Greece has demanded two art treasures, together worth 4 million euros (5 million dollars), from a German museum, according to the museum chief Wednesday.
Harald Siebenmorgen said the Greek Directorate of Antiquities and Cultural Heritage had demanded the museum hand over a sculpture of a female Greek idol and a Bronze Age dish as a pre-condition before it would loan any items to the Baden state museum in Karlsruhe.
The museum had applied to Greece for loans so it could mount an exhibition from December about the Bronze Age civilization that began on the Cyclades 5,000 years ago.
Greece says the two items were illegally excavated and removed from its territory. The idol is 88 centimetres tall.
Siebenmorgen said they were purchased with public funds in 1975 and Greece had no legal claim to them, because of the moratorium on civil claims and Germany had not signed a convention on restitution of art treasures until 1992.
Siebenmorgen told SWR 2 television that a linkage between restitution claims and loans was 'not the international custom at all' and said it was 'like extortion.'
Source: Monsters and Critics [October 12, 2011]
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| Three cycladic figurines, Badisches Landesmuseum, Karlsruhe, Germany, Inventory Nos. 75/2, 82/6, 71/30 [Credit: Wikipedia] |
The museum had applied to Greece for loans so it could mount an exhibition from December about the Bronze Age civilization that began on the Cyclades 5,000 years ago.
Greece says the two items were illegally excavated and removed from its territory. The idol is 88 centimetres tall.
Siebenmorgen said they were purchased with public funds in 1975 and Greece had no legal claim to them, because of the moratorium on civil claims and Germany had not signed a convention on restitution of art treasures until 1992.
Siebenmorgen told SWR 2 television that a linkage between restitution claims and loans was 'not the international custom at all' and said it was 'like extortion.'
Source: Monsters and Critics [October 12, 2011]