Marienkirche windows: taken east in 1946, home by 2009

On 14 August 1946, crates of church glass left Berlin by train for the Soviet Union. Welt gives that date. Spiegel, citing Russian sources, calls it the last trophy train. The glass came from St Mary’s Church, the Marienkirche, in Frankfurt (Oder), Germany. It was three medieval choir windows, made in the 14th century: a Creation window, a Christ window and an Antichrist window. Together they held 117 leaded glass panels.

During the war the windows were taken out to protect them from bombs. They were stored in the New Palace at Potsdam. Sources disagree on the year. The church association and a 2009 Tagesspiegel report say 1941. Other Tagesspiegel reports, Welt and Spiegel say 1943. At the war’s end, Welt reports, Soviet art officers took the crates to the Berlin Central Cattle Yard.

Of the 117 panels, 111 went to the Hermitage in Leningrad. Andrei Vorobiev, a former academic secretary of the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow, cites Hermitage records that give 20 August 1946 as the arrival date. He says the other six probably travelled in a separate crate to the Pushkin Museum. He is the only source for that route.

For decades the glass stayed out of public view. Spiegel says the Hermitage store was a secret depot that became public through leaks in 1991. Tagesspiegel says a German-Russian group of experts first saw the panels in December 1997. Sources differ on the date, so we say only that the panels came to light in the 1990s.

A Russian law of 15 April 1998 made cultural property moved to the USSR after the war Russian state property. Article 8(2) excepts property of religious organisations that was used only for worship. Germany did not accept the law, the Geneva case note says, but argued under that exception. On 17 April 2002 the law numbered 37-FZ granted the German claim for 111 panels, for return to the church congregation. On 23 June 2002 Germany’s culture minister of state received them from Russia’s culture minister at the Hermitage. The crates reached the church on 29 June 2002.

Whether this was a swap is disputed. In February 2001 Russia’s culture minister named a pledge by German business people to help rebuild the Dormition church at Volotovo near Novgorod. German troops had destroyed it in the war. The Geneva note says the company Wintershall paid for it. The Russian minister denied any trade. Welt and Kommersant called it a linked deal.

The six panels followed. In June 2005 Vorobiev told Kommersant they were in the Pushkin Museum. He says he saw them in autumn 2001, and that the museum’s director then told him to drop the matter. The director said at the time that the store held seven unmarked panels that might be from the church, and that this was unproven. Law 42-FZ of 3 April 2008 granted the German claim. The Kremlin said the panels were unique cultural heritage that had belonged to a religious organisation. The Pushkin Museum handed them over in Moscow on 10 November 2008. They were set into the choir in October 2009.

The windows are now in the choir of the Marienkirche, with all 117 panels in place. The church was a ruin after the war and had a roof again only from 1998.