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Art believed destroyed by Nazis found in Berlin
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Now here's a familiar theme -- construction crews and buried treasure. Seems like work crews are constantly stumbling onto some ancient relic here in Beijing, but this time, the story comes from Germany's capital, Berlin.
Nearly a dozen sculptures considered by the Nazis to "degenerate" artwork have been unearthed during construction near Berlin's city hall. The sculptures were believed to have been lost or destroyed after World War II, but here they are being shown to reporters on Monday.
The terra-cotta and bronze statues were found during a dig to lay down a new subway line.
They belonged to a collection of 15-thousand works condemned by Hitler's regime for containing anti-nationalistic themes or criticizing Nazi ideology.
The sculptures mainly depict women.
Ten of the pieces will go on display on Tuesday in Berlin's Neues Museum.
Matthias Wemhoff, Director of Neues Museum in Berlin, said, "These sculptures come from one complex, and we can trace them back. They were confiscated by the Nazis as degenerated art. All the pieces travelled between 1937 until 1941 in different directions, but in 1941 they all appeared in a depot of the Nazi propaganda ministry. From there we lose their trail and find them back in 1944 in a destroyed cellar."
One of the pieces, an Edwin Scharff statue of the actress Anni Mewes, was found in January, but it was thought to be unique.
Subsequent digs in August and October, however, turned up the remaining pieces.
While Nazi's often attributed the "deviant" characteristics of degenerate art to Jewish corruption, only two Jews were among the avant-garde artists who created the sculptures on display.
Otto Freundlich, whose large, elongated 1925 terra-cotta statue of a man's head was left partially standing, was murdered in 1943.
Naum Slutzky, a member of the Bauhaus school, fled to England in 1933.
His work "Female Bust," was originally a glinting bronze, but has been left only partially restored to reflect the damage of time and fire.
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