Berlin

Berlin’s collections, particularly in the realm of classical art, profited also from Germany’s belated entry into the international race to loot the Mediterranean and Near East of its remaining ancient treasures. As a latecomer in this field, the Reich was desperate to bring its antiquity collections up to the standards of the great western European museums, especially the British Museum. Fortunately for Berlin, one of the most zealous pillagers of classical art was Heinrich Schliemann, a grocer’s son from Mecklenburg who in the early 1870s located and excavated the site of Homer’s Troy in western Turkey. It was by no means apparent from the outset that Schliemann would deed the treasures he had found at Troy—most notably a collection of gold articles he claimed had belonged to King Priam—to the German capital. As a self-taught archeologist with no formal degrees, Schliemann had been derided as an impostor by Berlin’s classical scholars when he first announced his discoveries. (It was later to be established that he had indeed fabricated details of some of his finds.) Profoundly hurt by this rebuff, he announced, “If I leave it [the Troy collection] in my will to a German city, it can never be Berlin, for I have never had a single word of appreciation from there and have always been treated with the most odious hostility.” Only after he had gained credibility abroad did Berlin finally accept him as a genuine article and launch a campaign to win his loot for the royal collections. Pleased by the attention, Schliemann relented and in 1881 formally willed his Trojan horde to the new Berlin Ethnographic Museum, where a special wing was built to display it.

Ludwig Meidner

, Apocalyptic Landscape, 1913

On the occasion of what Kaiser Wilhelm I called Schliemann’s “patriotic gift,” imperial Berlin made him an honorary citizen (an honor bestowed heretofore only on Bismarck and Helmuth von Moltke) and threw a lavish dinner party for him at the Town Hall. The menu, written in ancient Greek, showed the Discoverer of Ancient Troy seated on the throne of Priam holding a spade in one hand and a statuette of Victory in the other, while a chastened Berlin bear reposed at his feet. In an official proclamation, Mayor Forckenbeck declared that Schliemann, “by his combination of practical activity with idealism” had become “a pattern for all German citizens.” Messages of congratulation came from Kaiser Wilhelm I and Bismarck, both of whom had worked assiduously to stroke the archeologist’s bruised ego. In his brief response, Schliemann showed that while he had forgiven Berlin its earlier snubs, he had not forgotten them: “In spite of her former cold treatment, you see that Berlin has done me honor at last. She has three great citizens—Bismarck, von Moltke, and myself.”

Schliemann’s archeological bug bit Kaiser Wilhelm II, who loved to dig for ancient treasure at his summer estate on Corfu, where, it was rumored, fragments were buried every year by sycophantic aides to facilitate his “discoveries.” On his numerous trips abroad he met with foreign potentates to personally press Germany’s case for access to the best sites and the right to bring some of the finds back to Berlin. In 1899, for example, he convinced the Turkish sultan to allow German archeologists to claim for Berlin half of what they found at the ancient Greek sites of Priene and Baalbek. Germany thereby gained a great advantage over Britain, France, Russia, and Austria in the exploitation of the cultural riches of the eastern Mediterranean. Germany’s cultural warriors brought home the Gate of Milet to add to the fabled Pergamum Altar, which had been placed on display in Berlin in 1880 and touted as Berlin’s answer to the Elgin Marbles. In 1902 Kaiser Wilhelm II presided over the dedication of a new space dedicated to the Pergamum treasures. (The famous Pergamum Museum itself was constructed in the period between 1912 and 1929.) With these additions, Berlin indeed rivaled London as a treasure-house of ancient plunder.

Matters were somewhat different when it came to collections of contemporary art. Old Berlin’s holdings had not been very distinguished in this domain, and in the imperial era they suffered from the misguided intervention of the kaiser. Wilhelm took a personal interest in acquisitions to the National Gallery, Berlin’s major museum for contemporary art; he hoped to weed out works that were too modern in technique or insufficiently edifying in theme. After visiting the National Gallery in 1899, Wilhelm complained to the Cultural Ministry that some “educative” national works had been “replaced by pictures of modern taste, some of them of foreign origin.” He demanded that the originals be replaced and the new pictures be “demoted to a less prominent place.” He also insisted that henceforth all acquisitions receive his approval.