Nefertiti back in Berlin museum after 66-year absence (News Feature)

By Clive Freeman Oct 15, 2009, 20:28 GMT

   Berlin - A limestone bust of Queen Nefertiti, dating back to 1350 BC, arrives back on view Friday at a rebuilt museum in central Berlin after an enforced absence of 66 years.

   The return of the 3,500-year-old Egyptian artwork, in all its subtle beauty, to the reconstructed Neues Museum has aroused excitement among Berlin's art-loving public.

   Not least because the building on Museum Island was severely damaged during wartime British bombing raids and the arrival of the Red Army to capture Berlin in early 1945. The building had remained a forlorn ruin since.

   Now splendidly reconstructed, a task masterminded over seven years by British architect David Chipperfield, the old-new Museum is being officially reopened at a gala ceremony Friday to be attended by German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Interviewed by the German Press Agency dpa at the Berlin museum Thursday, Chipperfield said reconstructing the ruined building with some of its scars still showing had been an exciting challenge. From the outside, it is obvious that some of the masonry is old, some new.

'We felt strongly we should hold on to all the original material,' he said.

   'But that was a very difficult thing to describe to the public, and there was a lot of emotional anxiety about what that would mean in the end. The building was a ruin after all.'

   But when the job of reconstruction had been completed this spring the reaction of the public and media had, he said, 'been the reverse of anxiety. In fact, there was a strong and positive emotional reaction to the restored building.'

   Chipperfield said fixing up a war ruin was a task unlike anything else he had ever tackled before.

The work on the Neues Museum cost the German government a total of 212 million euros (316 million dollars).

   The Museum comprises 8,000 square metres of exhibition space on four levels - shared by the Egyptian Museum and Papyrus Collection and the Museum for Pre- and Early History, with artefacts also on display from the Collection of Classical Antiquities.

   In 1943, the bust of Nefertiti and other Museum Island treasures were removed to safe storage at the height of the war.

   As defeat loomed for Nazi Germany in early 1945, the Egyptian artefacts were stashed in a Thueringian salt-mine where they were recovered by advancing US forces. But they were not sent back to the museum, which was located in what became communist East Berlin.

   It was always the intention, once Germany was reunited, that Nefertiti and the rest of the city's valuable Egyptian collection should be returned to Museum Island which, 10 years, ago was elevated to world cultural heritage status by the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

   After the war, the Nefertiti bust was displayed for 29 years at the Charlottenburg Museum, where it was seen by 14 million visitors. While work was in progress on the Neues Museum it was shown at the Altes Museum, also on Museum Island.

Back in its old home at last, the bust is displayed inside a 4- metre-high cabinet in the 'North Dome.'

   Dietrich Wildung, the recently retired director of the Egyptian Museum, expressed excitement at Nefertiti's 'homecoming.'

   The bust of Nefertiti had been buried for more than 3,000 years when German archaeologists rediscovered it near Armana, Egypt, in 1912. A huge trove of treasures was found at the site.

   James Simon, a German arts patron who had financed excavation work there by the German Orient Association, was allowed by the Egyptian authorities to keep the Nefertiti bust as repayment.

   The Egyptian authorities would later repeatedly call for its return.

Wildung concedes that when he first saw the Nefertiti bust years ago he was unimpressed. 'It seemed altogether too smooth and pretty. Only with the years did I begin to understand and appreciate its beauty.'

   Walter Farr, the US Army art officer who came across the Nefertiti bust amidst a huge pile of crated art works in the salt-mine in 1945, revealed before his death in 1997 how he had spent hours afterwards silently peering at the work.

   'Never again in my life would I ever be so moved and fascinated as I was sitting before that magical art work,' he said.

   Hermann Parzinger, president of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation which operates the museum, said that with the reopening, 'a new epoch has begun on Museum Island - after 70 years, all the museums are finally open to the public once again.'

   The Neues Museum, he said, bore the traces of its eventful past, but it had 'regained its dignity and splendour, thanks to the preservationist construction work by David Chipperfield.'