(Vatican Radio) Germany's Angela Merkel and Russia's Vladimir Putin have agreed to
visit an exhibition featuring disputed artwork, despite reports of a row between the
two leaders. Earlier, German sources with close knowledge about the situation, said
their planned opening of the exhibition in St Petersburg had been cancelled.
The
German chancellor had reportedly planned to mention the seizure of German art by the
former Soviet Union during the Second World War.
However, Putin told reporters,
at a news conference with the German leader: "In the evening we are visiting the exhibition
at the Hermitage Museum. We had not cancelled anything, we just wanted to see if we
would have enough time."
Merkel added: "We have agreed to go to the Hermitage.
It is an important exhibition." It appeared as somewhat of a U-turn, after even a
German government spokesman said in a statement that the visit was ditched after Russia
made clear there wasn’t enough time for Merkel to give her opening remarks.
ECONOMIC
FORUM
The controversy overshadowed Merkel's visit to St Petersburg, where
she was due to address the annual St Petersburg International Economic Forum, before
the opening of the exhibition.
The two countries are in an ongoing dispute
over whether works of art taken by Soviet forces during the Second World War should
be returned to Germany.
The exhibition, “Bronze Age -- Europe Without Borders”,
at the Hermitage from June 21 to Sept. 8, includes about 600 objects taken to Russia
from Berlin either during or at the end of the war, when Joseph Stalin’s Red Army
rolled into the defeated Third Reich’s capitol. After the war, museums in Soviet-occupied
eastern Germany were left with almost nothing.
About 2.5 million items were
packed up and sent to the then-Soviet Union.
TRAIN CARS
In
an act of friendship to communist East Germany in 1958, 300 train cars from Moscow
and St Petersburg brought back art treasures. Yet one million pieces are still missing,
including the Bronze-Age gold treasure of Eberswalde, which is to be exhibited
at the Hermitage exhibit for the first time since the war ended in 1945.
One
gallery alone in Berlin lost 441 pictures, including masterworks by Rubens and Caravaggio.
Russia
has defended its reluctance to return the artworks, saying they were paid for with
the blood of Russian soldiers and that it also lost many paintings that were looted
by the Nazis.
The controversy comes at a time when Merkel will run for re-election
on 22 September and wants to be seen as a determined politician.