Audiostation - Wie kommt eine Skulptur vom Friedhof ins Museum und wieder zurück? Wegmarken Jüdischer Geschichte

The Lion Sculpture from the Fountain at the Jewish Cemetery in Altona

M: The lion is holding a shield inscribed with Hebrew script in its paws. What does it say?

F: “This is the gift of the Sacred Brotherhood of Undertakers for Charity; He will swallow up death forever.”

M: So, the lion has something to do with death… Is it a cemetery statue?

F: Yes, it is. The lion comes from the fountain at the Jewish cemetery on Königstraße. You know, traditional ritual requires the faithful to wash their hands after visiting the cemetery. That’s why there’s a fountain at the entrance and exit.

M: Okay… but why is the lion now on exhibition here?

F: The story goes that it was found on the street near the cemetery in 1943 by an employee of the Altona Museum. She brought the statue here to save it from further destruction.

M: Isn’t that a bit far-fetched? Hamburg was the target of major bomb attacks at that time…

F: You mean Operation Gomorrah, in July ’43. Well, it could be that the statue was blown off the fountain during an air raid. After all, the cemetery was definitely hit by bombs, although not as badly as the houses in the neighbourhood.

M: Or if it wasn’t from the bombing, it could also have been a deliberate act of vandalism during the Nazi era…

F: Maybe, yes. Just like synagogues and Jewish shops, Jewish cemeteries were also ransacked and destroyed in many places.

M: Okay, but if the museum worker back then knew that the lion statue belonged in the cemetery, why did she take it with her? After all, she didn’t have the right to do that, did she?

F: Well, she probably wanted to save a work of art from further destruction. But as far as we know, after 1945 she didn’t exactly rush to return it to the Jewish community. But there are records that the statue was found in the street, and it was always clear to the museum that the lion belonged to the cemetery.

M: So why is the lion still here today, if it belongs to the Jewish community?

F: What’s on display here is actually a copy. The original was returned to the Jewish cemetery, and is now found in the visitor centre there. A second copy stands in its original location, on the fountain at the cemetery entrance.

M: Well, then, all’s well that ends well… right?

F: Well, it did take the museum a whole 70 years to decide to return the lion to the Jewish community. The Hamburg Heritage Foundation financed the casting of the copies and, in 2013, the original and a copy was handed over to the Jewish cemetery.

M: So it’s also a story of injustice, after all.

F: Yes. The cast here in the museum is intended to remind us of the responsibility that museums have when dealing with stolen goods.