Ismet Zaatov, Crimean Autonomous Republic’s Deputy Minister of Culture, took a month-long course of on-the-job training in Germany, invited by Prof. Barbara Kelner-Heinkele, Director of the Institute for Turkic Studies at the Free University of Berlin, and Dr. Konrad Wolier, Director of the Museum of European Cultures. The museum is known to have in storage some 3,000 objets d’art reflecting Crimean Tatar culture and daily life, contributed to the museum by German ethnographers in 1842-1994. The Day attempted to have a closer look at their background and the Crimean deputy minister kindly agreed to an interview.
Zaatov: I would list Nata and Hans Viendeisen’s collection among the interesting discoveries in the Museum of European Cultures. Both visited the Crimea in 1929 and spent more than half a year on the peninsula. Their expedition was aimed at collecting and studying artifacts originating from various Crimean regions and reflecting Crimean Tatar everyday life, traditions, and crafts. This collection includes children’s footwear, garments, headgear. Their condition and the manner in which they were made dates most of them from the mid-nineteenth century. There are practically no such items in the Crimean museum stock. Also, there is a very interesting collection of tools used by Crimean Tatar tanners, jewelers, and embroideresses. Relying on this data, it is possible to establish exactly what kind of tools the craftsmen used two centuries ago, the tools’ names, and so on.
I met with people at the head of Turkic foundations in Germany. I read lectures at eight such foundations, on the socioeconomic and cultural status of the Tatars in the Crimea. I also met with Akhmet Ozai, representative of the Crimean Tatar Majlis in Germany; with Rakhet Karanlyk, head of the Society for Culture and Mutual Assistance of Crimean Tatars in Western Europe; with people in charge of the offices of the Turkish newspapers Zaman and Milliyet in Germany; with Abdurahman Gjunesch, a Crimean Tatar leader in Berlin. I also had an interesting meeting with the sculptor Eskender Ediler. His father had had to emigrate from the Crimea in 1937 to avoid Stalin purges, settling in Esk i ю sehir [city in western Turkey, capital of Esk i ю sehir Province]. Eskender had received an excellent education in Germany and his parents subsequently joined him there. He graduated from three art academies in Germany, Switzerland, and Great Britain. He has an excellent command of the Crimean Tatar language and is the author of interesting works using various materials, including rock, metal, and plastics. We arranged with the Goethe Institute for his on-the-job training at the Decorative and Applied Art Chair of the Crimean State Engineering Pedagogical University, and for an exposition of his works in the Crimea.
How did all those items reflecting Crimean Tatar crafts and everyday life find their way to Germany?
Zaatov: In a variety of ways. Some were collected by German researchers, others were brought by Tatars who immigrated to Turkey and eventually finding themselves in Germany. I believe that the collection of works by the ethnographer and artist Wilhelm Kieseweter is the greatest contribution to the Berlin museum stock. He was the first ethnographer to visit the Crimea in the late nineteenth century. He painted over sixty pictures, portraying the Derviza (a.k.a. Panayir) festivities in the Baidarska Valley, a Crimean Tatar wedding party in 1842, a Crimean Tatar school in Hurzuf, then a village, showing how girls and boys were taught, also large folk instrumental orchestras, musicians playing at coffee houses, full-scale layouts of the village of Hurzuf and the Khan’s Palace. Wilhelm Kieseweter tried to convey the minutest details in his paintings.
German scholar Albert Wache visited the Crimea in 1903. After returning to Germany, he donated a collection of Crimean Tatar maram shawls to the Berlin museum. Some of the shawls had been made by embroideresses from the Baidarska Valley, Akmechet, and Bakhchisarai. All of these shawls have stylistic distinctions. Incidentally, I couldn’t spot Baidarska needlework technique at any other museums, nor even in private collections or in any modern Crimean Tatar embroideries.
Paintings must be most interesting in studying Crimean Tatar folkways, homes, and culture.
Zaatov: Yes, such paintings are of utmost importance, considering that all traces of the Crimean Tatar culture were deliberately erased by the Soviets after World War II. Wilhelm Kieseweter’s canvases are almost photographic images of our ancestors living in Hurzuf, Baidarska Valley, and Bakhchysarai, by whom I mean Crimean Tatar craftsmen known as esnaf: jewelers, bakers, merchants, and shoemakers.
Or consider the pictures created by artists in the first half of the nineteenth century, like the Italian Bossoli and the French Rafe. They portray Crimean Tatars in a somewhat stylized manner, a little embellished, producing a somewhat oblique physical type. As an art critic, I believe that Kieseweter’s works are far above them, were done professionally, and appear more accurate in terms of detail and inherent ethnic features. Their ethnographic accuracy is of tremendous scientific value. His works can be used to build a true picture of the Crimean Tatars in the first half of the nineteenth century; we can see how they dressed and what their homes looked like. Some canvases show the interior of coffee houses and other public places in Akmechet and Karasubazar. Kieseweter succeeded in accurately portraying that stratum of the traditional Crimean Tatar culture, no traces of which are left on the peninsula after the deportation [ordered by Stalin in 1944 —Ed.].
While in Germany, did you raise the matter of returning Crimean Tatar cultural and other treasures to the peninsula, considering their having been unlawfully extracted?
Zaatov: The items I saw on display at German museums had been contributed to the stock in a perfectly legitimate manner; these items had been legally purchased from Crimean Tatar owner in the mid-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by German ethnographers and private collectors visiting the Crimea. However, the leadership of those Berlin museums assured me that that they were willing to help us locate and return such Crimean Tatar cultural valuables as had been unlawfully exported during World War II.
Could an exposition of such Berlin museum displays be arranged in the Crimea?
Zaatov: We arranged with the museum management to photograph such exhibits, so we could put at an art album featuring Kieseweter’s works as part of a project or with financial aid from philanthropists. We have this kind of experience in the Crimea. One of the Crimean foundations has published an album with Carlo Bossoli’s works.
Do you intend to maintain contact with your German colleagues?
Zaatov: I have a genteleman’s agreement with Prof. Barbara Kelner-Heinkele, Director of the Free University’s Institute for Turkic Studies, that we will join efforts preparing for publication an anthology of German studies on Crimean Tatar history, culture, and everyday life. A number of German travelers, diplomats, and researchers have visited the Crimea beginning in the Middle Ages, collecting vast materials relating to the Crimean Tatars and their political system. Such studies ranged between military, economic, and cultural essays. We will try to sum up and categorize this data and I believe that the results will be of interest not only for Germany and the Crimea, but also for the rest of the international scholarly community.
