“HE Is Looking Out the Window: Death”
The Hermitage during the Blockade
Deutsche Fassung
Abstract
In its almost 250 years of existence, the Hermitage, Russia’s largest museum, has been evacuated three times: in September 1812, when Napoleon threatened to march from Moscow to St. Petersburg; in September 1917, when the road to Petrograd was left open to the Germans, and in July 1941, when the Wehrmacht was approaching Leningrad. Before the ring closed, two trains were able to leave the city; over 1.1 million artefacts were taken to safety. The museum’s employees suffered the horror of the blockade like all other Leningraders.
(Osteuropa 8-9/2011, pp. 231–248)