Italy and Germany quarreled over an ancient Roman statue bought by Hitler

“Over My Dead Body”

The director of a German museum refused to return the marble base of a Roman statue to Italy and demanded in return that the Discobolus be returned to Germany, since it had been bought for a lot of money by Adolf Hitler. “Only over my corpse,” replied the head of the Italian Ministry of Culture.

Italian Culture Minister Gennaro Sangiuliano has refused the request of the State Museum of Ancient Antiquities in Munich to return to Germany an ancient Roman statue that embodied “Aryan aesthetics,” calling it an Italian national treasure. The statue is in the Palazzo Massimo alle Terme in the collection of the National Museum of Rome.

Palombara’s Discobolus is a copy of a 5th-century BC bronze statue of Myron, dating to the mid-2nd century AD, according to the Associated Press. Hitler bought this Roman statue from an Italian collector in 1938. The deal took place only with the assistance of Benito Mussolini, since society and the Italian Ministry of Culture and Education were categorically against the export of such a valuable work of art to their country.

The statue of the athlete was excavated from the Villa Palombara on the Esquiline Hill in Rome in 1781. After 1781, several more copies of the same statue, as well as their fragments, were discovered in Italy. However, it is the first “Disco-thrower”, which became known as Lancellotti’s “Disco-thrower” after the name of the owner’s palace, that is considered the closest to the original.

The athlete, who for Hitler was the personification of the ideal beauty of the body, did not stay in Germany for long. After the end of World War II, the Discobolus was returned to his homeland as part of art collections illegally obtained by the Nazis.

The dispute over who owns the Disco Thrower arose when the director of the National Museum of Rome demanded the return of the statue’s 17th-century marble base, which was in the German state collection of antiquities. In response, the Munich Museum not only did not agree to return the base, but also demanded that the statue be returned to Germany. To be fair, it should be admitted that the Fuhrer really paid a lot of money for those times (5 million lire) for the athlete and donated him to the Munich museum as a “gift to the German people.” Museum director Florian Knaus said the discus thrower was purchased, not given as a gift to Germany or Adolf Hitler, and was therefore German state property, and its return to Italy in 1948 was a mistake. The Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera writes about this.

It is safe to say that the “cultural” officials of both countries entered into a skirmish, because the Italian Minister of Culture responded by expressing doubts that the German Minister of Culture, Claudia Roth, was aware of the response of the museum director.

“Germany can only get the statue by stepping over my corpse,” the minister told Italian state television Rai. In his comments, he called Germany’s request for the return of “Discobolus” “unacceptable.”

“This sculpture was obtained by the Nazis through fraud, that is, under pressure from Mussolini, and it is part of our national heritage,” Sangiuliano said. He expressed hope that the foundation will be returned. And the sculpture will appear before museum visitors in its “complete” original version.