Archaeology Magazine - November/December 1993 - 65

when Soviet troops emptied it was still alive. Goldmann
for declining to release more details - that there was
returned a year later, meeting with the director of the no authoritative inventory - is a lame one."
When the Soviet Union crumbled, so did hopes for
Hermitage Museum in Leningrad. While the latter had
no knowledge of the Trojan gold, he had seen a Polish an expeditious agreement on restitution. A Soviettreasure (taken by the Soviets when they took over the German General Relations Treaty of 1990 had called
city of Lwow in Ukraine) at the Ministry of Finance. For for the reciprocal return without compensation of
Goldmann this news established that, contrary to their
"art treasures illegally taken away." But in 1992 Boris
claims, the Soviets had not returned all of the artworks Yeltsin, president of the new Russian Republic,
taken during the war. The Trojan treasure might indeed appeared to add conditions by declaring that cultural
be in the Soviet Union.
trophies could be returned only on a mutual basis, and
Then, in 1991¡ARTnews magazine reported that the only after study by experts. Even so, Yeltsin was aslost Schliemann treasure was in Moscow, and Goldmann
sailed by Russian nationalists who insisted that the loot
hurried there to visit officials and curators at the
be kept as reparations for Nazi war crimes.
Pushkin Museum, whose storerooms were believed to
It was a step forward, therefore, when Russians and
contain the gold. But no one he interviewed would admit Germans, acting on the 1990 treaty, agreed at Dresden
to having seen it; cullast February to form a
tural glasnost had its limjoint commission to deal
its. He was shown
with wartime plunder.
documents purporting to
Composed of diplomats
show that on June 17,
and cultural officials,
the commission
has
1945, Soviet troops had
transferred
from the
missbegun cataloging
Flakturm Zoo three big
ing art. Highest on the
crates containing the
Russian list are the
treasure to a special
amber walls from the
in
Berlin.
room at Catherine the
depot
Confirmation that the
Great's palace.
Germans hope that
gold had traveled to
Moscow came in Decemafter decades of silence
ber 1991, when a friend
and denial they will at
in Potsdam telephoned
last learn the whereGoldmann to tell him
abouts of a multitude of
that he had found some
missing paintings, porceold lists in Russian givlains, and tapestries
from Berlin, Weimar,
ing military transport
numbers. The numbers
Moscow'sPushkin Museum, where the Trojan treasure has been and Bremen, not to menon the Pushkin Museum secretly kept since World War II, plans to exhibit the objects once tion many thousands of
documents
matched
old books from a dozen
they have been studied and conserved.
those on the list from
major libraries. Since the
Potsdam. Furthermore, the contents of the crates were Russians have more German artworks to exchange than
described in an inventory prepared in 1956 by a curator
vice versa, it is realistically speculated that a possible
of the Pushkin Museum. The 1956 inventory suggests
quid pro quo might be generous German financial comthat some of the Trojan treasure may, in fact, be lost. pensation in the form of aid to Russian museums and libraries.
"Gregory Koslow in Moscow checked this inventory
"There'll be talks and talks and talks, but at least
against our own," Goldmann said, "but the Russian list
made no reference to some key objects from our collec- we know that Schliemann's treasure, or at least part of
tion. I can't say any more now, but we cannot exclude the it, escaped destruction," says Goldmann. "Sooner or
possibility that these objects were removed from the later, the truth has to emerge." Nobody has done more
crates in the Flakturm Zoo before the Russian Army ar- than he has to.dig out the truth and keep the spotlight
rived."
on the missing treasure. One hopes that sooner, rather
Goldmann also learned that the Pushkin Museum
than later, the genuine treasure of Troy will replace the
stored German artworks in a special depot in the Russ- flashy facsimile, made for a television program, now
ian Orthodox Monastery at Zagorsk, 50 miles from displayed in his museum. Priam's gold has been in the
Moscow. He was told that there were as many as 16,000 Stygian gloom long enough.
objects from various Berlin museums. "Everybody was
reticent about the Zagorsk holdings," he went on, "but Karl E. Mkykr, a memberof The New York Times editoI was told they were cataloged, and that copies of the rial board since 1979, is the author of The Pleasures of Arcatalog had been seen on coffee tables of high-ranking
chaeology, The Plundered Past, and The Art Museum:
Soviet officials. So the reason given by Russian officials Power, Money, Ethics, a Twentieth Century Fund Study.
32 Archa KOI.OC;Y

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Archaeology Magazine - November/December 1993

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