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Berlin Museum Island: the defilement of culture

2020-10-21T17:00:57.031Z


On October 3, a total of 63 objects were willfully damaged in three facilities on Berlin's Museum Island. Experts speak of a new threat to culture.


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Museum director Seyfried on Wednesday in the Neues Museum, damage to a sarcophagus: "This is really about the nitty-gritty"

Photo: Stefanie Loos / AFP

The attack on art was carried out on the day of German unity, on October 3rd.

The museums in the capital were open as usual on public holidays, the perpetrator (s) were probably indistinguishable from the other visitors.

Objects in three houses on the Spree Island - including sarcophagi that are thousands of years old - were sprayed with an oily liquid.

It was colorless but left traces.

Very different objects and thus also very different materials in the Neues Museum and the Pergamonmuseum are affected, including frames for pictures in the Alte Nationalgalerie.

At least the paintings themselves, which are particularly sensitive, were spared. 

The incident only became publicly known through media reports.

The museums themselves and the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation (SPK), which is superordinate to them, had kept a low profile and only scheduled a press conference today - at short notice.

The previous silence was justified there with tactical investigative considerations, and not all cases were discovered immediately.

Lenders were informed early on, however.

The director takes the damage personally

Wednesday afternoon, press conference.

Friederike Seyfried, director of the Egyptian Museum, leads the journalists to some sarcophagi in the Neues Museum and shows examples of the damage - which a museum visitor would hardly notice, but which shock any expert and which must now be treated with a certain amount of effort.

Only in one of the stone coffins in the so-called Egyptian courtyard of the museum can the stain be seen more clearly.

The oily liquid was applied, maybe even sprayed on.

Director Seyfried should be noted that she takes the damage to the art that she maintains and manages here personally.

There is nothing harmless about it.

"It's really getting down to business here."

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Damage to an Egyptian sarcophagus in the Neues Museum: Mysterious liquid

Photo: Markus Schreiber / AP

There does not seem to be any traces of the perpetrator or the perpetrators, and people have to register almost everywhere in Corona times.

More than 3000 visitors were out and about on the Museum Island on October 3rd, according to the investigators, over 2000 tickets were "unfortunately" given in daily sales.

1400 tickets were booked via 644 email addresses.

These people were asked in writing if they noticed anything unusual during their visit.

Water pistol, squirt bottle or clown flower?

The surveillance cameras in the museums apparently did not provide any information.

The liquid could have been sprayed on in a discreet way, according to the police, a water pistol, a squirt bottle or even a filled clown flower that is served with a tassel is conceivable.

It's not just about material damage.

After the nocturnal break-ins and thefts in the Berlin Bode Museum in 2017 and in the Dresden Green Vault in 2019, this act of vandalism is another example of how even the most valuable cultural assets are not safe in this country.

Already in the summer there were cases of vandalism in the outdoor area on the Museum Island, including graffiti and cut banners.

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Press conference in front of the Neues Museum, SPK Vice Director Haak: The public was not informed for investigative reasons

Photo: Sean Gallup / Getty Images

You may have to deal with a new threat to culture, says Eckart Köhne, who heads the Badisches Landemuseum in Karlsruhe and is president of the German Museum Association.

This challenge cannot be mastered by the museums alone, since protection from the state, including the police, is necessary.

This protection would at least be made possible if football games were held on the weekend and police officers were posted in front of the stadiums. 

It is not uncommon for works of art to be damaged; some simply scribble on it with a ballpoint pen.

In Berlin, too, it was not about theft and quick money, but "apparently about marking cultural treasures ugly". 

A new, anti-culture spirit

Regardless of the possible motives of the perpetrator or the perpetrator in Berlin, a new, anti-cultural spirit is showing up in the country.

Why, asks Köhne, is a conspiracy theorist like chef Attila Hildmann allowed to claim in the social channels that one of the houses on Museum Island houses a "throne of Satan" and is the center of satanists and "corona criminals"?

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Seyfried demonstrating the stains on a sarcophagus: Hardly recognizable as damage to laypeople

Photo: Andreas Borcholte / DER SPIEGEL

Hildmann, meanwhile, responded to rumors via news service Telegram that his statements might have instigated the perpetrators: "Dogs hit bark! ... We will expose your child-abusing Satanist scene to the last man."

He also published a map, on which the Pergamon Museum and the residence of the Chancellor were highlighted, he wrote: "Pergamon Museum houses the throne of Satan (Baal)! 50 meters away at Kupfergraben 6 lives B'nai-B'rith-Illuminati Merkel! Coincidence? "

There is no such thing as absolute security

So the situation is explosive.

How much protection is needed, how much is possible?

Alke Dohrmann is an expert in security at the Conference of National Cultural Institutions, an interest group of more than 20 important cultural institutions.

She points out that there is no such thing as absolute security.

Museums should be "open" to visitors.

"These objects belong to everyone, and everyone should be allowed to see them."

Minister of State for Culture Monika Grütters also spoke today.

The museums of the SPK would have to "ask again questions about their security precautions", it would have to be "clarified how this amount of damage could have happened unnoticed and how such attacks should be prevented in the future".

However, the federal government is partly responsible for the fact that the foundation is underfunded.

The SPK is - not least at the request of the Minister of State for Culture - to be comprehensively restructured in the coming years, possibly even dissolved.

Now it sounds like the incident is being used to put pressure on the foundation's leadership.

Should someone from the top management of the SPK take responsibility and give up his office? 

Grütters does not want to rule it out: "The processes must of course be fully clarified," writes their spokesman.

"Only then does the question of consequences in the organization arise."

Icon: The mirror

Source: spiegel

All life articles on 2020-10-21

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