Pergamon Altar - Reception

Reception

The German Empire, which subsidized the excavation not least for reasons of prestige, quickly began to monopolize the altar and other archaeological relics. The "Jubilee Exhibition of the Berlin Academy of Arts" in May and June 1886 devoted a 13,000 square meter site to archaeological acquisitions from recent excavations in Olympia and Pergamon. But since the Greek government had not given permission to export art treasures, no finds from Greece could be shown there. Instead, a "Temple of Pergamon" was constructed. With a true-to-scale model of the western side of the altar base containing selected copies of the frieze — including the Zeus and Athena group from the eastern frieze — an entrance area for a building was erected which resembled the Zeus temple in Olympia. Part of the exhibit was a model of the city of Pergamon in the 2nd century AD reflecting the state of knowledge at that time.

Possibly the most striking example of the reception of this work of art is the Berlin museum which has on view a reconstruction of the altar. The design of the Pergamon Museum was inspired by the gigantic form of the altar. For viewing the altar, indeed for studying this work of art in itself, the reconstruction in the Pergamon Museum came to be important. The partial reconstruction of the edifice does not however reflect what was the main side in antiquity, the eastern wall, but rather the opposite, western side with the stairway. Opinions about this reconstruction, including the installation of the rest of the frieze on the walls surrounding the central exhibition room, were not entirely favorable. Critics spoke of a frieze "turned inside out like a sleeve" and of "theatrics".

In Nazi Germany this type of architecture later served as a model worthy of emulation. Wilhelm Kreis chose for his Soldiers’ Hall at the Army High Command headquarters in Berlin (1937/38) and for a never realized warriors’ monument at the foot of Mount Olympus in Greece a building shape which was very similar to the Pergamon Altar. But for the Soldiers’ Hall the frieze was limited to the front face of the risalit. The friezes by the sculptor Arno Breker were, however, never executed. Referencing this architectural form was not least in tune with the ideological concepts of the Nazis; an altar prompted ideas of being ready to sacrifice and heroic death. For the Nazis, the Pergamon Altar and Kreis' two testimonies of Nazi architecture were all "cultic buildings". The Nazis also attempted to appropriate the message behind the altar frieze, namely the victory of good over evil.

Peter Weiss begins his novel, The Aesthetics of Resistance, with a description of the Gigantomachy frieze. By way of retrospection Weiss’ contemplation is also extended to include the altar's origin, history, discovery, and reconstruction in the museum.

Some of the media and population criticized the use of the Pergamon Altar as a backdrop for the application submitted by the city of Berlin to host the Olympic summer games in 2000. The Senate of Berlin had invited the members of the IOC executive committee to a banquet taking place in front of the altar. That called to mind Berlin's application to host the games in 1936. Also at that time the Nazi Minister of the Interior Wilhelm Frick had invited the members of the IOC to a banquet laid out in front of the altar.