The Gods return: the future of Berlin's classical collections: Berlin's vast collection of Classical antiquities, centred on the Pergamon Museum, is undergoing its greatest transformation in over half a century. Its director, Andreas Scholl, talks to Claudia Herstatt about the plans and explains the collection's new global role

Apollo, Feb, 2008 by Claudia Herstatt

There are very few collections of treasures from the ancient world on the stupendous scale of the Antikensammlung, the antiquities collection of Berlin's state museums. In 2007 more than a million visitors came to the Pergamon Museum on the Museumsinsel to admire the collection's centrepiece, the mighty Pergamon Altar, which has given its name to the museum.

'The altar has never been in a better state in this museum than it is now', says the director of the Antikensammlung, Andreas Scholl, proudly. Restoration of the 2nd-century BC complex (Fig. 2), measuring 36 by 34 metres, was completed in 1996. Thousands of rusty iron pegs were replaced. The altar's massive frieze (Fig. 3) is now supported on stone instead of cement, which attracts water. This complicated task was entrusted to a small team of Italian craftsmen and--despite overrunning by more than a year--costs were kept to within 3m [euro].

But there are even better things to come. The collection of antiquities--which numbers about 300,000 inventoried items, including no fewer than 4,400 sculptures, 9,000 Greek vases and 14,000 gems and cameos--is to be completely reorganised and redisplayed. This project is so long-term that Scholl, although only 49, is unlikely to see it finished during his time in office, as he admits with a smile: the estimated completion date is 2027.

However, the plans, worked out in collaboration with the office of the Cologne architect Oswald Mathias Ungers (who died last year), have been completed and the masterplan for the museum complex in the heart of Berlin--a UNESCO World Heritage Site--has been decided on. Starting in 2010, the two monumental wings and the central section of the Pergamon Museum, constructed in 1930, will, step-by-step, be completely renovated. A fourth wing, planned from the start, but never built, will close off the open square (see Figure 4), allowing the museum to be toured in chronological order, starting with the treasures of Egypt and the Near East and going on to Greek and Roman artefacts. 'You will no longer first stumble upon the Pergamon Altar--instead, it will stand in the centre of the entire museum complex', says Scholl.

A classical archaeologist, who also teaches as honorary professor at the Free University of Berlin, Scholl has been in charge of the ancient world on the Spree since July 2004. 'I had actually envisaged a university career', he explains over a leisurely lunch in the canteen. 'The offer of a professorship at the University of Bonn and that of the post of director in Berlin arrived simultaneously in 2004.' He had then been a curator at the museum for four years and knew its treasures and extraordinary history so well that he decided on Berlin. 'Systematically opening up this large archive of objects for archaeological research and the interested public is one of the most important tasks of the future', he writes in Die Antikensammlung, a book published last year.

Under the Prussian monarchs, and particularly under Frederick the Great, who had an interest in archaeology, the main emphasis of the collection was acquisition, a task that intensified after the founding of the German Empire in 1871. Today, the museum's role is viewed very differently. 'We make hardly any purchases any more, and certainly not on the art market, with its lack of transparency', says Scholl. 'That is completely a thing of the past.' Therefore, the occasional excavations in which he has taken part--as recently in Milet in Turkey, ancient Miletus--'are not concerned with finds but with various scholarly questions'.

However, while original works may no longer come to Berlin, casts of finds are being acquired to fill out missing parts of the Pergamon Altar's 114-metre-long frieze. These include the rear view of a life-size warrior, discovered in the overgrown garden of a former collector in London, and the head of a goddess excavated at the original site at Pergamon--the latter is expected shortly. In this way monumental pieces are still from time to time fitted into the many gaps in the great frieze, made up of thousands of fragments, which represents the relentless battle between the gods and the Titans and celebrates the victory of civilisation over chaos.

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In Pergamon (modern Bergama in Turkey), the excavations that were begun in the second half of the 19th century in collaboration with the German Archaeological Institute are still being successfully continued. However, these days anything excavated there remains by law in Turkey. It was different at the time that the fragments of the monument were discovered. The Kaiser and the Ottoman sultan came to a friendly agreement to share between Turkey and Berlin the finds excavated by the Germans.

How does a Hellenistic altar of this size and importance come to be in Berlin? During demolition works on an early Byzantine fortification in 1864 the engineer Carl Humann, who was in Turkey carrying out surveying work, spotted sections of the frieze while watching the apparently worthless rubble being burnt for lime. He brought some of the relief panels to Berlin, where their importance was soon recognised. Good relations between Germany and Turkey enabled extensive excavations to take place, bringing to light--and to Berlin--large sections of the former monument.