Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, Transmitted to Congress, With the Annual Message of the President, December 3, 1877

No. 115.
Mr. Davis to Mr. Evarts.

Legation of the United States,
Berlin, June 13, 1877. (Received July 5.)

No. 698.]

Sir: Most European centers of population, even those of the smallest pretension, possess a collection of works of art of more or less value, and of more or less extent. In the large capitals these treasures are generally aesthetically arranged, with a view to gratify cultivated taste and give pleasure to sight-seers. The famous collections of the Vatican and the Louvre cannot be said to aspire to more than this, since, though liberally opened to the student and the copyist, they are not arranged with a view to progressive study or as a means of popular education.

Some of the modern collections, however, have been formed, arranged, and classified, and are used, rather with a view to diffuse a correct knowledge of the principles of art among a whole population than to afford pleasure to educated sight-seers. This is especially true of many German collections, and of none more so than of those in the museum of Berlin.

‘i hat collections for such purposes benefit a nation, that they create nobler tastes and gratify higher instincts than those developed or touched by the ordinary business of life, that they even have a commercial advantage and give a people new sources for the creation of national wealth, are truisms too obvious to dwell upon. That they require only a comparatively moderate annual outlay, provided it be directed by cultivated intelligence and unselfish zeal, is not so well known. Perhaps, therefore, I shall not entirely throw away my time if I devote it to the preparation of a brief sketch of the origin of the Berlin Museum, and of what it aspires to be and to do. It is quite within the power of the United States, should the necessary appropriation be made, to found an institution which, before the end of the first quarter of the next century, will be as useful to the millions who will then people the country as this museum is to the Germans of to-day.

The early princes of the house of Hohenzollern were brave and skillful warriors, thrifty statesmen, and lovers of freedom according to the ideas of their day; but the art which they most cherished was the art of war. While the finer-endowed Saxon rulers were collecting in Dresden enduring food for the gratification of the higher wants of man, Berlin was without a focus for a national art collection until the first quarter of the present century bad gone by. Individual electors of Brandenburg and monarchs of Prussia had collected pictures, some of questionable taste and some of merit, and also a quantity of antique statues, of which few had much worth; but these articles were scattered about in various palaces, inaccessible as a whole to the general public.

As early as 1810, the father of the present monarch conceived the idea of massing the royal treasures in a national collection. It being found impracticable to put them in the academy in the Unter den Linden, Schinkel was commissioned in 1823 to construct the building now known as the Old Museum. They collections were placed in it when finished, and thrown open to the public in 1830, from which time only the Berlin Museum can be said to have existed as an entirety. The space was soon found inadequate, and what is called the New Museum was constructed in the rear of the old one between 1844 and 1855.

William von Humboldt was one of those most instrumental in planning the original arrangement of the united collections. After the work was done, he reported to the King that, in his opinion, it was more systematic and more harmonious than the arrangement of any other great collection. He also foreshadowed the collection of casts from the antique, which is now one of the great features of the museum: and he added that, should that collection be extended and completed in the spirit in which it was begun, and should it be systematically arranged in an appropriate place, it would, in connection with the paintings, afford an unequaled opportunity for the study of art.

The administrative system then put in operation has been somewhat modified. Through all the changes, however, it has preserved its fundamental principle that there must be a central functionary to whom the specialists at the head of the several divisions are to be subordinate. Eminent men, holding from time to time the secondary posts, have resisted the subordination to a central head undoubtedly inferior to them in special fitness for managing a particular division; but it has been thought—and, in my judgment, wisely—that a man of general information and culture will take a broader view than a specialist is likely to take of the wants of the institution as a whole, and will therefore be a fitter person to be intrusted with the divisions among the different departments of the amount yearly allowed for the use of the whole institution.

The statutes of the museum are not in print. The officers, however, have kindly placed them at my disposal, and have been most generous in furnishing information on all points respecting the organization and management of the institution. The crown prince is at the head as its protector. No article costing over 1,500 marks ($357.30) and under 15,000 marks ($3,573) can be added without his approval. The purchase of articles costing over 15,000 marks must be first approved by the Emperor.

The institution is in the department of the ministry of education. It is declared to be “founded for scientific and art purposes,” and it is said that “the instruction desired and the cultivating influences of art are to be furthered by information to be given cheerfully by the officials, and by catalogues of the several collections.” The officer at the immediate head is called the director-general, and all officials are required to obey him.

The statutes make the following divisions and subdivisions of the collection:

I. The collection of plaster casts of sculpture of all ages and countries.

II. The collections from ancient ages.

1. The Egyptian collection.

2. Classic and other antique sculptures.

3. Vases, bronzes, mosaics, and other more minute works of art of the Greek and Roman period.

4. Coins of the same period.

III. The collections from the middle ages and more modern periods.

1. Sculpture.

2. Models of buildings.

3. More minute works of art.

4. Coins.

5. Paintings.

6. Drawings, miniatures, and prints.

IV. Historical, geographical, and ethnological collection.

1. Historical curiosities of the royal house of the country and of the countries in intimate relation with the same.

2. German and Sclavic antiquities.

3. Curiosities from other parts of the world.

The several departments of the museum are placed in charge of directors and assistants, who are to be present alternately whenever the museum is open, the director coming on one day and the assistant on the next. They are required to devote their time to their respective departments, and to be always ready to give any desired information respecting the collections under their charge.

In order further to assist the director-general there is a commission, consisting of five experts, to hear and report upon (a) new acquisitions; (b) removal of existing objects from the museum; (c) arrangement of objects in the museum; (d) repair and restoration of injured objects; (e) disposition of objects condemned as unsuitable; and (f) catalogues. Directors may be members of this commission. The concurrence of at least three members is necessary to a report. If the director-general disapproves of their action in any given case, he must report the fact to the minister of education, who has a right of revision. At present a director has no veto upon a purchase ordered for his department, even though he may disapprove of it. I am told that the proper authorities are considering whether it may not be well to confer this power.

In putting the statutes into operation the official divisions I have referred to are abandoned or disregarded. The departments (Abtheilungen) which have a director and an assistant director are: (1) the paintings; (2) the statues; (3) the antiquities; (4) the coins; (5) the drawings, miniatures, &c.; (6) the collection of artistic works of the middle ages; (9) the Egpytian antiquities. The ethnographic collection (No. 7) and the collection of northern antiquities (No. 8) are attached to No. 6; and the department of casts (No. 10) is attached to No. 2. The gallery of paintings has also a restorer and an assistant restorer, whose functions are both consultative and administrative The first scholarship of Prussia is drawn into the service of these departments. The late Dr. Waagen, esteemed one of the first critics of Europe, was at the head of the picture-gallery for twenty years. His present successor is Dr. Meyer. Professor Curtius is in charge of the department of classic antiquities. The department of coins is under the management of Dr. Friedlander; that of ethnography under Professor Bastian. Professor Lepsius created and manages the Egyptian department. The general director is Count Usedom, a gentleman long in the diplomatic service of Prussia, and regarded as qualified by general culture and varied experience to exercise the requisite gentle check upon the eminent men under him. The entire force, from the director-general down, employed in the service numbers 86 persons. This includes 44 gallery-attendants and 17 laborers. The entire amount annually expended in salaries and in. the traveling expenses of persons sent out on special artistic or scientific missions is 212,620 marks ($30,646.08). One familiar with the annual appropriations made for the staff of persons employed in the Capitol and departments in Washington will be struck with the contrast.

The budget for fire and lights, care of the buildings and gardens, liveries of servants, stationery, care and preservation of the books in the library, &c, is 108,550 marks ($25,848.61). The aggregate of these two sums ($76,494.69) represents the actual cost of maintaining this enormous institution in its present condition. To this must be added the amount annually expended for new purchases, which varies with the opportunities to buy and the generosity of the appropriating power. In the budget for the present year it is fixed at 325,000 marks ($77,415). For many years the amount expended did not approach this sum. In some years it has exceeded it. During the years 1872–’73–’74 the new acquisitions amounted to 44,337 pieces, viz, 225 pictures, 73 pieces of statuary, 192 casts, 2,580 articles of classic antiquity, 21,130 coins, 12,368 engravings, 3,031 ethnographic articles, 3,363 additions to the collection of German or northern antiquities, 50 additions to the Egyptian collection, and 1,325 articles of middle-age art.

The general disposition and arrangement of the collections is worthy of much praise, and could be imitated in similar collections elsewhere. The casts from the antique, for instance, are placed in rooms ornamented with views of restorations of Grecian and Roman buildings and towns. The walls of the room which holds the casts from the Parthenon and the temple of Ægina are painted in fresco with views of the Acropolis, Olympia, Ægiua, Sunium, and other similar sights. The rooms containing the Egyptian collection are decorated with paintings whose proper purpose can best be told in Professor Lepsius’s language:

In the arrangement of the rooms for the Egyptian museum, it has been proposed to make not only a convenient but an historic and art-teaching background, by means of which the separated and disconnected monuments of that far-distant epoch can be made to afford a more intelligent understanding and a greater comprehension to the beholder. A coup d’œeil of the history, the mythology, and the private life of the ancient Egyptians, spread before the eye in wall-pictures, should introduce one to the actual circle of Egyptian ideas, from which their monuments proceeded. Limiting ourselves here to copies of existing old Egyptian representations, we have been able, by faithfully imitating the Egyptian style and forms in larger dimensions and more varied selections than any collection of originals can offer, to place the visitor at once in a position to contemplate Egyptian art, and to judge the individual parts from the connection of the whole.

As I do not aspire to make a guide-book of this dispatch, it is enough to say that the happy ideas of Professor Lepsius have been well carried out in the decoration of the Egyptian rooms. The rooms of other collections, also, have been decorated with appropriate paintings, illustrative of the contents of the room and of the people with whose history they are connected.

The collection of casts from the antique, though not, indeed, peculiar to Berlin,^* has been carried here to a point little short of perfection. It contains some 1,400 plaster casts, giving all there is most famous in the different galleries of Europe. No historic school of art is unrepresented. The lions and bulls and low reliefs of Nineveh the placid faces of the Rameses and Thothmes of the Nile the statues and friezes from the Parthenon the classic treasures of the Vatican and the Louvre the statues on the tombs of the Medici, the best mortuary monuments of the middle ages in fine, the first representatives of every class of art in sculpture have been carefully reproduced in plaster through molds taken from the originals. They are daily open to public inspection and study, in well lighted, well-ventilated rooms, where, arranged in schools, they are placed in charge of a scholar competent to answer the questions of inquiring students. Here, too, at hours which do not interfere with the use of the museum by the general public, professors take their classes and teach the principles of art from the higher sources.

The same may be said of the other collections. The picture-gallery contains few pictures of great note; but as a place for teaching the history of art and the development of the different styles, it has few superiors. The coins and gems are arranged for educational use. Selected choice specimens, of different epochs and countries, are exposed in cases. Students who wish to go further have access to the remainder, through the attendants. In some fields of classic art an attempt has been made to imitate the plan which has succeeded so well with the statues. Paintings from Pompeii or the tombs of Borne cannot be had. Competent artists have therefore been employed to copy selected subjects from these sources. Thus the Berlin artist and workman find in the museum what will give them adequate ideas of the Roman use of color and form in decoration.

The department of casts contains the original molds from which the casts were obtained. From these molds the museum makes copies for persons whose orders come through proper channels, and generously sells them at cost price. Some idea of what this is may be gathered from a few items. The Horse-Tamer of Phidias, 5.56 meters in height, costs 6,000 marks ($1,429.20); the Farnese Bull, with all the figures, 3.63 by 2.98 meters, 3,600 marks ($857.52); the Capitoline Venus, 105 marks ($25.02); the Florence Niobe with one of the daughters, 135 marks ($32.17); the beautiful bronze Praying Boy in the Berlin Museum, 90 marks ($21.44); the bust of Julius Caesar, also in Berlin, 7.50 marks ($1.79); two lions from the portal of Mycene, 450 marks ($107.19); Horse’s Head from the Parthenon, 24 marks ($5.71). These prices include finishing the seams and the immersion of the cast in a solution of resin.

In a separate building, quite remote from those I have been describing, is the Gewerbe Museum, a large and quite interesting collection of objects like porcelain, majolica, glass, furniture, carpets, &c., showing the application of art to the purposes of daily life. In spirit, this collection is part of the Royal Museum, but it has a different organization. Practically, it has been found of decided value in the rich suggestions which it offers to skilled workmen.

Without entering upon the tempting fields which this subject offers, I content myself with the single point which has been presented. The history of this institution shows that the nation which comes the latest into the field can, at a comparatively moderate cost, gather collections of objects of art and historic interest which may rival older institutions as practical educators in taste and artistic execution. The collections of pictures, whose purchases laid the foundation of the Berlin Gallery, are not the last that will be brought to the hammer by reverses of fortune. The analogous process of tracing may give form and drawing in painting, as the mold has given them in sculpture. The skilled artist who can clothe them with color and fill them with soul has not ceased to exist. The same process which has given Berlin her casts from the antique, can give the like to us. Collections of gems and antiquities are still from time to time coming into the market, and the great treasures which have found their way to national ownership can still be copied in plaster for the student’s use. Lastly, in America we may hope that, even more than in Europe, private citizens will be disposed to deposit with the government for perpetual protection what they regard as their choicest treasures in art, when the government has once provided a receptacle for the purpose.

in the hope of making an humble contribution toward the establishment of such a national institution for our whole united country, I have written this dispatch; and, sir,

I have, &c.,

J. C. BANCROFT DAVIS.

1. The collection in the Louvere, in the crystal palace at Sydenham, and in the United versity of Bonn, are said to rank next in importance.