A new exhibit of Greek and Roman antiquities at Berlin's Pergamon museum puts 170 sculptures, vases and other works on display in Germany for the first time in six decades.
"Return of the Gods" is the largest exhibit the museum has mounted using pieces solely from its own collection, said Martin Maischberger, antiquities curator at the Pergamon.
"Of course, we don't consider them 'German pieces,' as they belong to world heritage," Maischberger said.
Most of the pieces were excavated in Italy, Turkey and Greece and landed in the collection of Prussia's Frederick the Great, who ruled in the 1700s.
In 1945, at the close of World War II, invading Soviet Soldiers seized the collection and sent it back to Russia, which was the fate of many artistic treasures in Germany. Russia declared the art had been seized as retribution for the 27 million Soviet lives lost and destruction of entire cities during the conflict. The two nations are still negotiating the return of many pieces.
But the Pergamon's antiquities were returned to East Germany 13 years later as a symbol of Cold War camaraderie between the Soviet Union and the German Democratic Republic, as East Germany was known.
The collection languished in storage in the Pergamon's basement until 2004 when FAAP, a Brazilian culture and education foundation, offered to contribute 300,000 ($388,000) toward restoration of the pieces in return for a yearlong loan to exhibit them in Sao Paulo.
Now back in Berlin, "Return of the Gods" runs from Nov. 27 to July 5, 2009.
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