Anniston, Ala. Visiting the Berman Museum of World History is like watching two old movies at the same time: one a romantic epic, the other a tale of war and espionage.
The museum has thousands of artistic and cultural objects collected by Farley and Germaine Berman as they traveled the globe for decades: A Tibetan religious icon dating to the 15th century, a royal Persian scimitar, a jeweled dagger that belonged to an Egyptian king and 21 sculptures by Fredrick Remington.
Amid the beauty are the beasts of war: A Greek battle helmet from 1200 B.C., an early grenade launcher, hundreds of World War II armaments and, most unusual of all, a killer flute designed for a spy.
The eclectic mix of art, cultural artifacts and weaponry is a living legacy of the Bermans, who lived in Anniston and bequeathed their collection to a foundation set up for the museum.
"It's the physical remnants of a real love story. They traveled together and did this," said Alan Atkinson, an art historian at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
Mrs. Berman died in 1993; Berman died in 1999.
The couple met in the 1940s in North Africa, where he was serving with Army Intelligence and she was working in French intelligence.
"I was spying on her and she was spying on me," says Berman, an attorney who spent more than 30 years in the military and retired as a colonel.
After the war, the two crisscrossed the world sightseeing, collecting objects and showing off their treasures at home in Anniston, located an hour east of Birmingham.
Berman loved to tell stories about the collection. He spun yarns about taking items off dead soldiers and receiving gifts from heads of state. His talks were believable enough that they still present occasional trouble for the museum.
"We have a problem with people coming in and saying, 'He stole this,"' said collections manager Robert Lindley.
In fact, the Bermans bought nearly all the artifacts while traveling or at auction. They used index cards to keep detailed records of each purchase.
"They were very astute collectors," said Lindley. "He didn't steal anything."
Well, Berman might have stolen a few things.
One of Berman's favorite stories was about how he a Jew came to own a metal tea set emblazoned with the swastika of Nazi Germany. Berman claimed he took the pieces from Hitler's Berlin bunker after his suicide.
Museum officials believe at least part of the story was true.
In his position with Army Intelligence, Berman apparently was in the first group of Americans to enter Hitler's bunker, and he did take one or two pieces of the set, Lindley said.
But the rest of the service was likely purchased after the war, like most of the 6,000 pieces in Berman's collection.
"These things were more common than people realize," Lindley said.
As testimony to his love of cloak-and-dagger stuff, Berman collected dozens of spy weapons. The pieces include guns made from belt buckles, walking canes, pens, lighters, a throat lozenge box and a concert flute. Depressing the right key on the instrument sent a bullet whizzing out the end.
In the basement of the museum is a pre-Civil War cannon that Berman kept at his home, which held the entire collection before the city opened the museum in 1996.
"He would horrify the neighbors by shooting it off on the Fourth of July," Lindley said.
Atkinson said such "vanity museums" are often looked down upon by historians who view the collections as the toys of the rich. The Berman Museum is much more than that, he said.
"There's certainly nothing else like it in the state or the Southeast that I'm aware of," said Atkinson. "Who's to say in 100 years what the name Berman will mean in the world of decorative arts and weaponry."
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