Trinkets for Treasures

For six years, Dr. Johannes Itten, director of Zurich's Kunstgewerbemuseum had glumly watched while the Swiss government dickered futilely with Russian-controlled East Germany for the return of 23 valuable oriental sculptures belonging to his museum. The Russians had picked them up at war's end and presented them as spoils of war to their German satellite.

Then one morning, Dr. Itten spotted a newspaper notice of the death of Titus Kammerer, host to Nikolai Lenin during his exile in Switzerland. Hastening to the bereaved home, Itten struck a bargain with Kammerer's son for a tea glass, a strainer and two butter knives, the only mementos left behind by Russia's revolutionary deity. Itten completed the deal just as a Soviet delegation drove up.

Last week, after a brief, pointed correspondence with East Germany's President Wilhelm Pieck, Dr. Itten went to Berlin's Soviet sector. There he solemnly handed his box of trinkets (i.e., priceless Communist relics) over to East Germany's State Art Commission, watched grunting Germans load his precious statues on to a Swiss truck. An "exemplary cultural exchange," announced the art commissar grandly. Dr. Itten did not crack a smile.

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