18 Oct 2017, 7:44 pm
naturalplastic wrote:
The short answer to the title question is that we should return artifacts eventually.
But its the kinda thing to be done on a case by case basis.
Some parts of the world are more stable than others.
In the opening weeks of the Syrian civil war both the world's oldest church, and the world's oldest mosque, were destroyed. And that was accidental collateral damage from the fighting. None of the many factions intended it. But later in the war a faction arose that actually had the destruction of antiquities as part of its creed, and that was ISIS. So now much of the world's heritage is gone thanks to the combination of collateral and intetsional destruction in Syria.
As for the Prussian books held by Poland. Hard to say. Emotionally...its hard to feel sorry for Germany after all of the plundering they did in the war they started. And its hard to be angry at Poland. And Poland didn't actually "plunder" the documents. They kinda fell into Poland's hands by accident. However you could argue that the books aren't even of value to Poland, and only have meaning to Germans. So maybe you could intellectually persuade me to Germany's case. But emotionally its hard to side with Germany on this.
But its the kinda thing to be done on a case by case basis.
Some parts of the world are more stable than others.
In the opening weeks of the Syrian civil war both the world's oldest church, and the world's oldest mosque, were destroyed. And that was accidental collateral damage from the fighting. None of the many factions intended it. But later in the war a faction arose that actually had the destruction of antiquities as part of its creed, and that was ISIS. So now much of the world's heritage is gone thanks to the combination of collateral and intetsional destruction in Syria.
As for the Prussian books held by Poland. Hard to say. Emotionally...its hard to feel sorry for Germany after all of the plundering they did in the war they started. And its hard to be angry at Poland. And Poland didn't actually "plunder" the documents. They kinda fell into Poland's hands by accident. However you could argue that the books aren't even of value to Poland, and only have meaning to Germans. So maybe you could intellectually persuade me to Germany's case. But emotionally its hard to side with Germany on this.
Some of the documents were returned to the Germans, and more precisely their Eastern part of it
In the 1970s, the first secretary of the Polish United Workers' Party (Edwardian Communist Party), Edward Gierek, gave in a gesture of goodwill to Erich Honecker, who was at that time the first secretary of the Socialist Party of the Unity of Germany, the SED (Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands), the Bach manuscripts, Bethoven, Mozart and Goethe. He did this to improve friendship between the "fraternal socialist countries" like the former Polish People's Republic and the GDR.
Then researchers from the GDR, as well as the Federal Republic of Germany, became interested in how Poland, in general, was in possession of these manuscripts. At that time, German historians began humming that this property and cultural heritage of the German people, and as such are the property of both the GDR and the Federal Republic of Germany, and Poland should return all collections to Germany, but our Polish politicians at both the Communist and the present time assume that first "German People" should return what they stole from "Polish People"
20 Oct 2017, 6:38 pm
TUAndrew
Blue Jay
Joined: 3 May 2014
Age: 36
Gender: Male
Posts: 89
Location: Hampshire, UK Sometimes France
24 Oct 2017, 7:24 am
