Rescued pre-WWII 'degenerate art' on display in the
Neues Museum in Berlin

Ten sculptures that were thought to have been destroyed or lost in Germany after World War II have been found in Berlin and will soon be displayed in a museum there.

The sculptures were discovered by workers constructing a new subway line on the site of an office building that burned down in 1944, Neues Museum director Matthias Wemhoff told the Associated Press.

The Neues Museum will display the long-lost art works, which were part of a collection of some 15,000 works of art that Hitler's regime had condemned. The works were criticized by the Nazis for their "deviant" sexual elements as well as their anti- nationalistic themes.

Berlin mayor Klaus Wowereit called the discovery of the statues a "small miracle," and said it "shows a lot about the dark times of the city."

"Each floor fell onto the next and everything that couldn't be burnt collected at the bottom of the basement," Wemhoff said of the collapsed building. It appeared the art works had been in storage there before the fire.

The first work of art to be unearthed, a statue of the actress Anni Mewes, by Edwin Scharff, was found in January. In August and October, the rest of the pieces turned up.

Among the artists who made the pieces of art now on display only two were Jews. Naum Slutzky created a bronze statue, Female Bust, that was only partially restored for the exhibit so that it would still show some of the damage incurred by time and by the fire.

Reporters got the chance to see the terracotta and bronze sculptures Monday in Berlin. It was not clear if the collection might also have featured wooden or canvas works.

On Monday in Berlin, reporters got the chance to see the sculptures. One portrayed a woman holding grapes. Another a mother and her child. Just three of the sculptures depict men. One piece, a male head made of terracotta, was deemed too delicate to be in the show.

The sculptures were discovered while workers were constructing a new subway line on the site of an office building that had burned down in 1944, according to Matthias Wemhoff, director of the Neues Museum.

Klaus Wowereit, mayor of Berlin, called the discovery of the statues a "small miracle," and told the AP that it "shows a lot about the dark times of the city."

The fire had caused the office building to burn from the top floor down, said Wemhoff.

"Each floor fell onto the next and everything that couldn't be burnt collected at the bottom of the basement," he told reporters.

Considering how the sculptures were placed in the building, it appeared that they had been in storage before the fire. It's not clear if the collection might also have featured wooden or canvas works.

Naum Slutzky created a bronze statue, Female Bust, that was only partially restored for the exhibit so that it would still show some of the damage incurred by time and by the fire. Slutzkyt fled to England in 1933, where he lived until his death in 1965. The sculptor who did the large 1925 terracotta statue of a man's head, Otto Freundlich, was killed in 1943 in a concentration camp.