At this time with Russia challenging the conventions of international law, it is interesting to note the Russian law passed by the Duma in 1998 - making all war-time works of art looted by the Russians to be legitimate.
This little story starts in present day Turkey and the excavations of German archaeologist Schliemann in the then Ottoman Empire at the site of Classic Ilion, since proved to be the site of ancient Troy.
University of Cincinnati
The layer in which Priam's Treasure was alleged to have been found was assigned to Troy II, whereas Priam would have been king of Troy VI (or VII - after the fire or battle that ravaged the city in about 1200 BC.), occupied hundreds of years later. Schliemann smuggled what came to be known as 'Priam's Treasure' out of Anatolia. The officials were informed when his wife, Sophia, wore the jewels for the public.
The Ottoman official assigned to watch the excavation received a prison sentence. The Ottoman government revoked Schliemann's permission to dig and sued him for its share of the gold. Schliemann went on to Mycenae. There, however, the Greek Archaeological Society sent an agent to monitor him.
Later Schliemann traded some treasure to the government of the Ottoman Empire in exchange for permission to dig at Troy again. It is located in the Istanbul Archaeology Museum. The rest was acquired in 1881 by the Royal Museums of Berlin (Königliche Museen zu Berlin), in whose hands it remained until 1945, when it disappeared from a protective bunker beneath the Berlin Zoo. In fact, the treasure had been secretly removed to the Soviet Union by the Red Army. During the Cold War, the government of the Soviet Union denied any knowledge of the fate of Priam’s Treasure.
The Pushkin Museum, Moscow
The tale of how the Schliemann gold resurfaced half a century after its disappearance begins in October 1987, when the young curator of the Museum of Private Collections, a branch of the Pushkin Museum, stumbled across some papers in the basement of the Ministry of Culture. Grigorii Kozlov had gone in search of a photocopier - a rarity in the Soviet Union even in the late 1980s - at his former workplace. Instead, in a dusty, dimly lit room in the bowels of the ministry, he discovered a pile of documents, among them one titled "List of the Most Important Art Works Kept in the Special Depository of the Pushkin Museum," and another, "Unique Objects from the 'Large Trojan Treasure,' Berlin, Ethnographic Museum," dated 28 March 1957. Kozlov, trembling with excitement, realized he was looking at evidence that the Schliemann gold was stashed away in the Soviet Union.
The next day, Kozlov informed his former fellow student Konstantin Akinsha, a postgraduate at the Research Institute of Art History in Moscow, about his find. The two art historians immediately began to investigate the whereabouts of trophy art in the Soviet Union. In April 1991, they published an article in the American journal ARTnews, which listed some of the "missing" art works they knew were on Soviet territory, including the Schliemann gold.Initially, the government refused to comment. But two months after the attempted coup in August 1991, Minister of Culture Nikolai Gubenko finally admitted that Soviet museums had secret depositories filled with war booty.
He stressed that his government would return artworks to Germany only if it received in exchange objects of equivalent "artistic quality" removed from the Soviet Union by the Germans. Denying any knowledge of the Schliemann gold's whereabouts, Gubenko implied that the Western Allies had gained possession of it at the end of the war.
Meanwhile, Kozlov had been visited by the KGB and interrogated by an outraged Irina Antonova, the director of the Pushkin Museum, who warned that if he continued publicizing the results of his investigations, the government might "return everything to the Germans free of charge!" Undaunted, both he and Akinsha carried on with their research into trophy art on Soviet territory, recruiting friends to sift through restitution documents in the Central Archive of Literature and Art. One friend found all the documents related to the transport of the Schliemann gold from Berlin as well as its arrival at the Pushkin Museum.It was not until fall 1994 - more than a year after Russia admitted to having the gold - that the museum allowed experts from abroad to view the treasure.
The return of items taken from museums has been arranged in a treaty with Germany but, as of January 2010, is being blocked by museum directors in Russia. They are keeping the looted art, they say, as compensation for the destruction of Russian cities and looting of Russian museums by Nazi Germany in World War II. A 1998 Russian law, the Federal Law on Cultural Valuables Displaced to the USSR as a Result of the Second World War and Located on the Territory of the Russian Federation, legalizes the looting in Germany as compensation and prevent Russian authorities from proceeding to restitutions.
Pinocchio's Door
The 259 objects were removed from a safe located in a two-room depository in the basement, where they had been hidden for some 50 years. The only way to reach that depository was from the tour guides' office through an iron door hidden behind a curtain. Museum staff called it "Pinocchio's door," because in the Russian version of the story, a magic door hidden by a painting of a fireplace leads to an enchanted paradise - "rather like the Communist ideal society," as Akinsha and Kozlov jokingly remark.
There are doubts concerning the authenticity of the treasure.
Sources:
TRANSITIONS ONLINE: CULTURE: From Behind Pinocchio's Door
Link to article in the New York Times
Wikipedia on Priam's Treasure
Reconstruction of Troy by University of Cincinnati
