Stephen Fry on »Elgin Marbles« from the Parthenon in the British Museum: Show class! Give her back!

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Stephen Fry

Photo: Isabel Infantes/ dpa

A return of the precious fragments would be, said Fry, "an act that would have to be described in a word that lately has seldom been used for British deeds: it would have class".

The so-called »Elgin Marbles« were removed by the British Lord Elgin during work on the Parthenon temple in Athens at the beginning of the 19th century.

The English actor and writer Stephen Fry commented on this in a speech at the traditional Hay-on-Wye Literature Festival in Wales.

The debate has occupied the British public for decades - it is probably the most prestigious restitution conflict in the country.

The marble sculptures have been shown in a separate room in the British Museum in London since 1939.

To this day, the museum refuses to discuss returning it.

Fry summed up the British Museum's argument as to why the art treasures should remain in London with his own succinctness: "We got them legally from the Turks ... who were the occupiers at the time." An American could also say with this logic : "Yes, in 1941 I bought the Eiffel Tower from the German occupiers of Paris," says Fry.

And if the French asked if they could have it back, he would say, "No, I got it legitimately."

The background to Fry's statement is that Lord Elgin, then British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, to which Greece belonged around 1800, stated that he had specific permission from Sultan Selim III.

to carry out work in the Acropolis - and also to take parts with you.

However, the authenticity of this document was questioned as early as the early 19th century: in 1816 a commission of the British Parliament examined the case before agreeing to purchase the pieces, despite some objections.

The British Museum states that a parliamentary vote would still be required today to allow a return.

In Athens »one of the best museums in Europe«

In his speech, which was reported by the London Times, Stephen Fry assessed the spiritual value of the Elgin Marbles as extremely high.

Two million people would cheer their return in the streets of Athens, Fry believes, because: "It would be as if Stonehenge, Big Ben and the Coronation Stone would return to us at the same time after the country had missed them for hundreds of years".

Fry admitted that in the 1970s, when a military junta ruled Greece and Athens had the worst air pollution, he would not have advocated returning the art treasures.

But meanwhile Greece has built the Acropolis Museum, according to Fry "one of the best museums in Europe", which specializes in the archaeological finds on the site.

In Fry's view, the British museums keep coming up with new excuses to avoid returns.

In justification that the statues would have been in far worse condition had they remained in Athens and not been exhibited in London, the writer notes: "If your friend has a fire in the house and you take his painting, so that it doesn't burns, then you can’t say: I’ll keep it forever, because without me it would have burned – then you could have let it burn.”

Fry describes himself as "passionate" about the case.

In fact, he has given television interviews and speeches on the subject several times in recent years.

He is currently working on the fourth volume in a series of retellings of Greek sagas.

Conversations at the highest level

Lord Elgin initially claimed that he only wanted to make plaster casts of the statues, but then took the works out of the country.

Earlier this year, a joint project between the universities of Oxford and Harvard, and the Museum of the Future in Dubai - the Institute for Digital Technology (IDA) - made headlines by proposing that the marble sculptures could be scanned and digital replicas made.

In this way, the originals could be returned and there would still be no gaps in the exhibition of world cultures in the museum.

But the British Museum balks, saying the Acropolis Museum has been allowed to scan the works on several occasions.

In 2014, the World Cultural Organization Unesco offered to mediate in the case.

In September 2021, she came to the conclusion that Great Britain must return the marble objects.

Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis put the issue at the heart of his Downing Street talks with Boris Johnson in November.

Although he had shown sympathy for the return idea as a student in Oxford, he did not decide to do so either as Mayor of London or today as Prime Minister.

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