Spain is set to ask Germany for the return of certain archaeological treasures which it gave willingly to one of the most powerful men of the Nazi regime.
Gold and bronze artefacts from the Visigoth period in Spain were presented to Heinrich Himmler, head of the notorious SS. Himmler was on a visit to General Francisco Franco in 1940 in Madrid.
Spanish officials in the fascist government hoped that the objects found near Segovia, along with hundreds of bones from a Visigoth cemetery uncovered during the 1930s on the Castilla y Leon plains, would help cement relations between the two countries by illustrating shared racial links.
The Visigoths, part of the nomadic tribes of Germanic peoples, became the dominant power over swathes of Spain and Portugal by 500AD. They occupied the Iberian peninsula until they in turn were overtaken by the Moorish Umayyad Caliphate in 711AD.
The artefacts were presented to Himmler’s staff by Julio Martínez Santa-Olalla, an archaeologist and Falange member, who was keen to demonstrate that the migration of the Visigoths to Iberia resulted in some shared racial heritage.
It was reported that the objects were transported by diplomatic bag to Berlin where they were believed to have been shared by museum collections in Nuremberg, Cologne and Vienna.
But now, with the passage of 76 years, Spanish officials wish to display the artefacts in the National Archaeological Museum in Madrid and have decided to ask Germany for their return.
The museum’s head of medieval antiquities, Sergio Vidal, says that the Visigoth graves are one of the most important Visigoth sites in Spain. They are trying, he said, “to find evidence to show that the material was sent to Germany on a temporary basis”.
No factual records still exist, however, in either country, making the undertaking more challenging.
