In addition to industrial equipment, Stalin’s government wanted to grab what if could of Berlin’s vast monetary and artistic resources, which included parts of the stolen treasure amassed by the Nazis. Prime targets for the “Trophy Teams” that Moscow sent to Berlin in May 1945 were the tons of gold bullion thought to reside in the city’s banks and the sacks of foreign currency rumored to have been hidden away by Nazi leaders. The Russians did not get all they had hoped for in this regard, for the Nazis had shipped much of the gold and currency out of the city. The teams had better luck with art, since Hitler had ordered that many of Berlin’s collections be kept in the capital as a sign of faith that it would never fall. Only in the last weeks of the war were a number of major works moved to more secure sites in the provinces, in particular to the giant Kaiseroda-Merkers salt mine in Thuringia. Not only were most of Berlin’s art collections still intact, but many pieces were packed up in protective cases, ready to move. The Soviets began their art-plundering even before the German capitulation, focusing their attention first on the parts of Berlin earmarked for Western occupation. They headed straight for the zoo flak tower and its huge repository of crated treasure, which included Schliemann’s horde of Trojan gold. Like a bank manager being made by robbers to clean out his safe, the director of the Prehistory Museum was conscripted to help the Russians evacuate the tower. The best items were moved to storehouses in the Soviet zone and then shipped to the USSR; less valuable pieces, including some of Hitler’s beloved nineteenth-century kitsch, passed into the possession of individual Trophy Brigade members who fenced them to Berlin shops. Since Berlin’s largest art repository, the Museum Island, was safely in the Russian zone, the Soviets could take their time in looting its famous collections. The buildings were in bad shape owing to the bombardment, and some valuable works, such as the Pergamum Altar and the Kaiser-Friedrich-Museum’s Ravenna mosaics, had been damaged or destroyed. (The situation could have been even worse, however; German curators had narrowly prevented Berlin’s military defenders from using what remained of the Pergamum Altar for a tank barricade.) Over the next months the Soviets took away truckload after truckload of loot from the Museum Island and other sites in their zone, never bothering to leave proper receipts, which scandalized the Germans. Most of this loot ended up in museums in the Soviet Union, where some of it remains to this day.
Trümmerfrauen
Berlin also housed Germany’s most significant collections of books, manuscripts, and documents, which, though perhaps not as glamorous as artworks or gold, constituted another important category of booty for the Soviets. The Trophy Brigades scoured Berlin’s libraries and scientific institutes for historically significant volumes and technical treatises, which they checked out on permanent loan. Less valuable items were carted away by the trainload to serve as decoration and insulation in Soviet apartment houses. The pilfered document collections, which included older Prussian records as well as Nazi-era files, remained in the USSR or went to archives in East Germany—a bane to Western scholars who in coming years would have difficulty gaining access to these materials, if they gained access to them at all.
Taken as a whole, Russia’s rapacious romp through Berlin’s museums, libraries, and archives significantly reduced the city’s status as a center of art and learning. Though by no means the only cause for Berlin’s cultural decline in the postwar era, the removals left gaps and holes that proved much harder to fill in than the vacant lots created by the bombing and shelling. Like its industry and commerce, Berlin’s artistic and intellectual life—especially in the western sectors—would partially recover with time, but the city would never regain its position of cultural dominance within Germany.
