Uruguay to melt down bronze Nazi eagle and recast it as dove
June 17, 2023
Uruguay will melt down a bronze Nazi eagle recovered from a sunken German warship and recast it into a dove of peace, President Luis Lacalle Pou announced on Friday.
The 350-kilogram (770-pound), two-meter (6.5-foot)-tall is emblazoned with a Nazi swastika.
The statue adorned Nazi Germany's Admiral Graf Spee battleship that was scuttled during World War II. It was uncovered at the bottom of the Rio de la Plata almost two decades ago.
"In times of division, violence, war in the world, we want to set a sign of peace," Lacalle Pou told reporters in Montevideo.
Famed sculptor tapped for project
The new dove sculpture will be made by famed Uruguayan artist Pablo Atchugarry.
He said it would be a "long and hard" process to recast the statue, which is expected to be completed around November.
The president of Uruguay meanwhile said that an exact location for the sculpture had not been determined.
But he added that it could be placed in the coastal city of Punta del Este, where the Rio de la Plata meets the Atlantic Ocean.
A long legal battle
The bronze Nazi eagle was uncovered by a team of marine salvagers in 2006 after a 10-year-long search.
The treasure hunters had signed an agreement with the Uruguayan navy two years earlier to share the proceeds of the find 50-50.
In 2019, a court ruled that the sculpture must be sold, reiterating that half the proceeds going to the government and half to the salvage team
But the salvagers later filed a lawsuit claiming the government reneged on that deal.
In 2021, Uruguay's Supreme Court ruled that the eagle was the property of the state.
zc/wd (AFP, dpa, EFE)