The State Hermitage Museum: Information

Interview with the newspaper Kommersant
4 July 2005 (N 120/Ï)

In an interview in Kommersant, Director of the State Hermitage Mikhail Piotrovsky presented his views on the situation which has developed since the publication in the newspaper on 30 June 2005 of an article about six stained glass windows held in the special storerooms of Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts. The article suggested that these works may be part of the same set of stained glass windows from the Marienkirche in Frankfurt-on-Oder that were kept in the Hermitage until their recent transfer back to Germany.

Kommersant :
- The Gothic Cathedral of the Virgin Mary (Ìàrienkirche) in Frankfurt-on-Oder is famous for its three stained glass windows dating from the 14th century. One of these is unique in its iconography, since it sets forth the history of the Antichrist. In 1943, when the Allies began their bombardment of Frankfurt, the stained glass windows were disassembled and taken away to Potsdam, where they were confiscated by the Soviet Army together with other artistic treasures. Eventually 111 of the 117 separate pieces of stained glass found their way to Hermitage and the six pieces missing were considered to have been lost. The Government of the Federal Republic of Germany asked repeatedly in the past for the return of the stained glass windows, but it took until the spring of 2002 for the State Duma of the Russian Federation to pass a law on their return to Germany. As a gesture in return, the German company Wintershall paid for the restoration of a church destroyed during the Second World War, Novgorod’s Church of the Assumption on Volotovoe Pole. However, now it appears that the six missing stained glass elements may be located in the Pushkin Museum, as Andrei Vorobiev, the former Academic Secretary of the museum, recently told.
- Did you have any idea that the six missing stained glass elements from the Marienkirche might be stored in the Pushkin Museum?

Ìikhail Piotrovsky:
- After you published your article, I spoke with Irina Antonova (Director of the Pushkin Museum – ed.). It is quite likely that they do have several pieces of stained glass from the Marienkirche. But there is no need to sensationalize this. That will only do harm to the cause of resolving issues surrounding transferred works of art. When we investigated our stained glass windows, the hypothesis was made that some parts should be found somewhere, but that requires careful study and convincing proof. This is a question of a legal nature, after all. The museum inventory of Russia can part with items only in one of two ways: either by decision of the courts or by mistake. For this reason one should not act hastily. The stained glass windows of Marienkirche were returned to Germany in keeping with a federal law passed by the State Duma. I am firmly convinced that all matters relating to transferred cultural treasures should be resolved by federal law. This is a very serious question with great political consequences for the future. The Duma took its decision in full conformity with the Russian law on transferred cultural treasures which the German side, by the way, does not recognize: the stained glass windows were returned as church property.

If the stained glass elements in the Pushkin Museum are really from the Marienkirche, then a similar procedure should be followed: the German Government should state its claims, a joint commission should carry out an investigation, and the issue should be placed before the State Duma. Everything should be done in a properly legal way: this best ensures the protection of Russia’s national interests, rather than merely the interests of one or another politician or cultural figure. I think that the Marienkirche stained glass elements should be added to what has already been sent back to Germany. In my view the question surrounding the Marienkirche was solved correctly: there are things which are more important to Germany than to us, and there are other things which we need and which we will never give up.

- The best specialists today on the Marienkirche are to be found in the Hermitage. Will your curators and restorers be allowed to participate in the expert examination of the stained glass pieces in the Pushkin Museum?

- I don’t know. If such a need will arise, most likely they will participate. Indeed, the best specialists on stained glass windows are in St Petersburg. We work in close contact with our German colleagues. In a recent bit of restoration work over there our restorers were sent to Germany. Frankfurt-on-Oder is very grateful to us for what we have done. When they do restoration work, they use the same methods we do. When they set about collecting money for other restoration, they decided to display the windows we had restored in juxtaposition with the remaining windows that were in poor condition. At the same time there were disagreements on this question between museum workers and politicians. We had a joint Russian-German project on restoration: to restore everything here, put the windows on display, and then send them back to Germany. But the German politicians demanded the immediate return of all the stained glass windows regardless of their poor condition.

- Were the Germans interested in getting the windows back in poor condition for political reasons?

- Someone really wanted to demonstrate that we were thieves, that we don’t know how to handle cultural treasures, and that we should simply give back what we had stolen. Whereas if we study these items and restore them – that indicates that we are not plunderers. Our position was fundamentally different: we confiscated a significant part of the German cultural heritage from the territory of Prussia and Saxony as compensation for that part of our own cultural heritage which was destroyed. Therefore, the discussion should be conducted from an even score, from zero, and not from the standpoint of "you stole it, give it back." The longer we argue, the less chance there is to restore these items, and many of them acutely need mending. We should hold joint exhibitions such as Unknown Treasures or Schliemann-Troy-Petersburg, but these plans always run up against opposition from the side of politicians. After museum catalogues are published, almost no one makes claims. The items are accessible to the public and are researched in a scholarly manner. We now are preparing for a joint Russian-German exhibition on the Merovingians and the Great Age of Migrations. I hope that the Pushkin Museum will also participate in this. We have other plans as well. In Germany there is a project to create a Russian-German Cultural Institute in order to apply our common efforts towards studying what we have, give recommendations on restoration work, and prepare exhibitions. These issues should be dealt with calmly, in discussion among museums, without any hysterics.

- Wouldn’t you say that the attitude towards the treasures which were transferred to us that they were stolen is related to the way that they were kept hidden?

- Of course. We committed only one sin: that we did not put these items on display. That is a great sin among museum people and it has to be corrected. As for the rest, Russia did not commit any crimes. The passions have been fueled by people who, as a rule, do not visit exhibitions. We are talking about things of a museum nature. There are almost no items which might rank as national symbols. Therefore the issues should be resolved calmly, even cynically, by horse-trading and with the necessary participation of the Duma. There is a general scheme for protecting Russia’s national interest though in each concrete case it may work out differently. For example, in the case of the Marienkirche windows, the return was a natural step. We had to exhibit them and moreover an atmosphere developed which facilitated the investment of German money in the restoration of the Church of the Assumption on Volotovoe Pole. In the case of the Baldin Collection (a collection of Western European drawings which Germany has long claimed should be returned – ed.), our interest is to obtain some of the drawings to fill lacunae in the Hermitage collection, while the rest can be sent back to Bremen.

- Did the Hermitage receive any compensation for the Marienkirche stained glass windows?

-Yes, it did. Our law requires compensation and we demanded it. When we calculated how much the Hermitage had spent on restoring and exhibiting the windows (this is a matter of fundamental importance, since without an exhibition and publication the items cannot be transferred, since we will then truly look like bandits), the sum was approximately $400,000. But one of our politicians considered that we were asking too much. That is demeaning for us: we are generally precise and correct when we count our money. Then in Germany people started to say that they cannot give so much. In the end we did get some compensation, but I think that in these matters disputes over petty sums are unseemly. It is important for us to protect the national dignity, to save face. We should not use such delicate questions relating to national self-awareness to fight for some financial stream.