The Pushkin Museum told how Schliemann smuggled the treasure to Germany

And what about Turkey

The exhibition “Schliemann. Troy is near”, dedicated to the great treasure hunter who believed his childhood dream and found the legendary city from Homer’s Iliad. Before Troy was considered a myth. A year ago, exactly on the 200th anniversary of Heinrich Schliemann, the Pushkin Museum presented the results of a study of 65 subjects – the analysis was carried out using a high-resolution digital microscope. It was an “epigraph” for a large-scale exhibition about Schliemann and his discovery, which was supposed to be done together with German and Greek museums. Of the 19 treasures, 13 are stored in Moscow – this is the same gold that Soviet soldiers took out of Berlin in 1945 and which was stored in the bins of the Pushkin Museum until the 1990s. It was assumed that the collection, divided by history, would be reunited and for the first time appear united. It did not happen – history again made a somersault. Despite this, the Pushkin Museum managed to give the viewer the opportunity to feel involved in the search for Troy.

Each visitor of the exhibition can feel like a treasure hunter. For this, several thematic routes have been invented that you can go on your own with an audio guide. During the preparation of the project, a whole encyclopedia has grown around the figure of Gerhard Schliemann in various genres – from funny educational comics to sometimes very sharp assessments of the figure of the famous archaeologist. Exactly 150 years ago, a German who lived in Russia for a long time, left his family here and left for the sake of his childhood dream in search of a mythical city, found a treasure that we today know as the “gold of Troy”. The anniversary of the discovery gave rise to a new investigation on the topic “who is Heinrich Schliemann.” Schoolchildren and students were engaged in it – about 50 young treasure hunters delved into a complex story. The public can study the results of their work virtually and in detail during an audio walk.

The exposition includes rare items from the storerooms of the Pushkin Museum only (from the 3rd millennium BC to the 20th century) and the results of their research, made on the latest devices over the past few years. A separate chapter is the mysterious story of the appearance of the Trojan collection in the Pushkin Museum. Materials about this were logically placed in the “Director’s Office”, which turned into an exhibition space after the death of Irina Antonova. Here, on a desk that belonged to Ivan Tsvetaev, the founder of the Museum of Fine Arts, and later to subsequent directors, one can find interesting materials about Schliemann. Among the exhibits, for example, are books that the self-taught archaeologist sent to the historian and archaeologist Ivan Tsvetaev. Who would have imagined then that after more than half a century, a sensational find would be in the Pushkin Museum. It happened in 1945 – the director was then the monumental sculptor Sergei Merkulov, who had the opportunity to restore the museum damaged by the bombing after the Second World War. He safely hid the treasures of Schliemann – so much so that the employees did not know where. The sensational premiere of the archaeological collection happened decades later under the next director, Irina Antonova. Showed then with apprehension. In 1996, the exhibition was held in the midst of fierce disputes between President Yeltsin and the State Duma over restitution – the return of cultural property imported into the USSR after the war. The “Gold of Troy”, also known as the “treasure of Priam”, turned out to be at their epicenter. It was claimed by Germany and Turkey. The vicissitudes around the “gold of Troy” is another dramatic chapter of the exhibition.

After all, Schliemann was not immediately believed that he had found the treasured Troy. The discovery happened on May 31, 1873 – during excavations on the Hisarlyk hill, the archaeologist noticed that, as he later said, something flashed in the niche of the fortress wall. Schliemann decided to extract the find without prying eyes. On that day, he dug up a large vessel, in which there were about 10 thousand different artifacts – jewelry, beads, gold dishes. Schliemann called the discovery “Priam’s treasure” after the name of the last king of Troy. In fact, the treasures have nothing to do with King Priam. Schliemann was a successful archaeologist, but self-taught, and actually committed vandalism, because he dug down the Hissarlik hill, destroying the cultural layer of Homeric Troy. He discovered an older city. And yet the German made an incredible discovery that they did not want to admit for a long time. “The burned city, which Schliemann calls Troy, is just a wretched village!”, “Schliemann remains a crazy and deluded person,” they wrote about him in the press. Many believed that the “gold of Troy” was a fake. And yet, photographs of his young Greek wife flew all over the front pages of newspapers. Schliemann was either admired or scolded for what the world stands.

The fate of the “gold of Troy” became the subject of controversy between states immediately after its discovery. Initially, Schliemann wanted to leave the treasures for storage to the Greek authorities and even promised to build a museum in Athens at his own expense. But the Greek authorities refused, fearing a quarrel with Turkey, on whose territory excavations were underway. Then Schliemann offered the treasure to any country that was ready to build a museum for the collection and name it after him. But no one dared. As a result, the archaeologist signed an agreement with Turkey, according to which he promised to leave the treasures to her, but instead, under the cover of night, he smuggled everything to Germany. That is, the artifacts turned out to be there illegally, albeit at the behest of their discoverer. Then there was a trial, and Schliemann was ordered to pay a fine of 10 thousand francs. The archaeologist paid three times as much. In 1881, Schliemann placed the collection in the Berlin Museum, from where it disappeared in 1939. For safety, she was hidden in a bunker under the zoo. And not so long ago it turned out that the director of the German Museum of Antiquities, Wilhelm Unferzagt, fearing marauders, himself handed over the treasures to the command of the Red Army, which entered Berlin (only after the death of Unferzagt, his wife published letters about the fate of Trojan gold). In 1993, the Russian authorities admitted that the “treasure of Priam” was located in Moscow and partly in the Hermitage. Since then, work has been underway to study the treasures, but only recently they reached a high-tech level, which museum visitors could observe all year round – digital microscopes were located in the glass pavilions of the exposition. A lot of discoveries were made before everyone’s eyes, clarifications in the dating of objects. It was assumed that cooperation with Western museums would allow researchers to compare collections and make new discoveries. But big politics put another comma in this tangled story of the “gold of Troy”, became the reason for new myth-making of the now young treasure hunters, who described in detail the ups and downs of the “Priam treasure” and its discoverer for the project.