Dilek Zaptçıoğlu-Gottschlich: “The Emperor’s Treasure Hunters” – Culture

In another war, in another time, the German excavator Theodor Wiegand came to Odessa. The archaeologist came from Istanbul, the Ottoman Empire had just surrendered, but the Germans, allied with the Turks, were still holding Odessa. Wiegand would have liked to continue digging for treasures in the Ukraine, but the collapse could no longer be stopped. The archaeologist was one of the last Germans to leave Odessa in a troop transport.

Wiegand had previously excavated the famous “Market Gate of Miletus” in Asia Minor, one of the showpieces of the Pergamon Museum in Berlin. Packed in 533 crates, the pieces, which weighed several tons, set off on their journey in 1908, even though the Ottoman antiquities authorities had already banned the export of archaeological finds. The proud excavator confided in his diary how happy he was about the coup: Under the phrase “pieces of architecture” it was possible to get everything out of the country, “without the Turkish authorities having any idea that they are now giving us a whole monument, so big like the Arch of Constantine in Rome”.

Political blackmail and “colonial arrogance” also played a significant role in formally legal acquisitions

Tricks and deception were just as much a part of the tools used by German excavators as spades and trowels in the 19th and early 20th centuries in the Orient. She was not only driven by real archaeological zeal, but also by the desire to increase the standing of Prussia and then Germany in the competition of the European “great cultural powers” with sensational finds. In the history of art looting, Wiegand’s flying visit to Odessa is just a footnote.

In Odessa, works of art are once again being carried into the basement and church windows are being nailed shut. Museum directors and librarians fear that the Russian invaders may be targeting their treasures in part because art is now seen as an integral part of a people’s identity. When German, British and French treasure diggers hauled away the millennia-old legacies of the advanced cultures of the Mediterranean region and Mesopotamia, they generally did not give any thought to who they were actually kidnapping this heritage from.

At most, they were plagued by the fear that they might be caught if they proceeded too boldly with “big chunks” (Wiegand). They saw themselves as saviors of antiquity from those “barbarians” who lived where the Hellenes had once built their temples and the Egyptians their pyramids. “The West not only got artifacts, but also sovereignty over history,” write Jürgen Gottschlich and Dilek Zaptçıoğlu-Gottschlich in their book “The Kaiser’s Treasure Hunters” about “German archaeologists on a foray into the Orient”.

The journalist and the historian researched in the largely digitized Ottoman Archives in Istanbul, in the note boxes of the Archaeological Institute in Berlin, in letters and biographies. In the scattered sources they found enough material for a highly exciting tale of the time when the Orient was the Wild West of archaeology. The basics are known, but parts of the book read like a detective story, which leads to the conclusion that political blackmail and “colonial arrogance” also played a significant role in formally legal acquisitions by the major Berlin museums. Although the Ottoman Empire was not a colony, it was broke and dependent, and needed Germany as an ally.

The Germans did not give up, they defied the export ban and left the inferior goods to the Turks

The Istanbul Antiquities Administration was by no means as naïve as one would have liked to see in Berlin. The first Ottoman law against looting antiquities dates back to 1858, and others followed. The treasure diggers and the museums, for which they mostly traveled, were initially granted a fixed share of finds, usually a third, before exports were banned altogether in 1906. The third was not enough for the Germans. In 1899 they pushed through a secret agreement between Kaiser Wilhelm II and Sultan Abdülhamid II. It set 50 percent regardless of “what else is required by law.” Shortly before the outbreak of the First World War, they even almost put up with the rupture of political relations for this delicate secret treaty.

At that time there was controversy about finds from Assyria in Mesopotamia, in what is now northern Iraq. The German ambassador on the Bosporus, Baron Hans von Wangenheim, with an imperial directive in hand, urged the removal of the valuable finds and threatened “inconveniences” if they resisted. Sultan Abdülhamid, who had agreed to the secret treaty, had already been overthrown, and the Young Turks ruled in Istanbul. But the Germans did not give up, they enforced their half-half division against the export ban and left what the Germans thought was inferior to the Turks.

The guilty conscience sometimes shone through. The bust of Nefertiti in Berlin was hidden in the basement for ten years. Its discoverer, the Egyptologist Ludwig Borchardt, had panicked and asked that the sensational find be “not only treated discreetly, but also secretly”. The war ended ancient self-service. Even afterwards, however, those responsible were happy to point out that “the others”, the British and the French, had done the same thing. The Brit Lord Elgin was considered the number one deterrent after he had large parts of the Parthenon frieze on the Athenian Acropolis removed with a crowbar in 1800. The Ferman, Sultan Selim III’s permission, which the British Museum still relies on in the Elgin case, “does not exist,” the Gottschlichs write. Such a document cannot be found in the Ottoman Archives. “But a ferman from the sultan would definitely be in the archives, because these high decrees were all carefully documented.” Which puts you in the middle of the current restitution debate, not just for the Elgin Marbles, the Parthenon Frieze.

What to do? Why not fund good reconstructions using parts of the originals?

The authors do not recommend any radical solutions, i.e. the complete emptying of the world cultural heritage museums in Berlin. But they demand an honest approach to their history and more creativity. Why not fund good reconstructions using parts of the originals? For example for Bergama, the former Pergamon. Where the Zeus altar stood, 400 meters high above the Kaikos River, there is now emptiness under the Aegean sun. According to the authors, the loss of ancient cultural assets does not only have a material aspect for Muslim societies. Concepts of monoculture are also promoted in this way. In the case of Turkish demands for return, they advise talks “at eye level”.

You can see an example of how things are getting better today in Göbekli Tepe in south-eastern Turkey. There, experts from the German Archaeological Institute in Istanbul and Turkish archaeologists are jointly researching a Neolithic temple complex, one of the most exciting archaeological sites in the world. Nobody would think of kidnapping the stelae, richly decorated with pictures of animals, abroad.

The book certainly appreciates the achievements of the excavators, “who acted according to the rules of their time and often risked their health, sometimes even their lives, in the search for the past”. But the times have changed. With a great new museum in Troy, Turkey has created the basis for showing the Troy finds from German museums on the spot. The request of the Troy chief archaeologist Rüstem Aslan, who is well known in Germany, at least for loans has so far been in vain. That is bitter.