Museum of Prehistory and Early History receives "finds" from the ruins of the former Museum of Decorative Arts (today: Martin-Gropius-Bau) in Stresemannstraße
Press release from 04/11/2022
The West Berlin painter Peter Grämer had dug through the ruins in the 1960s - his widow Christine Weber has now handed over 1500 objects, mainly ceramics, but also bronze, iron and stone.
The Martin-Gropius-Bau, which is so well-known in Berlin today and was long used as a museum of arts and crafts, housed the collections of the Museum of Prehistory and Early History of the National Museums in Berlin from 1921. Only the most valuable artefacts could be brought to safety before the destruction of the war. Tens of thousands of artefacts from all eras were reduced to rubble when the museum was bombed in 1945. In the post-war period, West Berlin "hobby archaeologists" were drawn to the destroyed museum, who dug through the ruins and were able to recover some important artefacts.
One of them was the painter Peter Grämer, born in 1939, who came to Stresemannstraße with his fellow students from the University of Fine Arts (now UdK) to dig very successfully for archaeological finds in the rubble. The widow of the artist, Christine Weber, who died in 2018, has now handed over a collection of 1,500 objects to the Museum of Prehistory and Early History. These are mainly ceramics (shards and whole vessels), but also bronzes, iron and stone. Mrs Weber also handed over three notebooks in which her husband had recorded the most important finds in ink. The find spots are also precisely documented in drawings.
"We quickly realised that most of the pieces were old items from the Museum of Prehistory and Early History. A small number of the 'finds' belong to the collections of the Ethnological Museum and the Museum of Asian Art from the then neighbouring Ethnological Museum. Our artefacts come mainly from Bronze Age and Iron Age Greece, some from Italy and above all from Troy. So far, around a dozen of the artefacts have been identified. However, this is proving difficult for the majority, as the old inventory numbers have mostly been lost due to the fire. We are particularly pleased about the return of artefacts from Heinrich Schliemann's collection," says curator Bernhard Heeb.
"We know that in West Berlin it was almost a 'popular sport' to search for artefacts in the museum ruins. In our eyes, the example of Peter Grämer and his widow should set a precedent and we call on people to return artefacts that could have come from this site to the Museum of Prehistory and Early History. There are no legal consequences to fear, we are simply grateful if we can take back these collection items, which are still important for our research today," says Matthias Wemhoff, Director of the Museum of Prehistory and Early History.
Anyone who suspects similar "finds" in their private environment can contact us at h.junker@smb.spk-berlin.de.
Press photos: www.preussischer-kulturbesitz.de/newsroom/presse/pressebilder.html