Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin

Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin and 11th Earl of Kincardine (* July 20, 1766, † November 14, 1841 in Paris) was a British peer, diplomat and skilful art thieves.

Life

He began his career at the court in Brussels ( 1792 ) and Berlin ( 1795 ). In 1799 he was offered a post as ambassador to the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire under the condition that he marry before. For this purpose he married in the same year rushed the 14 years younger Scottish aristocrat Mary Nisbet. Soon after his arrival in Constantinople Opel he lost as a result of an unknown plague much of his nose. During his term of office lasting until 1803 in Turkey, he was with the consent of the Sultan among others also extensive archaeological excavations perform.

Contrary to the agreements, however, he was not limited to the scientific study of the finds and the production of castings. Rather, he brought the art treasures in large part out of the country. If they are not lost as a result of shipwreck, Elgin enriched so that, inter alia, his private art collections in his Scottish country house. But the showpiece, which recovered on the Acropolis of the then Turkish occupied city of Athens marble sculptures of the Parthenon, the so-called " Elgin Marbles ," he offered to the British Museum in London, which she after some hesitation, in 1814 for £ 35,500 should buy.

His approach was Lord Elgin during his lifetime fierce criticism of his contemporaries. Lord Byron scolded him in " Childe Harold's Pilgrimage " even as "cultural barbarians." Elgin justified himself with it, he had merely sought to save the endangered by the Greek-Turkish war art treasures. The Greeks had not been to their reliable protection in a position so that its intervention was necessary to save the Exkavate for eternity. Since then, the looting of cultural goods is widely referred to as " Elginismus ".

During his return to England in January 1803, he got into France as a British citizen in 1806 to permanent captivity. Meanwhile, his young wife Mary Nisbet be made ​​off with her lover. In his second marriage he became the father of James Bruce Earl of Elgin, the destroyer of the Old Summer Palace in Beijing. On the run from creditors Elgin came impoverished, depressed and live long in the face disfigured to Paris, where he died in 1841.