BABYLON REVIVED

Hawera Star, Volume LI, 3 January 1931, Page 2

BABYLON REVIVED

BERLIN’S GREAT MUSEUMS

MONUMENTS UNDER ROOFS

The centenary of Berlin’s “Museum Island” ivas celebrated on October 2 by the opening of three new museums upon, it, the result of twenty years planning and building, much interrupted and delayed by the war, the revolution, and the inflation. The three new museums are not in fact entirely separate entities, and. have not separate entrances of their own. The 'portico and entrance hell of what is to be their principal facade have not yet been built, because until the new approach lias, been constructed over the Spree, which the present state of municipal finances forbids, they could not be approached from this side. At present, therefore, the German Museum, the Pergamon Museum, and the Near Eastern Museum are links joining the Kaiser Frederick Museum at one end of the island to the Neues; and Altes Museums’ at the other end, so that the whole complex of buildings is united by bridges over the streets and the Metropolitan Railway line which divides them. The new museums conceived by the late Wilhelm von Bede are superb examples of the new German school of museum arrangement. The aim is to show painting, sculpture, and architecture in their original inter-relation.

A REMARKABLE COLLECTION

In the German Museum have been concentrated all the German sculptures and paintings in the Berlin collections from the early Middle Agee to the end of the Eighteenth Century. 1 his will prove a revelation for many visitors from England where knowledge of German art is too often confined to Du rer and Holbein. The early medieval sculpture and the (glories of German rococo are .both given a proper emphasis.

But it is the Ptergamon end Near Eastern Museums which contain the! greatest surprises. In enormous hallo whole monuments and facade® have, been reconstructed. Thirty yards of the processional street —originally nJO yards long—whioh led 1 to the Isbtar Gate of Nebuchadnezzar ll’s palace have been reconstructed though only half the original 50ft. in width. On either side of the visitor rise the shimmering blue* glazed walls of ancient Babylon with their lions and legendary monsters. The gateway itself hais. been built up its enirety according to the excavations of Koldewey in 1899. Opposite to it rises the facade of a Parthian palace of the second century A.D

The wall of Babylon stands back to back with the Roman-baroque market gate of Miletus., second century A.D 1 . Tn all these reconstructions it should Ive emphasised there is no falsification. The original portions of the building—ip the case of the Miletus Gate practically all the sculptured details, and oven some of the ashlars which make up the plain wall space' —are dlearly but discreetly distinguished! from the rest. THE GREATEST TREASURE. , The greatest treasure of the museum is the Pergamon Altar built by King Eumenes II in 180 8.0. This has a huge room to itself. The original altar was on a. mount 3|ft. high, girt with a sculptured frieze representing the war of the Olympian gods with the giants. Half the building ha® been reconstructed with ai great flight of steps sweeping up to the colonnade which ran round the sanctuary. Some of the frieze can, therefore, ibe seen in its original architectural setting and the rest of it runs round the room. The steps shocked the Govenment (building | inspectors because they are two inches higher than the municipal regulations allow, but the museum authorities manfully refused to mar their re-creation of an architectural masterpiece by adding iron railings for the weak-kneed to cling to or covering the steps with rough-surfaced linoleum.