anhalt family is “Portrait of Prince G.B. Anhaltsky”. After all, such an inscription was originally on the canvas. The two-meter canvas was brought to Poltava as unusable, with the notes “copy” and “not subject to restoration.”

After the war, Stalin ordered the Arts Committee to bring paintings to the base in Moscow to replace the lost ones. Each museum calculated its losses and then received Western European paintings from the exchange fund. Naturally, the masterpieces did not reach the provinces. They gave away what Moscow, St. Petersburg and Kyiv did not take, that is, works little-known artists. Many of the works were in poor condition. The same “Prince of Ankhal” had to be restored for 30 years. The work was also complicated by the fact that a significant part of the paintings turned out to be nameless, - Svetlana Bocharova, deputy director for scientific affairs at Poltavsky, tells the details of the exchange. art museum.

One collection was defended, another was donated

To establish the authenticity of the paintings, an independent examination is necessary. Independent, not German, says Olga Kurchakova. - You can find fault with everyone regional museum Ukraine, after all German paintings there are a lot everywhere.

Poltava can only guess what will happen to the portraits after the official appeal from the Germans. After all, all exhibits are part of the National Museum Fund of Ukraine, and its fate will be decided exclusively by the state.

But experience shows that the state disposes of good in different ways. For example, in 2008, the Simferopol Museum managed to defend the right to 80 works from the German collection, and even after the examination confirmed that these paintings were taken from Germany, the paintings remained in Ukraine. After all, cultural property received as reparation for the war cannot be returned by law.

However, there were other cases: in 2001, official Kyiv gave Germany the trophy archive of Carl Philipp Emmanuel Bach - this is previously unknown music, more than five thousand unique sheet music, inscribed by the hand of the great composer and his sons. Leonid Kuchma simply presented them to German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder.

HELP "KP"

Losses of the Poltava Museum during the occupation

During the war, 779 paintings, 1895 icons, 2020 engravings disappeared from Poltava without a trace. Together with bibliographic rarities, the art museum's losses amounted to 26 thousand copies. Only 4 thousand small stock paintings were packed into boxes and taken to Ufa and Tyumen.

We had to restore the lists of what was lost from memory museum workers, because the Germans, when they retreated, burned all the documents. The amount of losses of the Poltava museum in 1945 was estimated at 13 million 229 thousand rubles, the director of the museum shows the acts. - Only one picture came back. Apparently, the Germans left her, and the Poltava residents took her to the market and sold her for a loaf of bread. The last owner in 1977 returned “Morning Prayer” by Jeanne Baptiste Greuze to the exhibition.

The occupiers carefully selected works of art. Thus, Alfred Rosenberg, Reich Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories, collected the best specialists and purposefully removed Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Caravaggio from museums. And finally, the Germans set the Poltava local history museum on fire, and shot those who tried to save the property.