Albanian exhibition quest for contact

Press, 30 August 1988, Page 14

Albanian exhibition quest for contact

By

THALIA GRIFFITHS

NZPA-Reuter Hildesheim, West Germany Reclusive Albania has sent an archaeological exhibition to West Germany as part of its new quest to make contact with the outside world. Since the death of its Stalinist hardline leader, Enver Hoxha, in 1985, isolationist Albania has been exploring modest economic and cultural relations with some Western countries.

“It is very important for us to get our country’s culture and history known,” said a spokesman for the Albanian Embassy in Bonn, which formed diplomatic ties with Tirana a year ago. He cited plans to increase cultural contacts with West Germany. The exhibition, the largest of its kind to be held outside Albania, covers the period from the New Stone Age, around 6000 BC, to the death of Albania’s national hero, Skanderbeg. In the fifteenth century, Skanderbeg repelled 13 invasion attempts by the Ottoman Turks.

Ancient Illyria, whose southern part is occupied by present-day Albania, stood on the Balkan peninsula at the crossing of important north-south and east-west trade routes. The Illyrian culture grew in a peaceful coexistence with influences from neighbouring Greece until it was conquered by Rome in 168 BC.

The exhibition gives a picture of the Illyrian

people, the ancestors of today’s Albanians, as peaceful and artistic. Household pots and jewellery are decorated with delicately traced, abstract line patterns.

Statues and vases show the influence of, Greek culture as do finds from a theatre in Byllis, in Albania’s south, including an actor’s mask and an altar to Dionysus, god of wine and pleasure. With the collapse of the Roman empire, the region fell under the rule of Constantinople. The coming of Christianity is represented with early Byzantine icons and finds from churches.

“History has great significance for Albania as a source of national identity,” a museum director, Arne Eggebrecht, said. “Stalin is venerated by the Albanians because he prevented Albania from being annexed to Yugoslavia as Kosovo was.

“Skanderbeg’s struggle for national freedom is very important to them. The Albanian flag is Skanderbeg’s flag, the doubleheaded eagle, with just a star added,” he said.

“I am sure this exhibition is part of the country’s efforts to open up after the death of Enver Hoxha, making contact more subtly, through cultural means rather than political ones. “The exhibition shows Albania has played a part in world history since ancient times, that it is not the blank space on the map it is generally held to be.”

Hildesheim’s RoemerPelizaeus Museum is well known to European archaeologists for its exhibition facilities. Finds from Peru, the splendours of Tutankhamun’s treasure and lifesize terracotta warriors excavated from the tomb of the Chinese emperor, Qin, have all been exhibited there. The latest exhibition was Albania’s idea.

“Three years ago during an Egyptian exhibition, representatives of the German-Albanian friendship society came to me and asked if I was interested in putting on an exhibition on ancient Albania,” Eggebrecht said.

The exhibition was in preparation well before West Germany established diplomatic links in October, 1987, and Eggebrecht’s efforts have sparked a series of cultural contacts.

At Albania’s request, this modest north German town with its Romanesque churches and elaborately patterned half-timbered houses will in turn be the subject of an exhibition in Tirana in the next couple of years.

A local film enthusiast recently spent 10 days in Albania selecting material for a festival to be held in September, which the town hopes will become a regular fixture. Much of the exhibition’s catalogue is written by Albanian archaeologists and it is to be put on sale in Albania. The exhibition runs in Hildesheim until November before returning to Albania.