Double Fake Double Take - ProvokatoR magazine

Double Fake Double Take

on 15-05-2007 04:15

Published in : , Misc

by Calvin Keogh

There’s no denying the power of a diva, or the talismanic attraction of their artefacts. Kylie’s hotpants are drawing crowds to London’s V&A while the boas of Marlene Dietrich tickle the fancy at Berlin’s Film Museum. For true devotees, Berlin also promises the jewels of Helen of Troy, the original femme fatale.

The trinkets were discovered by Heinrich Schliemann, German fortune seeker and almost as much of a legend himself. Born to a pastor and apprenticed to a grocer, as a youth he took off on a ship for Venezuela but was shipwrecked in Holland. He stayed, made a name in trade, and moved on to Russia.

Heinrich Schliemann

During a year out in California he bought and sold $1million in gold dust before returning to Saint Petersburg to marry local socialite Ekaterina Lyschin. His wife prudently withheld sex until he got even richer. He duly cornered the market in ammunitions and explosives, sired three children, and retired by forty.

With new purpose to find, Schliemann abandoned his family to wander, aiming to associate his name with the world’s most famous and mysterious sites. He once entered Mecca disguised as a Bedouin and, reading of excavations at Hissarlik in Asia Minor, became obsessed with the idea of uncovering Homer’s Troy.

Boasting thirteen languages and brandishing a false degree in archaeology, Schliemann intended to fake it and make it. He claimed US citizenship, even to have dined at the White House, and cited Indiana law to divorce Ekaterina. Arriving in Athens, he advertised in the classifieds for a Greek replacement.

A relation of the local Archbishop, Sophia Engastromenos, responded and the newly-weds bought out British archaeologist Frank Calvert, who had been digging methodically for twenty years. When in 1873 a glint of gold was uncovered, the workers were packed off to lunch and the treasure removed in Sophia’s shawl.

Photos of the bride wearing the diadems, necklaces and earrings were sent around the world, making the ‘Jewels of Helen’ headline news. With the Turkish government threatening to sue, the hoard was smuggled out, eventually ending up in the Berlin Museum. For all the fuss, however, on display today is a set of copies.

Sophie wearing the jewels

The originals, hidden in an 8ft-thick bunker under the Berlin Zoo, disappeared at the end of WWII to turn up in 1993, alongside 134,000 other looted works, in Russia. Still held by the directors of Moscow’s Pushkin Museum as ‘compensation’ for war damage, Ekaterina would doubtless approve.

Ever a spinner of the truth, Schliemann might have the last laugh with the persistence of a legend of his own making. Recklessly ploughing through the layers at the site, what he found was not the Troy of the Iliad but actually 1,000 years older. Yet his and Helen’s name remain inextricably linked.

With a face that launched a thousand ships, Helen must have had a mean set of accessories. Although it wasn’t this finery that caught the eye of Paris, take your imagination along to the Pre- & Early History Museum and the fabulous Trojan jewels. They could be even better than the real thing.

From May 13 at the Museum für Vor- und Frühgeschichte, Langhansbau, Schloss Charlottenburg.
(Tuesday-Friday 9am-5pm, Saturday & Sunday, 10am-5pm)

Filmmuseum Berlin, Potsdamerstr. 2
(Tuesday-Sunday, 10am-6pm, Thursday until 8pm).