Enchanted Silver

The fate of a unique collection should be decided by law

The issue of "Anhalt silver", covered in detail by our newspaper (see "Vremya Novostei" of May 12) , has still not received a solution. Stored in the Hermitage since 1952 and being part of the collection of the Anhalt family, a silver cup from the 16th century and 17 unique silver sculptures from the turn of the 17th-18th centuries by Augsburg masters are still the object of claims from the representative of the family, Prince Edward von Anhalt. The prince demands their return, claiming that his father Joachim Ernst von Anhalt is a victim of two totalitarian regimes: under the Nazis he was sent to Dachau, and after the war to a special camp of the NKVD, where he died.

The Russian Prosecutor General's Office rehabilitated Joachim Ernst von Anhalt back in the 90s. The heir’s claims were supported by the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation, as well as some representatives of the Russian public, who proposed returning the valuables “as a gesture of goodwill.” However, there are still no legal grounds for the return of the collection, and the fate of their owner seems, upon closer examination, to be far from so clear-cut. Additional information about the fate of the prince was obtained by Julia Kantor, a leading researcher at the State Hermitage who was investigating the circumstances of the case, and documents confirming them were recently submitted to the Ministry of Culture. Yulia KANTOR brings excerpts from them and details of the discussion that has unfolded over the past six months to the attention of readers.

Released by order of Himmler

From a letter from the General Prosecutor's Office to Eduard von Anhalt, the son of the repressed prince, dated May 19, 1992:

According to available materials, Anhalt Joachim Ernst was arrested on September 3, 1945 by the NKVD task force of Eisleben in Germany for alleged membership in the fascist party and as a large landowner and placed in a special camp. There is no evidence to support his connection with the fascist party .

However, from the Federal Archives of Berlin (the Central Card Index of NSDAP Members Foundation), I received the registration card of a NSDAP member from November 1, 1939, Joachim Ernst von Anhalt. The card does not contain any indications of penalties “along the party line,” much less a certificate of expulsion. Which indirectly indicates the absence of political motives for the arrest of the prince by the Reich authorities - otherwise he would not have been left in the party.

The registration card of a Wehrmacht officer, obtained from the Berlin “German Information Service for Former Wehrmacht Servants,” also dates back to the fall of 1939. The German Information Service also provided an archival extract: von Anhalt was registered as a Wehrmacht employee on September 21, 1939 at the headquarters of the second reserve infantry battalion stationed in Halberstadt.

Now about Dachau. Eduard von Anhalt insists that his father was sent there as an anti-fascist. However, neither he nor his lawyers provide any evidence of this. No information appears anywhere about whether von Anhalt is recognized as a victim of Nazism in Germany. (This question is the subject of further research.) The prince, as evidenced by an archival extract from the Dachau memorial, was sent to a concentration camp for “forced labor.” This “qualification” was assigned mainly to “asocial elements” - this is how they commented on the situation at the memorial complex.

From the response of the Central Archive of the FSB of the Russian Federation to the Hermitage request:

As can be seen from the only protocol of interrogation of I.-E. von Anhalt dated September 3, 1945, he was in the Dachau concentration camp... after being arrested by the criminal police in Berlin.

If the prince had been arrested as an anti-fascist, the arrest would have been handled by the Gestapo. Additionally, Anhalt was released less than three months after his arrest. “Political” prisoners did not receive such short sentences, especially during the war. In the certificate issued upon release from Dachau, there is no mention of the reasons for release (end of sentence, amnesty, acquittal or anything else).

The already quoted certificate from the archive says: in Dachau the prince was not interrogated even once. From Dachau he was released by order of Himmler and sent home to Dessau.

The testimony of an arrested person during interrogation by the NKVD is not the most reliable source. But these are the data from the first interrogation conducted immediately after the arrest... It is difficult to imagine that they were made up.

Confiscation of property was not used

For Eduard von Anhalt, the issues of his father’s rehabilitation and claims to property came together as one block. He came to Russia in the winter of 1991/92 as the head of the Lebensbrücke (Bridge of Life) charity organization, which brought humanitarian aid to St. Petersburg. At the same time, Anhalt was engaged in the rehabilitation of his father, which was carried out in December 1992 - that is, less than a year after the request was submitted. The issue of family silver first surfaced even before rehabilitation.

From a certificate from the Prosecutor General's Office dated May 19, 1992:

There is no information about the use of any confiscation measures by the Soviet authorities.

This information is repeated by another certificate, dated December 10, 1992, issued by the Prosecutor General's Office simultaneously with the certificate of rehabilitation. Two years later, Eduard von Anhalt himself was recognized as a victim of political repression - as the son of someone illegally repressed.

On March 15, 1994, the Prosecutor General’s Office wrote to Eduard von Anhalt:

The available archival materials do not contain information that the authorities of the Soviet military administration took any confiscation measures regarding the property of Joachim Ernst Duke von Anhalt. If your family or state archives in Germany have documents confirming the confiscation or seizure of the property of Joachim von Anhalt in connection with his repression, I believe that your state will find the opportunity to restore the civil rights of his heirs. There is still no information about the availability of such documents.

The Ministry of Culture, now forced to deal with the problem of “Anhalt silver,” demonstrates that it is “above the fray.” In an interview with the Kultura newspaper, published in May 2005, Anatoly Vilkov, deputy head of the Federal Service for Supervision of Compliance with Legislation in the Sphere of Mass Communications and the Protection of Cultural Heritage, described the fate of Joachim von Anhalt . As you know, during the war the Duke worked at a factory where Russian prisoners of war worked and supplied them with medicine. For this, the Nazis put him in Dachau, where he was kept until the arrival of the Red Army. The next day, the NKVD took him and put him in prison again. The Duke of Anhalt died in prison in 1948. His family had family silver, which was placed in one of the banks when the war began. All these tableware from the 16th-17th centuries were unique. In the early 90s, our Prosecutor General's Office rehabilitated the Duke as a victim of political repression. And soon 18 items from the family collection were discovered in the Hermitage. But it was not possible to establish that these things came to us in connection with the arrest of the NKVD. So the return of the collection to the Duke’s heirs is our gesture of goodwill, which will definitely be done.

It is not possible to confirm the information cited above about the reasons for the Duke’s arrival in Dachau. In addition to the incorrectly named year of Anhalt’s death, there are other inaccuracies: “until the arrival of the Red Army” the Duke could not be supported in Dachau - she did not come there. Bavaria and the Dachau concentration camp were liberated by the Americans in April 1945. Anhalt was released from there exactly a year earlier. And finally, about the family items, which after the rehabilitation of Anhalt were “soon discovered in the Hermitage.” These objects - tabletop silver sculptures - have been in the Hermitage since the 50s and are exhibited as part of the collection of Prussian silver. The director of the Hermitage informed Anatoly Vilkov about this back in 2002.

From an information note from the director of the Hermitage Mikhail Piotrovsky :

In response to your letter dated 27.03.02, we inform you that the items specified in the request (17 silver figurines and a silver cup) arrived at the State Hermitage in 1951 from Gokhran according to acts... dated 19.06.51.

Since 1951, they have been part of the collections of the State Hermitage in permanent material-responsible storage, included in the museum’s accounting documents: the book of receipts, inventory with the code “E” and drag inventory, and are the state property of Russia.

The same persistent ignorance is exhibited by some outside observers who closely follow the “Anhalt story.” Among them is Lyudmila Narusova, a member of the Federation Council from the Republic of Tuva, who has been on the “Anhalt topic” since 1992 - that is, from the very beginning. The senator expressed her point of view on Radio Liberty on October 1, 2005. Talking about her acquaintance with Prince Anhalt, which took place in 1991, Ms. Narusova offered her version to the audience: His father had a collection of silver cups in Germany, which had been in the family since the 17th century. At the end of the war, he was placed in a concentration camp in Dachau as an anti-fascist, then, in 1945, he was released. When the Soviet army arrived, the NKVD again put him in a camp for allegedly collaborating with the Nazis. This time, imprisoned by the NKVD, he died in the camp. Anhalt told me that these cups are in the Hermitage . There was no question of them being returned to him. It was about rehabilitating my father. A rather lengthy process began for all the checks in the Prosecutor General's Office, which has always been politicized, especially then. Nevertheless, the Prosecutor General concluded that his father was innocently convicted, repressed and subject to rehabilitation. Thus, the question of the return of the Anhalt cups falls under the law on the return of property to those illegally repressed for rehabilitation, and not for displaced values.

In the same program, I voiced the documents cited in this article, but they apparently seemed unconvincing to Lyudmila Narusova. Like those published in my article in Vremya Novostei, with which the senator is familiar.

“Anhalt Silver” is not the first story for the Hermitage related to displaced art. The stained glass windows of the Frankfurt Marienkirche, which were kept in the museum since the post-war period - religious objects subject to the law on transferred valuables, returned to Germany after the State Duma adopted the corresponding federal law. A collection of drawings from the Bremen Kunsthalle, located in the Hermitage since the 70s, taken from Germany by Captain Baldin without any documents, also, in accordance with the law, had to return to Bremen almost three years ago. (But after leaving St. Petersburg, she settled in Moscow, in the bowels of the Ministry of Culture.) In both of these cases, the dilemma “give or not give” did not exist for the museum: there were undeniable legal grounds for the transfer. With “Anhalt silver” the situation is somewhat different.

The position of the Hermitage, formulated by Mikhail Piotrovsky, remains unchanged: the exclusion of things from the museum collection and, therefore, from the state property of Russia can be carried out only if the corresponding federal law is adopted or by a court decision, and not as a supra-legal “gesture of good will”. Otherwise, such gestures turn from acts of reconciliation into political deals that are insulting to historical memory and humiliating for Russia.

Julia KANTOR