MOSCOW.- The Pushkin Museum presents "Era of the Merovingians: Europe without borders" with works from a medieval dynasty that controlled parts of modern-day France, Belgium and Germany from the fifth to the eighth centuries. The exhibition will be on view through May 13. It includes around 1,300 items such as collars, broaches and statuettes that ancient tribes fashioned from precious metals and deep red Indian almandine.

Soviet soldiers seized about 700 of them from a Berlin museum as compensation for damage inflicted by Germans on Soviet cultural treasures in May 1945.

German Culture Minister Bernd Neumann stated that the exhibits "were regarded as missing for more than 60 years." "These objects are part of the world's inheritance…andmust be returned in accordance with international law, " Neumann said.

The head of Russia's Federal Agency for Culture, Mikhail Shvydkoi, stated that it was more important to display the exhibits than to know to whom they belonged. He further said, "without them we cannot understand the history of Europe."