Get to work! New non-fiction books: Hitler kept Nefertiti in Berlin

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On April 1, it will be exactly one hundred years since the embodiment of beauty entered the public consciousness. In 1924, during an exhibition dedicated to excavations at Amarna (Egypt), the Berlin Neues Museum showed a half-meter-tall limestone with painted stucco, wax and rock crystal: a bust of Nefertiti. Although only one eye is decorated with a gem, the wife of Pharaoh Akhenaten from the 14th century BC captivates with her evenness.

“Nefertiti was considered the ‘queen of fashion,'” writes German historian Sebastian Conrad, 57, in his recently published book on the bust’s global career. “For example, wearing earrings goes back to the Egyptians.” The modern woman of the Roaring Twenties wore such jewelry with the knowledge that she was following a fashion that was almost as old as history itself. Conrad: “Today there are still countless cosmetic products that are advertised under the name of Nefertiti.”

After the discovery, her face was smeared with dirt: “On December 6, 1912, al-Sanusi began to search the rubble that covered room 19 of the ruins of the city of Amarna,” Conrad writes. An Egyptian worker found what he was looking for and handed the bust over to the German excavation director, Ludwig Borchardt (1863–1938). In order to deprive the find of its significance and be able to take it to Berlin, bypassing the French antiquities service, Borchardt desecrates Nefertiti.

Due to fears of claims from Egypt, the bust remained hidden for almost twelve years. And less than ten years after the first exhibition, Berlin is going to voluntarily return it: since the face of an oriental-looking woman did not correspond to the ideal blonde beauty of the Nazis who came to power in Germany in 1933, they wanted to give her to Nefertiti to the Egyptian king. But Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) prevented the extradition. Since then it has become a bone of contention between the countries.

It is a magnet for visitors to Berlin’s Museum Island. “The exhibition “In the Light of Amarna,” shown in 2012, the anniversary year of the bust’s discovery, attracted 600,000 visitors to the museum in eight months,” writes a professor of modern history at the Free University of Berlin in his book. book . Conrad attributes the global reaction to the “media revolution of the 20th century”: from photographs in newspapers and magazines, almost all of humanity knows this similarity.

“Nefertiti found its greatest response on the African continent and, above all, in the African diaspora,” writes Conrad. Barbadian singer Rihanna (36 years old) was photographed as Nefertiti for Vogue Arabia in 2017. And her American colleague Beyonce (42) appeared at a music festival in California in 2018 in the image of a “survivor from Nefertiti” (Conrad). “Like no other work in the history of art, Nefertiti has become a logo that can be read throughout the world,” says the professor.

Source: Blick