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Hermann Parzinger, President of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, says: "This exhibition project clearly shows how successful and trusting the cooperation between German and Russian museum experts has become. Of course, the political solution remains that the German holdings, which have been kept in Russia since 1945, should find their way back to their original collections. But the time for repatriation does not yet seem to have come. We are therefore continuing to focus on expanding and intensifying specialist contacts and hope that this will also pave the way for resolving the other issues."

Exhibition venues and duration:
State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg: 21 June - 8 September 2013
State Historical Museum, Moscow: 15 October 2013 - 13 January 2014

The exhibition is the result of years of collaboration between museum colleagues from Russia and Berlin. It presents the cultural, social and religious developments in Bronze Age Europe using more than 1700 artefacts from all participating museums. This epoch begins with the origins of early metalworking in the 4th millennium BC and extends to the beginning of the first millennium BC. It is the period in which larger, hierarchically structured civilisations first emerged from the west of present-day Europe as far as Russia and Eurasia. Geographically, the exhibition therefore covers the area between the Atlantic and the Urals as far as the Caucasus. It presents the latest research findings on the Bronze Age from all participating museums.

Highlights of the presentation include gold and silver artefacts from the "Treasure of Priam" from Troy, objects from the Maikop kurgan in southern Russia, the Borodino Treasure and outstanding find complexes from Germany, such as the famous Eberswalde Treasure in Brandenburg, the gold finds from Werder and the Daberkow Luren.

Like many other exhibits, the Eberswalde Treasure is part of the pre-war collection of the Berlin Museum of Prehistory and Early History. Today it is located in Russia as so-called war-related relocated cultural property. Numerous objects from the National Museums in Berlin, including irreplaceable centrepieces, were transported to the USSR by the Red Army after the Second World War as so-called looted art. They were considered lost or even destroyed during the war until the 1990s. It was only after the reunification of Germany that the museums were able to establish and gradually intensify specialised contacts. Since the end of the 1990s, it has gradually become known that a large proportion of the cultural artefacts lost during the war have been preserved and are now in Russian museums. The different legal opinions of Germany and the Russian Federation regarding the ownership of these objects are the reason why the exhibition cannot be shown in the Berlin Museum of Prehistory and Early History, although it is one of the co-operation partners. Germany is of the opinion, based on international law, that the artefacts must be returned. Russia declared them to be national property in a Duma law passed in 1996, thus ruling out their return to date.

Of the more than 1700 artefacts in the exhibition, almost 600 are objects from the Berlin Museum of Prehistory and Early History that were relocated as a result of the war. These objects are of particular importance in the exhibition due to their scientific and historical significance for analysing culture in Bronze Age Europe. Almost 230 other items are on temporary loan from the Berlin Museum. The remaining exhibits have been contributed by the participating Russian museums from their own collections. A key factor in the realisation of the exhibition was that the relocated old holdings from Berlin are explicitly marked in the exhibition as "Relocated due to war. MVF Berlin until 1945".

With their presentation in the exhibition, the objects relocated from the Museum of Prehistory and Early History due to the war have returned to the scientific cycle. Their storage location and state of preservation are finally known. This is the basis for any further scientific work with them. The project also served to intensify co-operation between Russian and German experts. Together, the experts from both countries catalogued and photographically documented the collections that had been relocated as a result of the war. The cooperation was also characterised by great openness when it came to restoration and conservation measures. The German museum experts had unrestricted access to the objects to the extent necessary for the preparation of the exhibition. This joint scientific processing of the artefacts promotes the development of a functioning network for similar projects in the future.

"Bronze Age - Europe without Borders" is the second exhibition that the Berlin museums have realised in this form with Russian cooperation partners. The first exhibition in 2007 was dedicated to the Merovingian period. As was the case then, "Bronze Age - Europe without Borders" has now succeeded in scientifically analysing a large, interrelated cultural area, despite the arbitrary fragmentation of the collection.

The opening of "Bronze Age - Europe without Borders" also marks the end of the cross years "Germany Year in Russia / Russia Year in Germany". The exhibition is a German-Russian cooperation project under the auspices of the Petersburg Dialogue, whose Culture Working Group is jointly chaired by the Director General of the Hermitage, Mikhail Piotrovsky, and the President of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, Hermann Parzinger. The Petersburg Dialogue is a German-Russian discussion forum with the status of a non-governmental organisation that meets once a year, alternately in Russia and Germany. Its working groups deal with all areas of society.

The exhibition will also be accompanied by a bilingual book with numerous specialist articles by German and Russian academics, a future standard work on the subject. All the exhibits are illustrated in the catalogue. The Berlin collections from the Museum of Prehistory and Early History, which have been in Russia since 1945, are also explicitly marked in the catalogue. In addition to the current Russian inventory numbers, the former German inventory numbers are also listed. The catalogue was made possible by the generous support of the Ernst von Siemens Art Foundation.

Exhibition catalogue (German / Russian):
Бронзовый век. Европа без границ. Четвертое - первое тысячелетия до н. э. / Bronze Age. Europe without borders. 4th - 1st millennium BC.
Publisher Tabula Rasa, St. Petersburg, 2013; 648 pages. Available in Russia from the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg and the State Historical Museum in Moscow; in Germany shortly from the National Museums in Berlin.

Conference:
From 16 to 17 October 2013, the State Historical Museum in Moscow will host the conference "The Bronze Age in Europe. Current Research and Perspectives" organised by the German Research Foundation and the Berlin State Museums.

Press contacts in Russia:
State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg:
Ms Larissa Korabelnikova, e-mail
State Historical Museum, Moscow:
Ms Olga Gukovskaya, e-mail
German Consulate General in St. Petersburg:
Mr Ricco, e-mail
German Embassy in Moscow:
Ms Althauser, e-mail
Ms Linke, e-mail
Goethe Institute Moscow:
Ms Voigt, e-mail

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