BERLIN, May 15 – Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer on Wednesday thanked Ukraine for returning one of German music’s most valuable treasures – an archive of music by Johann Sebastian Bach and his children that was lost in the chaos of World War II. Last November Kyiv returned the collection of about 5,000 documents, including signatures and score by Bach and his children, to Berlin, where it was originally housed as part of the Berlin Sing Academy.
Fischer praised the Ukrainian government for taking a leading role in the “sensitive and difficult process of restoring misplaced cultural artifacts” and expressed confidence that other German treasures still in Ukraine would also be returned soon. He emphasized that the gesture in no way lessened Germany’s responsibility for the suffering of the Ukrainian people during World War II, but served as a symbol for the peace that now stretches across Europe. The music collection was found in 1999 in Kyiv after a 20-year search by a Harvard music professor. Bach scholars are keen to study the documents, which were moved from Berlin in 1943 to shield them from Allied bombing raids and later fell into Soviet hands.
Ukraine’s decision to return the documents to Germany is part of an agreement between the two countries to give back any materials found in the others’ country. The Berlin Sing Academy was established in 1791 and still performs today.
