Germany, Poland in tussle over treasures
KRAKOW, Poland — Monika Jaglarz closed the door to the small office and drew the shades. She then spread a green velvet cloth over a wooden table and pulled on a pair of white gloves as though to begin some kind of surgical procedure."I have had a few years of experience with this now," said Jaglarz, a librarian at Krakow's Jagiellonian University. "But I have to admit, the first time my hands were trembling."This time her hands were steady as she tenderly laid out the contents on the velvet cloth: A letter written by Martin Luther in 1530; a decree signed by Louis XIV dated 1664; some correspondence from George Washington, commander of the beleaguered Continental Army in the winter of 1781.
These treasures and others in the vaults of the Jagiellonian Library, including original music manuscripts from Bach, Beethoven and Mozart, have become the subject of a bitter diplomatic debate between Poland and Germany.The Germans claim these items — hidden here during World War II — are legally and morally part of their national patrimony and should be returned. Poland insists Germany forfeited any legal and moral claim to the collection long ago. Polish President Lech Kaczynski bluntly told the Tribune last month that the collection would not be returned.The argument underscores the increasingly acrimonious relationship between the ostensible NATO allies and European Union partners; it also suggests that more than 60 years after the end of World War II, the ground beneath Europe's great battlefields remains unsettled.In 1941, when it became clear that Allied bombers could hit Berlin, Nazi authorities took the precaution of moving the capital's cultural treasures out of harm's way.Two years later, when the bombing of Berlin began in earnest, thousands of items from the Prussian State Library, including most of the ones now in the Jagiellonian's vaults, had been packed in crates and shipped to Grussau (now Krzeszow) in Lower Silesia, a part of southern Poland that Germany annexed at the start of the war.The crates were hidden in various monasteries and castles. As it turned out, the greatest threat to the collection would come not from Allied bombers but from the Soviet army and its "trophy brigades," which scoured the occupied territories for plunder to ship back to Russia.By luck, the army missed the treasure when it marched through Grussau in 1945 behind the retreating Germans."This is always the most dangerous moment for any collection, when one army is leaving and another is arriving, and you have a no-man's-land for a certain time," said Wojciech Kowalski, a law professor who is now the Polish government's special envoy handling the case.Later in 1945, the collection, which also includes handwritten manuscripts of Goethe and Schiller as well as some of the earliest printed books, was discovered by a group of Polish librarians, who secretly moved it to another hiding place.About the same time, Allied leaders meeting in Potsdam decided Poland's postwar borders would be shifted. The Soviets took a large swath of Polish lands in the east, while Poland was compensated with a smaller chunk of land that had been German territory in the west. This included the area where the treasure had been hidden."We got the [German] land and all of the assets that were on the land," Kowalski said. "The Polish state became the owner, and the property was nationalized."Despite having solid legal claim to the treasures, the Polish government maintained a 30-year silence on the matter, refusing to acknowledge its possession of the collection. "In my opinion, this was a mistake," said to Zdzislaw Pietrzyk, director of the Jagiellonian Library. But that was the way Moscow wanted it.The silence was broken in 1977, when Edward Gierek, the leader of communist Poland, presented Erich Honecker, his East German counterpart, with several of the collection's most valuable pieces, including Mozart's handwritten score for "The Magic Flute" and Beethoven's manuscript for the last movement of his Ninth Symphony. This was billed as a gesture of German-Polish brotherhood under Soviet auspices.
Manuscripts on displayAfter the reunification of Germany in 1990, the German government made its first official queries about the return of the collection। The Poles demurred, but talks were opened and, for the first time, Poland allowed some of the manuscripts to be put on public display.In 2000, with Poland eager to join the EU, Prime Minister Jerzy Buzek presented German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder with another prize from the collection: Luther's German Bible.Since then, the negotiations have slowed, and now with the highly nationalistic Kaczynski brothers in power — Lech is president, twin brother Jaroslaw is prime minister — the talks appear to be dead in the water.The Kaczynskis are often accused of manipulating lingering resentment toward Germany for political gain, but in this case there has been heavy-handedness on the German side as well.
Tono Eitel, a veteran German diplomat who is handling the negotiations for his country, described the manuscripts as "the war's last prisoners," while an article in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper referred to the collection as beutekunst, a term usually used to describe the artworks looted from Germany by the Red Army.This infuriated the Poles."We saved this collection. We didn't rob or loot anything," Kowalski said.
Eitel declined to be interviewed for this article. A Foreign Ministry spokeswoman would say only that Germany hopes to reach "a constructive and unanimous solution" with the Poles. She also added that Germany does not accuse Poland of "stealing" the collection.But President Kaczynski, visiting Chicago last month, said emphatically that the collection would stay in Poland."If we put things on this level, we could start claiming that the Germans should compensate us for the damage it did to Warsaw," he said.Anna Fotyga, Poland's foreign minister, recently suggested $20 billion as a starting point. The Germans see this as posturing, but for Poles, World War II wounds remain real."The Kaczynskis are very cynical in their German position, but this anti-German complex is still very important in Polish life, and we as a nation are still very much afraid of them," said Pawel Spiewak, a political scientist at Warsaw University.A recent deal between Germany and Russia to build a natural gas pipeline beneath the Baltic Sea has done little to calm Poland's fears. The main purpose of the pipeline appears to be to bypass Poland, and while not quite as dire as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact that sealed Poland's doom in World War II, it does, as Pawel Zalewski, head of the Polish parliament's foreign relations committee, delicately put it, "create a direct reference to the negative experiences of the past."
'Restitution' claimBut what truly irks Poles is a demand for "restitution" by a small group of Germans who lost property when Poland's borders were shifted after the war. The group has filed a suit with the European Court of Human Rights."It's a very minor group, but it has a huge potential to cause destruction," Zalewski said.The German government said it does not support the suit but declined to sign a joint statement with the Poles formally opposing it, Zalewski said.Until these issues are resolved, it appears likely that some of Germany's greatest cultural treasures will remain in Polish hands.That is fine with the Jagiellonian's chief librarian."For 20 years I worked in the department of manuscripts, and it was my pleasure and honor to touch these treasures," Pietrzyk said. "And now as director, my responsibility is to protect and care for them as part of the world's heritage."
KRAKOW, Poland — Monika Jaglarz closed the door to the small office and drew the shades. She then spread a green velvet cloth over a wooden table and pulled on a pair of white gloves as though to begin some kind of surgical procedure."I have had a few years of experience with this now," said Jaglarz, a librarian at Krakow's Jagiellonian University. "But I have to admit, the first time my hands were trembling."This time her hands were steady as she tenderly laid out the contents on the velvet cloth: A letter written by Martin Luther in 1530; a decree signed by Louis XIV dated 1664; some correspondence from George Washington, commander of the beleaguered Continental Army in the winter of 1781.
These treasures and others in the vaults of the Jagiellonian Library, including original music manuscripts from Bach, Beethoven and Mozart, have become the subject of a bitter diplomatic debate between Poland and Germany.The Germans claim these items — hidden here during World War II — are legally and morally part of their national patrimony and should be returned. Poland insists Germany forfeited any legal and moral claim to the collection long ago. Polish President Lech Kaczynski bluntly told the Tribune last month that the collection would not be returned.The argument underscores the increasingly acrimonious relationship between the ostensible NATO allies and European Union partners; it also suggests that more than 60 years after the end of World War II, the ground beneath Europe's great battlefields remains unsettled.In 1941, when it became clear that Allied bombers could hit Berlin, Nazi authorities took the precaution of moving the capital's cultural treasures out of harm's way.Two years later, when the bombing of Berlin began in earnest, thousands of items from the Prussian State Library, including most of the ones now in the Jagiellonian's vaults, had been packed in crates and shipped to Grussau (now Krzeszow) in Lower Silesia, a part of southern Poland that Germany annexed at the start of the war.The crates were hidden in various monasteries and castles. As it turned out, the greatest threat to the collection would come not from Allied bombers but from the Soviet army and its "trophy brigades," which scoured the occupied territories for plunder to ship back to Russia.By luck, the army missed the treasure when it marched through Grussau in 1945 behind the retreating Germans."This is always the most dangerous moment for any collection, when one army is leaving and another is arriving, and you have a no-man's-land for a certain time," said Wojciech Kowalski, a law professor who is now the Polish government's special envoy handling the case.Later in 1945, the collection, which also includes handwritten manuscripts of Goethe and Schiller as well as some of the earliest printed books, was discovered by a group of Polish librarians, who secretly moved it to another hiding place.About the same time, Allied leaders meeting in Potsdam decided Poland's postwar borders would be shifted. The Soviets took a large swath of Polish lands in the east, while Poland was compensated with a smaller chunk of land that had been German territory in the west. This included the area where the treasure had been hidden."We got the [German] land and all of the assets that were on the land," Kowalski said. "The Polish state became the owner, and the property was nationalized."Despite having solid legal claim to the treasures, the Polish government maintained a 30-year silence on the matter, refusing to acknowledge its possession of the collection. "In my opinion, this was a mistake," said to Zdzislaw Pietrzyk, director of the Jagiellonian Library. But that was the way Moscow wanted it.The silence was broken in 1977, when Edward Gierek, the leader of communist Poland, presented Erich Honecker, his East German counterpart, with several of the collection's most valuable pieces, including Mozart's handwritten score for "The Magic Flute" and Beethoven's manuscript for the last movement of his Ninth Symphony. This was billed as a gesture of German-Polish brotherhood under Soviet auspices.
Manuscripts on displayAfter the reunification of Germany in 1990, the German government made its first official queries about the return of the collection। The Poles demurred, but talks were opened and, for the first time, Poland allowed some of the manuscripts to be put on public display.In 2000, with Poland eager to join the EU, Prime Minister Jerzy Buzek presented German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder with another prize from the collection: Luther's German Bible.Since then, the negotiations have slowed, and now with the highly nationalistic Kaczynski brothers in power — Lech is president, twin brother Jaroslaw is prime minister — the talks appear to be dead in the water.The Kaczynskis are often accused of manipulating lingering resentment toward Germany for political gain, but in this case there has been heavy-handedness on the German side as well.
Tono Eitel, a veteran German diplomat who is handling the negotiations for his country, described the manuscripts as "the war's last prisoners," while an article in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper referred to the collection as beutekunst, a term usually used to describe the artworks looted from Germany by the Red Army.This infuriated the Poles."We saved this collection. We didn't rob or loot anything," Kowalski said.
Eitel declined to be interviewed for this article. A Foreign Ministry spokeswoman would say only that Germany hopes to reach "a constructive and unanimous solution" with the Poles. She also added that Germany does not accuse Poland of "stealing" the collection.But President Kaczynski, visiting Chicago last month, said emphatically that the collection would stay in Poland."If we put things on this level, we could start claiming that the Germans should compensate us for the damage it did to Warsaw," he said.Anna Fotyga, Poland's foreign minister, recently suggested $20 billion as a starting point. The Germans see this as posturing, but for Poles, World War II wounds remain real."The Kaczynskis are very cynical in their German position, but this anti-German complex is still very important in Polish life, and we as a nation are still very much afraid of them," said Pawel Spiewak, a political scientist at Warsaw University.A recent deal between Germany and Russia to build a natural gas pipeline beneath the Baltic Sea has done little to calm Poland's fears. The main purpose of the pipeline appears to be to bypass Poland, and while not quite as dire as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact that sealed Poland's doom in World War II, it does, as Pawel Zalewski, head of the Polish parliament's foreign relations committee, delicately put it, "create a direct reference to the negative experiences of the past."
'Restitution' claimBut what truly irks Poles is a demand for "restitution" by a small group of Germans who lost property when Poland's borders were shifted after the war. The group has filed a suit with the European Court of Human Rights."It's a very minor group, but it has a huge potential to cause destruction," Zalewski said.The German government said it does not support the suit but declined to sign a joint statement with the Poles formally opposing it, Zalewski said.Until these issues are resolved, it appears likely that some of Germany's greatest cultural treasures will remain in Polish hands.That is fine with the Jagiellonian's chief librarian."For 20 years I worked in the department of manuscripts, and it was my pleasure and honor to touch these treasures," Pietrzyk said. "And now as director, my responsibility is to protect and care for them as part of the world's heritage."
No comments:
Post a Comment