Germany

Priam’s Gold got to Germany through Schliemann. Schliemann wrote that he smuggled the gold out of Turkey because he was afraid of what the ‘corrupt’ Ottoman government would do to the treasure. 1

Schliemann gave the treasure to the German government in 1881, and the gold and other antiquities were housed in the Ethnographical Museum in Berlin, later called the Museum of Early and Pre-History. 2

At the start of World War II the treasures were moved to a safer place out of fear they could be destroyed by Allied airstrikes. Packed in three sealed boxes, they were stored in a bank safe-deposit box, and in November 1941 moved to a concrete bunker at the Berlin Zoo. During the war, the treasures were crated and stored near the Berlin Zoo in a bunker, which was liberated, along with its contents, by the Red Army in 1945. 3 Rumors were that it had been destroyed by bombs or melted in the fires engulfing the city.

 

 

 

 

 

 

  1. Traill, David A. Schliemann of Troy: Treasure and Deceit. London: John Murray, 1995. ↵
  2. Easton, D. F. “Priam’s Gold: The Full Story.” Anatolian Studies 44 (1994): 221-43. doi:10.2307/3642994. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3642994 ↵
  3. Nicholas, Lynn H. The Rape of Europa: The Fate of Europe’s Treasures in the Third Reich and the Second World War. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994. ↵