Egyptian Artifacts and a Wealthy Berlin Patron of the Arts

If you want to see the famous bust of Egyptian Queen Nefertiti (c. 1370 – c. 1330 BCE), the wife of Pharaoh Akhenaten, you have to visit Berlin’s Neues Museum (New Museum) to experience it in person. The world-famous sculpture of Nefertiti’s head and shoulders first arrived in Berlin in 1913. Other than during times of war, the Nefertiti bust has resided in Berlin since then, but it has only been at its current location on Museum Island since 2009.

The bust of Egyptian Queen Nefertiti has been located in the North Dome Room of the Neues Museum since 2009. She looks pretty good for her 3,300+ years. The Neues Museum will celebrate the 100th anniversary of her first public display in Berlin in April 1924. PHOTO: David von Becker, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

100 Years of Nefertiti in Berlin
Nefertiti is the main attraction of the New Museum’s extensive Egyptian Museum section, and for good reason. Her artistic excellence and almost flawless condition have earned her likeness the stardom she has long enjoyed. Although it has been in Berlin for over a century, the bust of Nefertiti has not always been on public display, and her location in the German capital has changed numerous times over the years. Attributed to the sculptor Thutmose, since its arrival in Berlin, the bust has survived wars and political turmoil by being relocated, sometimes temporarily in places far removed from the capital city.

In 2024 the Neues Museum will officially celebrate the 100th anniversary of Nefertiti being on public display in Berlin. When the acclaimed 19-inch (48 cm) tall bust first went on permanent display in April 1924 in Berlin, public interest in things Egyptian had been heightened recently by Howard Carter’s 1922 discovery of King Tutankhamun’s nearly intact tomb in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings. The queen’s striking beauty only added to her appeal.

It took Carter another two years to extract Tut’s iconic mask. Since December 1925, Tutankhamun’s golden funerary mask – with the image of Osiris, the Egyptian god of the afterlife – has been on permanent display at Cairo’s Egyptian Museum. It, along with other Tut tomb treasures, has also been loaned out by Egypt for limited museum tours around the world. The new Grand Egyptian Museum at Giza has been under construction since 2012. It may or may not officially open in 2024. Currently only very limited access tours, booked in advance, are available.

This bust of Nefertiti is only 2 inches (5 cm) tall. It is a souvenir replica, one of many thousands sold around the globe. The few flaws of the original have been restored. PHOTO: Hyde Flippo

Faithful Copies of the Nefertiti Bust
Soon after the Nefertiti figure arrived in Berlin, Heinrich Schäfer, the director of the Egyptian Museum had commissioned the German Australian sculptor Tina Haim-Wentscher (1887-1974) to create faithful copies of the bust. (She was a longtime friend of the German sculptor Käthe Kollwitz, who in 1933 advised her Jewish friend not to return to Germany from an overseas journey with her husband.) In all, Haim-Wentscher created three replicas, one each for Kaiser Wilhelm II and James Simon (see below) in 1913, both with Nefertiti’s missing left eye and other flaws restored, plus a later (early 1920s) third copy that was used as a model for a series of high-quality replicas sold to museums and private collections worldwide. Smaller, less costly, less exacting reproductions of the queen’s bust have been marketed as souvenirs ever since. But the original remained in Berlin. And that soon became a problem.

Since the beginning of its century-long public presence in Berlin, Thutmose’s bust of the Egyptian queen has not been without controversy. Egyptian demands for the bust’s repatriation began not long after 1924, the year it first went on public display. Ever since then, Egyptian and German authorities have argued over where the bust belongs. We’ll take a closer look at this dispute below.

James Simon and Nefertiti
It was the wealthy Berlin cotton and textile magnate and patron of the arts James Simon (1851-1932) who alone funded the excavation that revealed the largely undamaged stucco-coated limestone bust of Queen Nefertiti in 1912. Also unearthed at Tell el-Amarna were other artifacts, including a shattered bust of Pharaoh Akhenaten.

Like the now iconic bust he paid to discover and bring to Berlin, James Simon himself is also controversial. On the one hand the Berlin millionaire and art lover was known for his generous philanthropy. Some estimates claim that during his lifetime he gave away one third of his vast fortune for social causes and the public good.

But others point out that he exploited poor Egyptian farmers to obtain the cotton that made him one of Prussia’s wealthiest men. Despite being a Jew, he had influence in high places. He was one of the so-called “Kaiser’s Jews”, a disparaging term for a group of Jewish men who met regularly with Kaiser Wilhelm II. But also as a Jew, following his death in 1932, his name and very existence were virtually eradicated by the Nazis. His papers and private archive were destroyed, and he was largely erased from German history until very recently.

One of the most notable physical memorials to his memory is the new James Simon Gallery visitor center, designed by British architect David Chipperfield, that opened on Museum Island in 2019. The visitor center and art gallery now serve as the main entrance and orientation center for the entire museum complex on Museum Island. Simon today has many admirers in Germany – as well as detractors. But there can be no doubt that Nefertiti would not have come to Germany without James Simon’s financing. Simon was one of the founders of the Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft (German Orient Company, DOC) in 1898. It was the DOC that carried out Simon’s various archaeological expeditions in Egypt and Mesopotamia.

Ludwig Borchardt and the Amarna Dig
Hired by Simon, the Berlin-born, Jewish Egyptologist Ludwig Borchardt (1863-1938) headed the Amarna excavation that began in 1911 and ended in 1914. During the 1912/1913 phase of the project, workers stumbled upon a complex that turned out to be Thutmose’s sculpture workshop. It was here that the now famous bust of Nefertiti was discovered in December 1912. Borchardt personally witnessed the removal of the bust on 6 December 1912. He quickly sent word of the find to James Simon in Berlin.

The bust of Nefertiti and other Amarna artifacts were soon transported to Berlin, where they arrived in early 1913. The Germans claim the items discovered in Egypt were evaluated and properly allocated between the two parties as part of a “partage” agreement approved by the Egyptian authorities. But almost from the very beginning, the Egyptians and Prussians argued over who should possess Thutmose’s sculpture work. Egypt at this time was a British protectorate, and the Egyptian archaeological authority was run by a Frenchman. In any case, Borchardt sent the bust to James Simon in Berlin, the man who had financed the dig. Simon kept the bust in his private collection until 1920, when he turned it over to the Prussian state.

Nefertiti’s Nazi Interlude at Merkers
After going on public display in Berlin in 1924, Nefertiti’s likeness stayed put for 15 years, until Hitler started the Second World War. After 1939, the bust of Queen Nefertiti and other valuable museum items were moved out of the Neues Museum for safe keeping. Her first refuge was inside a Reichsbank vault in Berlin. Later Nefertiti was locked away in a bunker near the Berlin zoo.

But as the Soviet Red Army moved ever closer to Berlin in 1945, Nefertiti joined other precious, irreplaceable works of art that the Nazis were hiding away in more secure locations. Much of this Nazi booty had been looted from all across Europe, but Nefertiti had been on display in Berlin since 1924. Nevertheless, she joined other art, foreign and domestic, stored deep within the Kaiseroda salt/potassium mine at Merkers in Germany’s Thuringia region.

The Allies and the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives Unit
Only five months after Nefertiti had arrived in her secret salt mine location, the U.S. Third Army captured the mine, and the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives (MFAA) unit of the Allied forces collected the hidden treasure located there. This historic event, as portrayed in the 2014 movie The Monuments Men, was at the time most notable for the Reichsbank gold bars – worth $200 million in 1945 – also found in the mine. Nefertiti was recovered from the mine as well, but she and the other objets d’art were almost a side note at the time. The gold made the headlines. (Nefertiti does not appear in the film; nor do the many MFAA people who were active after the war.)

The Egyptian bust and other artworks were dutifully sent to the “Monuments Men” Central Collecting Point in Wiesbaden, in the former Museum Wiesbaden building, where each precious item was carefully archived and put in storage until it could be returned to the rightful owners. (Wiesbaden was just one of four archival centers set up by the MFAA in the American occupation zone. The other three were in Marburg, Munich, and Offenbach.) She was, however, considered so special and significant, that in 1946 she went on public display at the Museum Wiesbaden. The German people and the world could see that the bust had survived the war. For various reasons mentioned below, Nefertiti would remain in Wiesbaden for another decade.

The bust of Nefertiti being admired at the Museum Wiesbaden in 1951. The recovered artifact spent a decade in Wiesbaden before being returned to West Berlin in 1956. PHOTO: Museum Wiesbaden, Stadtarchiv Wiesbaden

Controversies and Political Complications
Also in 1946, the Egyptian government submitted a formal request to the Allied Control Commission in Germany, pointing out that the return of Nefertiti’s bust had previously been agreed to by the Nazi government, only to be thwarted by Hitler. Now that the Führer was dead, surely it was time to right this historic wrong. And it was not the first time that Egypt had tried to get Nefertiti returned to her homeland.

The first efforts towards repatriation had begun almost as soon as the bust had been sent to Berlin, and had continued into the 1920s and beyond. But now it was the Americans who were preventing the bust’s return to the Egyptians. The reason given for the refusal was that the commission had authority to repatriate only objects looted during the war. Before the Second World War, the bust had been a permanent resident in Berlin’s Neues Museum ever since 1924, eight years before the Nazis came to power. But in 1946 the German Third Reich no longer existed, and the Allies now controlled Germany with their four occupation zones, one each for France, Britain, the USA, and the Soviet Union. Wiesbaden (Hesse) was in the American Zone.

In addition to the four zones in Germany, the former capital city of Berlin was also divided into four zones. The Soviet zones would become East Germany and and East Berlin. By 1949, there were two Germanys, each with its own form of government. East Germany (the German Democratic Republic, GDR), influenced by the Soviet Union, took a socialist path. West Germany (the Federal Republic of Germany, FRG) influenced by the other three Allies (Britain, France, USA), took a federal, democratic path, with a constitution modeled after the USA.

When Josef Stalin’s Soviet Union attempted to absorb West Berlin into East Germany via the Berlin Blockade in 1948, the Allied response was the 15-month-long Berlin Airlift (1948-1949). It was the beginning of the Cold War, and both Germany and Berlin would remain divided until 1989.

Egyptian Artifacts in Austria Emperor Maximilian I of Mexico, former Archduke Maximilian I, the brother of Austrian Kaiser Franz Josef. PHOTO: Public Domain Berlin is not the only German-speaking capital with a major Egyptian museum. How did Vienna, Austria come to also have an Egyptian museum? It began almost two centuries ago in Egypt. The Egyptian Museum of Antiquities in Cairo today contains many important pieces of ancient Egyptian history. It houses the world’s largest collection of Pharaonic antiquities. The Egyptian government established the museum in 1835 near the Ezbekieh Garden and later moved to the Cairo Citadel. But in 1855, following a royal visit to Egypt, Archduke Maximilian I of Austria, a rabid admirer of all things Egyptian, purchased almost 2,000 artifacts from the Egyptian government. He kept the collection at his Miramare Castle near Trieste (then in Austria, now in Italy). After the archduke became Emperor Maximilian I of Mexico he was executed in 1867, following a failed attempt to impose European control over Mexico. The items in the Miramare Collection that Maximilian had shipped to Mexico just before his demise – to display in a planned Egyptian museum there – instead went back to Trieste. In 1883 Maximilian’s Miramare Collection became a large part of the Egyptian and Near Eastern Collection at Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum. In 1893 the Austrians obtained even more Egyptian items (from Thebes).

Egyptian Museums Worldwide
The Egyptian artifacts genie has long been out of the bottle. Various internet lists of worldwide museums with significant Egyptian collections enumerate hundreds of museums, large and small, in over 65 countries, including Egypt. Germany alone has over 70 Egyptian collections in cities from Aachen to Würzburg. Some German cities have three or four different museums with Egyptian artifacts. Britain, France, and Spain also have many Egyptian museums. But only Berlin has Nefertiti.

Below is a detailed timeline of key events related to the bust unearthed in December 1912 at Tell el-Amarna, Egypt by an archaeological team funded by James Simon’s German Oriental Company (Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft). This chronology covers events between December 1912 and April 2024.

Nefertiti Bust Timeline (1912-2024)

1912: 6 December | The Nefertiti bust is discovered at Amarna by the German Oriental Company’s archaeological team led by the German archaeologist Ludwig Borchardt. The dig is financed by James Simon, one of the wealthiest and most influential men in Prussia.

1913: January | The Nefertiti bust arrives in Berlin along with other Amarna artifacts that are part of the agreed portion of the find allocated to Germany. Other parts of the find are kept by Egypt. The German collection is kept at James Simon’s mansion on Tiergartenstrasse.

1913: November | The Amarna finds are briefly on public display at the Neues Museum, but without the bust!

1913: Two copies of the Nefertiti bust are commissioned for Kaiser Wilhelm II and James Simon. The replicas by German Australian sculptor Tina Haim-Wentscher are faithful to the original, except for fixing the missing left eye and other minor flaws, such as the broken ears.

1920: 11 July | James Simon donates the Amarna collection, with the bust of Nefertiti, to the Ägyptisches Museum (inside the Neues Museum). It would take another four years before Berlin’s Egyptian Museum could be renovated to exhibit the new Simon collection in an appropriate fashion.

1924: The bust of Nefertiti and other Amarna artifacts go on public display in the former Greek Courtyard, now roofed over and renamed the Amarna Courtyard. The collection will remain here for the next 15 years, despite Egyptian demands for the return of the bust to Egypt.

Nefertiti’s first public display around 1924, in the Amarna Courtyard at the Neues Museum after the conversion of the Greek Courtyard. On the right the Nefertiti bust inside a glass case. PHOTO: © Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Zentralarchiv

1925: Pierre Lacau, the director of the Department of Antiquities in Cairo, bans all German excavations in Egypt unless the Amarna artifacts are returned.

1930: Heinrich Schäfer, the director of the Egyptian Museum in Berlin agrees to an exchange of Amarna items, but when the press learns of the imminent deal, it sets off a storm of outrage in Germany.

1930: 28 June 1930 | After the issue of a possible return of the bust had again arisen, James Simon publishes an open letter addressed to the Prussian minister of culture, reminding him that the Berlin museum’s directors had promised that the bust would be returned to Egypt should the authorities ever request it. As a businessman, he felt that this promise should be honored. His letter was ignored, and Simon died in 1932.

1933: October | Reichsminister Hermann Göring agrees to return the Nefertiti bust to King Fuad, to commemorate the anniversary of the king’s accession to the Egyptian throne. But Hitler strongly objects and personally intercedes to block any return. The queen’s bust would remain in Berlin until war intervenes.

1939: With the outbreak of war in Europe, the bust and other Amarna items are removed from the museum to two different secure locations. The first refuge was a Reichsbank vault, the second was a bunker near the Berlin zoo.

1945: Early March | As Soviet troops approach Berlin, Nefertiti and other valuable museum objects are now moved out of the capital to a more remote location at the Kaiseroda salt/phosphate mine in Merkers, Thuringia in eastern Germany. This proved to be a wise move, as Berlin and the buildings on Museum Island were heavily damaged by aerial bombardment. More than a third of the Neues Museum was destroyed.

1945: Late March | As the war nears its end, an Allied “Monuments Men” art recovery unit locates the Nefertiti bust in Merkers – along with many other works of art, Nazi loot, and gold bars worth millions. The bust is first moved to the Reichsbank in Frankfurt. In August the bust and other recovered artwork are transported to the Central Collection Point warehouse in Wiesbaden to await its eventual return to the rightful owners. Later the bust is on public display at the Museum Wiesbaden, where it will remain until 1956.

1946: The East German (GDR) government is already pressing for the return of the bust to its former home in what is now East Berlin, but Nefertiti remains in Wiesbaden.

1956: After a decade in Wiesbaden, the bust of Nefertiti returns to Berlin, but not to the eastern, former Soviet Sector of the now divided capital, the home of the bust before the war. The Americans send the bust to West Berlin, where it goes on display at the Museumszentrum Dahlem (Dahlem Museum Center).

1961: 13 August | Almost overnight, the German Democratic Republic erects the wall that Walter Ulbricht claimed he had no intention of building. East and West Berlin are now divided by the Berlin Wall, a barrier that will remain standing until November 1989.

1967: The bust and other Egyptian items move to the new Egyptian Museum (Ägyptisches Museum) in the Stüler Building, just across the street from Charlottenburg Palace in West Berlin. Nefertiti will stand in a rotunda on the second floor of the museum for over two decades.

1990: 12 September | Following the opening of the Berlin Wall in November 1989, the “Two Plus Four Agreement”, a treaty officially marking German reunification is signed by officials from the former Allied nations (France, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the USA) as well as the two Germanys.

1992: With its growing popularity, the bust of Nefertiti in Charlottenburg is moved downstairs to a room of its own on the ground floor. With better lighting of the bust, now located in a darkened space, the likeness of Nefertiti now makes a more striking impression, allowing viewers to better appreciate her beauty.

2005: March | At last the bust returns to its former home on Museum Island, but not exactly. The Egyptian Museum now moves from Charlottenburg in former West Berlin to the upper floor of the Old Museum (not the original New Museum) in former East Berlin. Nefertiti is still the star, but she is now in a huge glass display case, where she shares the room with other items from Amarna.

2009: October | Following extensive renovations, the Neues Museum reopens, with Nefertiti in a starring role, back in her original museum, albeit in a new location inside the building. The North Dome Room, originally intended to house Greek sculptures, proves to be an excellent new home for Nefertiti.

2019: 13 July | The new James Simon Gallery visitor center, designed by British architect David Chipperfield, opens on Museum Island. The visitor center and art gallery now serve as the main entrance and orientation center for the entire museum complex on Museum Island. It is named for James Simon, who had donated the bust of Nefertiti to Prussian Museum Authority in 1920, and who had supported the arts in Berlin and Germany for most of his adult life.

2024: March/April | The Egyptian Collection at Berlin’s Neues Museum marks the 100th anniversary of the date when the Nefertiti bust first went on public display at the museum.

– HF