Master’s Thesis for the Attainment of the Degree
Master of Art at the Department of Architecture Technical University Munich Winterterm 2020/2021
Title:
The Virtuous Alliance of Private Art Collections in Public Museums, the Controversial Case of the Flick Collection in the Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin
Reviewer:
Prof. Dr. Dietrich Erben Chair of Theory and History of Architecture, Art and Design
Prof. Dr. Andres Lepik Chair of History of Architecture and Curatorical Practice
Submitted by:
Pia Nürnberger Oskar von Miller Ring 25 80333 München
Submitted on:
Munich, March 31st, 2021
0 TABLE OF CONTENT
INTRODUCTION 2
1.1 PUBLIC MUSEUMS AS OBSERVERS 2 1.1.1 PRESENTATION OF THE EXAMINATION AREA 4 1.1.2 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 6
2. PART I: THEORETICAL AND PRACTICAL RELEVANCE OF THE RESEARCH TOPIC 11
2.1 DISAMBIGUATION 11 2.1.1 MUSEUM 11 2.1.2 COLLECTION 12 2.1.3 PUBLIC SPHERE 13 2.1.4 PRIVATE 14 2.1.5 PRIVATIZATION 14 2.1.6 PUBLIC PRIVATE COLLECTION 14 2.1.7 PRIVATE COLLECTION IN PUBLIC INSTITUTION 15 2.2 THE BOOM OF PRIVATE MUSEUMS SINCE THE 1990S 16 2.2.1 GERMAN PRIVATE COLLECTIONS OF ART IN THE 20TH CENTURY 16 2.2.2 EVENT MACHINE MUSEUM 23
3. PART II: CASE STUDY FLICK COLLECTION AT HAMBURGER BAHNHOF 30
3.1.1 STIFTUNG PREUßISCHER KULTURBESITZ 30 3.1.2 HAMBURGER BAHNHOF 33 3.1.3 COLLECTION 42 3.1.4 ARRIVAL 59 3.1.5 FIRST EXHIBITION 73 3.1.6 DEPARTURE 77
4. RESULTS OF THE INVESTIGATION 83
5. LIST OF REFERENCES 92
1 Introduction 1.1 Public Museums as Observers
Both private and public musuems own to the public their commitmend to the communication of knowledge, their task is to present an obejctive past and present and to establish connections between them that are relevant for a broad public. It is thereby curious to get to the bottom of the question whether exhibiting private collections, in both private and public museums, change the traditional purpose and ethics of a museum today?
When observing the numerous new museums founded between the 1990s until today, one might think that museums are in a continuous boom. In 2018, 8800 exhibitions opened in Germany alone and the trend seems to be rising.1 However, many public museums are struggling for survival, as operation costs as well as the acquisition of contemporary artworks is hardly possible for public institutions anymore. This paper will explain why public museums a suitable place for private collections and why more and more public museums are creating exhibitions from private collections.2
This thesis argues for the importance of public museums as exhibition venues for private collections. The research is conducted through a case study of the Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin, the thesis evaluates the benefitis and disadvantages of private collections in public musuems and to understand the context and particularities of why several private collectors prefer to open their own museum instead of presenting their collection in public ones. The following questions constitute the core of this master’s thesis: What are the reasons for this phenomenon that began in the 1990s and led to more and more collectors establishing private museums for their art collections instead of exhibiting them in public museums? What are the advantages and disadvantages of these respective exhibition models, both for the public museum and the private collector? What problems, but also potentials, do both variants have? What are the conditions under which private collections can be successfully displayed in public musuems and when can those relationships break down? What are the terms that public museums can accept for the display of privately-owned artworks? How does the public museum favour the experience of art for the viewer? Is the exhibition process of public museums more democratic than of private museums?
1 See: Statista, “Entwicklung der Anzahl von Ausstellungen in Deutschland.“ 2 The definition for a private collection describes very briefly the collecting of objects by private individuals. See: Chapter 2.1 Disambigurations – Collection.
2 Since 2003, the Hamburger Bahnhof has entered into an agreement with the private collector Friedrich Christian Flick to display his collection at Rieckhallen, located near the Hamburger Bahnhof facilities. The agreement was productive for both collector and musuem, but unfortunately broke down for the following reasons: The Senate's sale of the Rieckhallen, the city's lack of interest in the Friedrich Christian Flick Collection and the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz (Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation) lack of diplomatic handling of the situation. The collection now will be relocated back to the depots in Switzerland in September 2021. A study of this case can thus reveal meanings, problems and potentials about the difficulties and the benefits of the display of private art in public museums.
Since the 1990s, more and more private collections with their privately purchased works have been appearing in public; on the other hand, public museums have only limited possibilities to acquire works, since the state is increasingly cutting funding and the costs of artworks is rising more and more. Two phenomena are therefore happening in parallel, neither of which improving the situation of public museums.
It seems like the audience today is no longer looking for a public art space to appreciate art and learn about contemporary artists. Instead, art enthusiasts and the art community are gradually concentrating their attention on private collectors who have preferred to create their own private space in order to share with the world what has encouraged them in their own encounters with contemporary art and collecting.3
In many cases, public museums have to make themselves dependent on the loans and support of a growing number of private patrons with privat collections and donors who support state institutions through loans and thus keep the museum running. For the private collectors, this kind of cooperation means an enormous increase in the value of their collection. On the one hand, for the public museum it is an enrichment of their exhibitions, but also a restriction of freedom regarding the conception of the exhibitions and a certainly an economic dependence, because the collector wants to be entertained. There are collectors who claim that their collection should only be presented in its entirety.4 In the most problematic cases, this results in a few wealthy privileged individuals who determine which contemporary works of art are exhibited in the major public museums and are ultimately received within the public interested in art and which are not.
3 See: Doroshenko, Private Space for Contemporary Art, 4. 4 Like the Brandhorst Collection in Munich.
3 Evidently, it is of great importance for the general public that these private collections are made publicly accessible. There are two forms of accessibility by which a private collection can be made public: presenting the private collection publicly in its own museum or making the private collection available via exhibition in a public museum. The founding of privately-run museums has aroused great enthusiasm among private collectors and can be seen to be a new phenomenon in the museum landscape. These private museums are primarily dedicated to current and contemporary art and, with their remarkable exhibition and programme offerings, contribute to the revitalisation and profiling of the cultural landscape of their cities, while at the same time creating diversity and new qualities in the museum landscape. The second variant, exhibition of private collections in public museums, was common in the late 19th century but is now increasingly rare.
Scholarly engagement with the subject has increased in recent years, and there is an overall increase in interest in museums, which is evident based on the growing number of visitors each year.5 The museum cannot be clearly assigned to one discipline, it is a phenomenon with interest from various academic disciplines, such as the social sciences, cultural studies, cultural management and art studies.
The public museum, Hamburger Bahnhof, has been a topic of polemic in newspaper and media articles for a while now, since it is one of the largest contemporary private collections in Europe and it is leaving Berlin due to a foreign investor demolishing the so-called Rieckhallen, a side building of Hamburger Bahnhof, in order to develop office and residential space. This case presented a unique situation for examining the issue of whether private collections should be increasingly returned to public institutions instead of being presented in self-funded private museums. Therefore, this master's thesis examines the situation of the Hamburger Bahnhof (Nationalgalerie), a state-owned public museum that houses private collections by way of permanent loans in a former railway station that provides an ideal architectural setting for exhibiting contemporary art.
1.1.1 Presentation of the Examination Area
In order to conduct an empirical and qualitative study, a representative selection is made from the public musuems of the research field, a so-called sample is selected. In this master’s thesis the Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin has been selected. The interest of the current press reports in the Hamburger Bahnhof demonstrates how important it is to deal with the presentation of private collections in public museums. This thesis will firstly point out to some relevant theoretical literature
5 111 million visits in 2019 in German museums. See: https://www.tagesspiegel.de/kultur/besucherzahlen-in- museen-111-millionen-besuche-im-jahr-2019/26827984.html (15 March 2021)
4 and then, in a second step, examine its implementation using the example of the Friedrich Christian Flick Collection and the Hamburger Bahnhof.
The Friedrich Christian Flick collection of contemporary art is named after collector himself Friedrich Christian Flick. It consists of approximately 2,500 works by 150 artists, and it has been on display in Berlin at the Hamburger Bahnhof since 2004. The Austrian investor CA-Immo purchased the Hamburger Bahnhof property in 2007 and plans to expand their Europa City development and make way for mixed-use high-rise commercial towers and residential spaces as a result, the Friedrich Christian Flick Collection will be relocated to Switzerland.
The subject of the departure of the Friedrich Christian Flick Collection from Berlin has received a lot of attention especially in speculative and unsubstantiated statements by the press. There are various newspaper articles from different daily newspapers, journals and magazines on this subject of the departure of the collection from Berlin, especially many in the period from the beginning of 2020 until now.
The departure of the collection of Friedrich Christian Flick seems to be not only interesting for the press, since also in the conversations with the experts from the Nationalgalerie, the research topic of presenting private collections in public museums affimed and it was emphasized that it is good to approach this topic from a scientific side. There is no substantial research from an urban studies and architectural standpoint of the private collections which are presented in Hamburger Bahnhof.6
The Hamburger Bahnhof is a building privately owned by CA- Immo that houses the private Collection Friedrich Christian Flick. The operation of the museum is governmental founded and managed by Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz. It becomes clear here that various actors are involved in this complex process, and the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbeistz and also the Berlin Senate for Culture are trying to retain the private collection in Berlin.
In preparation for this work, information on the Austrian investor CA-immo and the political situation at the time of the Friedrich Christian Flick Collection's arrival in Berlin in 2004 was considered. However, for the purposes of this master’s thesis, this information serves to provide evidence for an
6 In an interview conducted for this thesis, Klaus-Dieter Lehmann emphasized the importance of this research subject several times, and Gabriele Knapstein also reported in an email that, after consultation with colleagues in her institution, she had no knowledge of a master's or doctoral thesis that dealt with the topic. See: Lehmann, Interview. 14 January 2021. And Email conversation between author and Knapstein on 8 of February 2021.
5 argumentative understanding of the overall picture of the relationship between private collections and public museums. In other words, this thesis focuses on an analysis of the Hamburger Bahnhof in order to evaluate the presentation of private collections in public museums more generally.
1.1.2 Research Methodology
The thesis is divided into two parts. In the first part, the thesis deals with the theoretical and practical relevance of the conditions under which museums and private collectors can have an ideal relationship and still fulfil their own mission. It begins by offering a definition of the different types of institutions and collections and continues with an overview of the boom of private museums since the 1990s, using primary sources, like newspapers, archivale documents and existing publications in the field of the exhibition of private collections. The second part addresses the private collection of Friedrich Christian Flick, which is currently housed in the public institution of the Hamburger Bahnhof Museum in Berlin. The Hamburger Bahnhof is thus presented as an exemplary example of a private collection housed in a public museum. For this analysis, the author conducted interviews with experts from the field and focused on specialist literature, newspaper articles. Finally, it evaluates the conclusions from part one and part two, and they are worked into a conclusion about the value of exhibiting private collections in public institutions. After explaining the topic of the study, its relevance and its theoretical framework and basis in the first part of the master’s thesis, the second part is dedicated to the presentation and justification of the empirical research project as well as the detailed description of the field of study.
In addition to primary sources and legal documents, this study uses interviews with experts conducted with the help of a guideline that presented the reasons for the importance of public museums as exhibition venues for private collections. A semi-standardised interview was developed on the basis of the theory of König and Volmer.7 The The method used here is standardised by guiding questions, so that the evaluation is easier and makes a comparison of the interviews possible. Interviews require extensive understanding of the subject of the study. Therefore, in preparation for the interviews, all relevant data and information on the private collections of Marx, Marzona, and Flick, as well as the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz, the Nationalgalerie, and the Hamburger Bahnhof were analysed. Research was also conducted into people from German politics in the field of culture and local politics in Berlin as well as the investor CA -Immo. Likewise, previous
7 The authors consider it necessary to start the conversation with the interviewee with a simple question. The first questions should be easy and unproblematic to answer so the interviewee can find a way into the topic. See: König, Volmer. Systematische Organisationsberatung: Grundlagen und Methoden, 106.
6 interviews, newspaper articles, their websites were consulted, and an intensive literature review was conducted.
The interviews started with easy and straightforward questions that were simple for the interviewees to answer. In order to give experts, the opportunity to answer freely and to present their personal point of view, the main questions were formulated openly. The key questions were individualised for the survey so that the experts have the feeling of a trusted and personal conversation. Key questions served mainly as context and orientation for the duration of the interview to ensure that the interview did not neglect any important aspects of the research. The interview questions were flexible so that it was possible to include new topics that arose during the interviews. For the interviews, seven main questions were set up: What reasons can be given for the fact that since the 1990s more and more collectors have founded private museums for their art collections instead of exhibiting them in public museums? What are the advantages and disadvantages of the respective exhibition models, both for the public museum and the private collector: presenting a private collection in a public museum and presenting a private collection in a private museum? What problems, but also potentials, do both variants have? What kind of competition is there between private collections and public museums? What are the conditions under which private collections can be successfully displayed in public musuems and when can those relationships break down? What are the terms that public museums can accept for the display of privately-owned artworks? How does the public museum favour the experience of art for the viewer? Why is the exhibition process of public museums more democratic than of private museums? The Interviews were all conducted within a time span of 40 to 60 minutes.
Before the interview, all private collectors, directors and presidents of public institutions were contacted to arrange an interview by telephone and in writing. Written correspondence was made via an email in which an exposé was addressed on the subject of the investigation. The content of the interview was clarified in this email, and the interview questions were emphasized. For the beginning of the assignment, the importance of the discussion was emphasized. An appointment, either with the people themselves or their secretaries, was made. Both interlocutors were made aware that the conversation needed to be recorded. For one individual only, prior to publication, it was necessary to approve the transcription of the recorded interview.
Of eleven inquiries about the collections’ situation of the private holdings that are presented to the public at Hamburger Bahnhof, six of the people refused to be interviewed. The Senator for Construction in Berlin, Hans Stimmann, who was active in this role from 1991 to 2006, pointed out
7 that the process was more than 25 years ago and that it would therefore be difficult for him to make precise statements. In addition, the main responsibility at that time did not lie with him but with the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz and the Senate. He suggested a discussion this with Klaus-Peter Schuster. Monika Grütters, the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media, estimated that her opinion is relevant, but due to the large number of similar inquiries and for reasons of equal treatment, she could not be available. Similar case was it with Klaus Lederer. He felt unable to take part in a conversation, on the one hand due to time constraints and on the other hand because he felt he could not contribute much to the topic. The collector Christian Friedrich Flick does not hold any more public discussions, his collection manager Patrick Peternader explained, though he was willing to answer some questions in an informal setting and provided the opportunity to view some of the folders of the Flick collection. Michael Eissenhauer, the current general director of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, referred through his secretary that the director of the Hamburger Bahnhof, Gabriele Knapstein, would take over his questions. There was communication with Heiner Bastian, over the phone with his secretary and with him personally also by email, but there was never a planned conversation, and he did not come back again after a majority of inquiries. Five people were thus consulted on the subject: Gabriele Knapstein, Hermann Parzinger current president of the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Joachim Jäger director of the Nationalgalerie, Klaus-Dieter Lehmann, president of the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz between 1998 and 2008 and Markus Diekow, Head of Corporate Communications Germany of the Austrian investor CA-immo.
These qualitative expert interviews were conducted with two Berlin museum directors, an Austrian investor and two presidents of Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz between 27 November 2020 and 19 January 2021. An expert is someone who, according to Mayer, has specific and definable knowledge in a restricted field and has unique access to processes of information and decision-making.8 All five calls were made via Zoom, a videotelephony software programme.9 An attempt was made throughout to recruit people for the interviews who are involved in the processes of Hamburger Bahnhof and the Friedrich Christian Flick Collections since 2003, so that they would serve as a primary source in that they have exclusive experience of the institutions.
All five interviews can be described as pleasant, and the collaboration of the interviewees was altogether generous. The interest and specialisation of the interviewer and the professional knowledge and personal experience of the directors of the museums, the presidents of the foundation and the investor favoured a tone of expertise and exchange of knowledge. After a short
8 See: Mayer, Interview und schriftliche Befragung: Entwicklung, Durchführung und Auswertung, 41. 9 Due to the conditional situation of the COVID-19, this option was the safest for all participants and also the only one possible.
8 phase of getting to know each other, in which both sides briefly introduced themselves and the interviewer briefly explained her research goal for the master’s thesis, the interview went straight into specifics. This transition was always smooth and there was already a connection to the research topic on the interviewees part. All interlocutors are in leading positions, as well as public figures, so their time is very precious. Therefore, the pre-arranged time should not be wasted. However, it turned out that all interviewees took enough time for the interview and conversations lasted up to one and a half hours.
Both parties, interviewer and interviewee, seek their own goals in an interview. The interviewer is interested in receiving comprehensive answers to his questions and hopes to obtain in the personal interview new and not yet known information. The interviewee will weigh up what information from the public will produce positive or negative reactions and will thus not always be completely forthcoming. There should be a balance if the interviewer is more interested in getting answers than the interviewee is in giving them, this creates asymmetric motivation. The aim of the survey should therefore be to achieve as much commonality in communication as possible.10
The discussions showed that in conversation, a high degree of consensus could be reached. In the interview, both parties participated, because there was a common motive and a shared interest in a good and successful interview. All interviews were based on shared confidence and at eye level there was still a very good atmosphere of conversation. All interviews were recorded with the interviewees' permission. This method of documentation is a fast and, above all, precise way of collecting data. Afterwards, the interviews were put into a written transcript.
According to Mayring the evaluation of the interviews, qualitative data, is done through an interpretative procedure. The basis of this procedure is the transcription of the interviews. Through a verbatim transcription, a comprehensive text version of the verbal data is created, which then provides the basis for the interpretative evaluation.11 All five interviews were conducted in German and recorded with the Zoom recording device and put into written form immediately after the interviews. The work was accurate and there are no transcription errors. According to Mayring, the transcription of verbal language into written form is the most commonly used method of transcription. In order to obtain a clearer readability, one must nevertheless move away somewhat from the spoken. For this reason, some spoken words were linguistically adapted, stylistically smoothed or sentence structure errors corrected. However, strict attention was paid not to omit or
10 See: Atteslander, Methoden der empirischen Sozialforschung, 119. 11 See: Mayring, Einführung in die qualitative Sozialforschung, 89.
9 add anything to the content. Mayring describes this protocol method as advantageous when the content and thematic level is in the foreground and the interviewees act as experts, as is the case in this master's thesis.12
The written transcript forms the basis for the study. First, the interviews were examined to see how they answered the research questions. In the second step, text passages were assigned to the individual chapters. The first part aims to form the working basis for the second step, an extraction designed for individual information. In a third step, a logical scheme is developed between the individual pieces of information. Here, consistent statements and contradictory arguments are equally considered. The purpose of the assessment is the previously described method of pragmatic evaluation protocol. The systematic evaluation of these subjective statements and assessments allows the illustration of what is common and the formulation of general statements.13
The second approach, in addition to the qualitative interviews, is document analysis. This is considered a compliment to the interviews. The document analysis reveals information available that was not generated by the researcher, in comparison to the details gathered in the interviews. The document analysis is an empirical collection of data that makes use of existing documents. Content analysis is used to examine communication content such as texts, films and images. The focus here is on texts. The websites of the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz the Hamburger Bahnhof and the Nationalgalerie as well as those of the Austrian investor CA-immo are systematically examined. In addition, documents produced by the Hamburger Bahnhof and the Flick Collection were also examined. These include press articles from the period 2004-2005, exhibition brochures and event programs, as well as foundation documents and the exhibition catalogue of the first exhibition of the Friedrich Christian Flick Collection at Hamburger Bahnhof.
Document analysis must also adopt a set procedure as an analytical data collection procedure. With regard to the research issue, before their informative importance is assessed and interpreted, the collection of documents is first specified precisely.14 The next step is to evaluate and interpret the data obtained from the data analysis, followed by the Interviews and conducted within the same structure of categories. The systematic classification and interpretation of the documentation follows this.
12 Ibid. 91. 13 See: Mühlfeld and et.al. Auswertungsprobleme offener Interviews. 325-252. 14 See: Op. Cit. Mayring, 49.
10 2. Part I: Theoretical and Practical Relevance of the Research Topic 2.1 Disambiguation
Public institutions depend on the support of private collectors in order to fulfill their educational mission. Especially in contemporary art, this educational mission requires the regular and constant acquisition of artworks, which is nowadays difficult for state public museums for the reasons of cost. Even if the origin of the collections is private, some private collections are designed to be presented in public museums. In these public institutions, highly trained staff, as well as a functioning infrastructure, is created so that an objective and democratic ecucation through the works of art can be carried out. This section defines these terms, as they can be applied to assess whether private collections can be of use to public museums.
2.1.1 Museum
The word museum is not a protected term in Germany and can be used by any institution, regardless of whether it functions culturally or commercially. In Germany, there is no legitimate term definition, no clear task description and no precisely formulated standard value. As there is no legally valid definition of a museum in the German museum environment, the International Council of Museums (ICOM) is illuminating.15 They define a museum as follows: “A museum is a non-profit, permanent institution in the service of society and its development, open to the public, which acquires, conserves, researches, communicates and exhibits the tangible and intangible heritage of humanity and its environment for the purposes of education, study and enjoyment.”16 The defining factors that determine a museum are thus, that it has a collection of cultural and natural historic importance, administrated by a non-profit organisation, and the institution has to be permanent and open to the public. The activities that constitute a museum are collecting, maintaining, studying, displaying and communicating the tangible and intangible cultural heritage of mankind and nature for the benefit of society and for the purposes of education, study and entertainment.
Public museums are committed to the definition of the previous paragraph. In contrast to public institutions, private collectors enjoy the advantage of independence and, in the best case, make individual and valuable—yet more subjective—contributions with their private museum. They are subjective both in terms of content and ways of exhibiting. Whereas in public museums a committee decides on the purchase of artworks on the basis of art-historical relevance, the purchase of works by private collectors is much more spontaneous and it is therefore easier for private collectors to
15 See: Riedel, Privat gesammelt – öffentlich präsentiert. 79. 16 ICOM Statutes 2007. See: https://icom.museum/en/faq/what-is-icoms-definition-of-a-museum/ (accessed February 25, 2021)
11 acquire artworks even from young, not yet established artists, which is more in line with the speed of the contemporary art market.17
UNESCO’s Institute of Museum Studies divides museums into nine categories in different collecting areas : list the nine areas here.18 The institutions examined in this thesis fall under category two, that of art museums, which includes art and architecture museums, arts and crafts, ceramics, church treasures and ecclesiastical art, film and photography.19
The distinction between public museums and private museums is significant, as they differ in terms of accessibility, permanence and publicity. A public museum is an institution that is largely maintained by public funds, acts in the public interest and is freely accessible to everyone. Public state institutions strive and are obliged to present a collection for the social benefit. This is guaranteed through a museum board. A private museum is often run by the owner, who is also the collector. This person provides for the financial necessities and these museums are also interested in making their collections accessible to the public. Art acquired by the collector is presented. Whenever this thesis refers to museums, it explicitly refers to art museums with a focus on collections in contemporary art, unless otherwise stated.
2.1.2 Collection
The concept of collecting, or also of arranging, is a phenomenon that accompanies all epochs of art history. Collections create collective memories that link the past, present and future of a society and offer orientation and education. Society obliges its governments to preserve the common cultural heritage and to assume the responsibility of a comprehensive historiography. It is important that there are both public institutions and private individuals who contribute to bringing this cultural heritage together and making it accessible to the public.20
A collection is understood to be an accumulation of similar objects that are connected with a logical and comprehensible concept. Colloquially, a collection that meets these criteria is called a ‘good collection,’ it has a concept and theme after works have been gathered together. The focus is not on
17 See: Knapstein. Interview, 19 January 2021. 18 a UNESCO classification, UNESCO, “Verteilung nach Museumsart.” See: http://ww2.smb.museum/ifm/dokumente/materialien/mat52/bz98t8.htm (accessed February 25, 2021) 19 The categories are: 1. museums with folklore, local history or regional history collections 2. art museums 3. castle museums 4. natural history museums 5. natural science and technical museums 6. historical and archaeological museums 7. collector museums with complex collections 8. cultural history special museums 9. several museums in one building (museum complex) 20 See: Pomian, Der Ursprung des Musuems. Vom Sammeln. 44 – 45.
12 a mass or accumulation of many works, but rather on an orderly quantity that has been gradually assembled over a period of time. A programmatic orientation of the collection is important, focal points must be formed on certain themes, artists or groups that represent the selected area.21
According to the Austrian sociologist Justin Stagl, to collect means to assemble disparate items of the same or similar nature in one location.22 The process is piece by piece and systematic in nature, and it yields an ordered quantity, a collection, rather than a disordered mass or accumulation.23 The activity of collecting alone does not guarantee that a compilation of works will emerge that justifies the concept of a collection. The German art historian Götz Adriani explains that an accumulation of works of art in a collection can only be called a collection if it follows a programmatic orientation.24 When the term collection is used in the following, it always refers to art collections. These can either be owned by private individuals (private collection), by companies (corporate collection), or by private collectors.
2.1.3 Public sphere
The use of the terms ‘public’ and ‘public sphere’ in contemporary history has been studied and shaped by the German philosopher Jürgen Habermas. It is described by him as a multiplicity of competing meanings that originate from different historical phases. The word public is used in several respects. Public typically refers to events that are open to everyone, in contrast to private events. Public buildings, in particular, bear their name not only because of their general accessibility, but also when they accommodate a state use and thus assume public duties for the benefit of society. When we talk about public authorities, we mean the government. When we talk about public opinion, we mean the opinion expressed by most people.25 The word public has become synonymous with state.26 In the sense of this master’s thesis, the words public, state and publicly accessible are equated. A public museum is maintained with public funds, it operates in the public interest and is publicly open to everyone.
21 See: Weibel. Die Allmacht der Sammler. Gespräch mit Heinz-Norbert Jocks. 22 See: Stagl, Homo Collector. Zur Anthropologie und Soziologie des Sammelns. 23 Ibid. 24 See: Adriani, Kunst Sammeln. 14. 25 See: Habermas, Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit. Untersuchungen zu einer Kategorie der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft. 54 - 58. 26 Ibid. 55.
13 2.1.4 Private
Private is the inverse of public. Private, as opposed to public, refers to the private, confidential, and specific property of a particular entity or group of people who are closely related. Unlike public museums and public collections, which are present in public and play an educational role in culture, private collections, which are financed and built with private funds, are not public. The case is different with private museums, where private collections are made accessible to the public by the private collector. In the master’s thesis, the term ‘private collection’ is used when a private collector displays his collection in a museum, he has created himself or when he gives his collection to a public museum in the form of a donation or loan.
2.1.5 Privatization
Privatization applies to the transition of public assets into private property. The concept defines the transition of formerly state operations to the private sector of the economy. In terms of private collections, it is the reverse phenomenon; at the beginning of the museum, there is the private collection that has entered the public sector.27 The German art historian Horst Bredekamp describes the cabinet of curiosity as the form of collection that can be described as the first museum.28 The cabinet of curiosities is understood as a closed space in which objects are collected and arranged according to certain principles. Its function was not primarily the presentation, but rather the study of these objects. With the emergence of the cabinet of curiosities, a new scientific view of the world was formed, which was to be shared with the public.29 As a result, the privately collected objects entered the public space. The concept privatization is significant for the context of the master’s thesis, as it focuses on the relationship of private collections in public institutions.
2.1.6 Public Private Collection
Art historian Walter Grasskamp coined the term public-private museum.30 In the context of the definition given to public and private, a public-private collection appears to be a contradiction. The concept of public implies a general accessibility for everyone, private stands for the intimate and thus excludes the accessibility of the public. The typical private collector acquires artworks, for a number of purposes, with private means for his or her private pleasure, in which case the collection stays
27 See: Op. Cit. Pomian, 7 – 12. 28 See: Bredekamp, Antikensehnsucht und Maschinenglauben. 29 See: Beßler, Wundklammer: Weltmodelle von der Renaissance bis zur Kunst der Gegenwart. 30 See: Grasskamp, “Die weiße Ausstellungswand.“
14 primarily in the private context. In certain cases, a desire arises among public private collectors to share their privately funded art collection with the public. There are various reasons for this: private collectors frequently hit the limits of their capacity as a result of their continuing collecting efforts and need to extend or outsource their collections, which is often accompanied by the move into the public domain, and the benefit of public perception by making collections public are often motivating factors. Some collectors also see the importance of their own art collection and do not want to keep it from the public and for this reason decide to make their collection public. In the master’s thesis, the term public-private collection is used for private art collections that are generally open to the public. The form in which the collection is made public and what accessibility it has can vary. A state museum has public visiting hours, while a private museum often has restricted access and requires pre-registration or an appointment.
2.1.7 Private Collection in Public Institution
The definition of public-private collections differs from that of a public museum presenting private collections. First of all, in terms of public utility, a public-private collection can also be profit-oriented. In terms of permanence, the public-private collection does not have the obligation to be designed for perpetuity, but this is one of the basic foundations of the public museum. A public museum is at the service of society and wishes to promote its further development, while private museums mainly serve the interests of their collectors. The task of the public museum is the preservation, research, exhibition and communication of knowledge, it pursues the goal of fulfilling the scientific claim of documenting the past, a private museum is not obliged to these points and therefore does not have the obligations to fulfil the classic core tasks of a museum.
In principle, however, the large private museums hardly differ from the public museums, they have also acquired a well-functioning museum apparatus, which produces according to their taste. A significant difference, however, is the accessibility and opening hours of private museums, as well as their exclusive choice of location. Berlin's Bunker Phenomenon is a good example of this. The Boros Collection as well as the Feuerle Collection are located in two central places in Berlin, in which these private mausoleums, despite their location in the middle of the city, cannot be perceived, because they recede far from the skyline and can hardly be recognized visually, and for which the visit is only possible through an online registration. This anonymous, coveted and nevertheless exclusive character is in contradiction to the tasks of public institutions.
15 In this master’s thesis, the term private collections that are presented to the public is used for collections that give their private collections to public institutions, both in the form of donations and as loans.
2.2 The Boom of Private Museums Since the 1990s
2.2.1 German Private Collections of Art in the 20th Century
The 1990s were marked by an economic upswing in society, which resulted in the art market completely exploding, prices skyrocketing and private collections and especially private museums popping up everywhere. There had already been very wealthy art collectors in the 20th century who had wished to share their private collections with the public. The most important German art collectors are therefore briefly outlined here in order to put the publicization of the Friedrich Christian Flick Collection into context.
The start of pronounced private collecting practice that continues to this day was marked in the early 20th century. The German Empire's economic boom during that time brought great fortunes to industrial companies. The expectation of increased social prestige and appreciation accompanied the creation of art collections. In the first decade of the 20th century, this was not only a dream by European also by American collectors who dominated the European art market. Some American corporations had gained very large fortunes through a wide range of activities and tried to manifest their social progress through art ownership. American corporations thus concentrated, similar to the collectors of the German Empire, mostly on items from the decorative arts and the prestigious old masters. The American millionaires' purchasing power pushed prices to unprecedented heights. At auctions, European collectors were frequently left behind, and even public museums were unable to keep up with the immense amounts offered for works of art.31
The community of collectors also changed in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century. Whereas collectors had mainly entered into collaboration with public museums at the end of the 19th century, one can almost talk of a liberation of collectors after the turn of the century. Collectors no longer gave their works of art exclusively to public museums but started to create museums themselves.32 That is why some private collections are now illuminated historically and their influence on public musuems.
31 See: Op. Cit. Riedel, 33. 32 See: Op. Cit. Riedel, 35.
16
Karl Ernst Osthaus was one of the first collectors to introduce his own designs in a private museum (1874-1921). In Hagen, he founded the Folkwang Museum in 1902.33 He can be described as one of the first half of the 20th century's most outstanding art collectors and patrons. He was able to build up a large collection of art objects and natural science objects with his family's fortune. He conceived the concept of his own museum as early as 1898, intending to serve, to inform and to enhance public taste. The Folkwang Museum was opened as the first contemporary museum of its period in the industrial town Hagen in Westphalia in 1902. The founder of the museum strove to fuse art and life and arranged contemporary art exhibits in Hagen that in just a few decades brought international renown and consideration to the Folkwang Museum.34The Folkwang Museum presented modern artists such as Cézanne, Gauguin, van Gogh or Matisse, the first public collection in Germany.
The art collector Osthaus had an interest not only in goods but also in projects to invest his money and wanted to create a museum that would be an intellectual and artistic counterweight to the desolation of culture and landscape brought on by the industrialization of the Ruhr region. Osthaus was not interested in personal fame and recognition.35 In 1909, Osthaus established a second museum, the Deutsches Museum für Kunst in Handel und Gewerbe, in X location, based on the conviction that the accomplishments of artists could enrich the daily lives of people.36
Alexander Schnütgen (1843-1918), a theologian and priest, was a devoted collector of Christian art who was another prominent collector and forerunner in the establishment of public musuems from private collections. His collection arose from the desire to preserve works of art over time when they were no longer kept in high regard. Schnütgen told the city of Cologne in 1906 that he wished to donate his collection of Christian art to the city.37 Attached to the donation was the condition to add an extension to the existing Kunstgewerbemuseum, which now houses the foundation entitled
33 Folkwang – Folkvangar, Norse mythology: the dwelling place and palace of the goddess of beauty Freya; the word mean of “Folkwang” is comparable with “People's Hall” – a space for the people. https://www.wortbedeutung.info/Folkwang/ (accessed February 3,2021) 34 See: Kuenzil, “The Birth of the Modernist Art Museum.” 35 See: Grasskamp, Museumsgründer und Museumsstürmer. 103. 36 In addition to his cultural contribution, Osthaus also engaged in the creation of housing estates for philanthropic workers and the establishment of Folkwang schools to play an important role in the teaching of artistic subjects and musical education. With his early death in 1921, these efforts came to an end. In the year of the death of the Osthaus, the collections of the Kunstmuseum and the rights to its name were acquired for the City of Essen by the Essen Folkwang Museumsverein. The Folkwang Museum and the Municipal Museum of Art were united and reopened in Essen in 1922. With the founding of the Osthaus Museum in his hometown of Hagen in 1945, Karl Ernst Osthaus was given an everlasting memorial. In the historically restored and enlarged original Folkwang building, the Osthaus Museum in Hagen has been shining in new splendor under a new name since August 2009 and commemorates its founder. See: https://www.museum-folkwang.de/de.html (accessed February 3,2021) 37 See: “Museum Schnütgen.“
17 Sammlung Schnütgen. The city replied to the demand from Schnütgen and opened a museum building bearing the name of the donor in 1910. Today, the Schnütgen Museum is located in the Romanesque church of St. Cäcilien in Cologne, and houses a world-famous collection of medieval art. The private collection of Schnütgen provided the foundation stone for the foundation of a public museum because he thought of the public impact and duties that a museum has.38
Alexander Schnütgen became the role model for a young Cologne collector of modern art, Josef Haubrich (1889-1961). Schnütgen encouraged Haubrich to build up a collection during the 1920s in order to show it to the public. This collection became one of the most significant building blocks of the museum landscape of Cologne after the Second World War. Haubrich also donated his collection to the city of Cologne in 1946. 39 The collector stated that his collection exceeded the private reach and that, for social purposes, he wanted to make it available to the public. He felt especially dedicated to young people, who should have the ability to see what has happened in recent years for themselves. By defeating the rule of mindlessness, he saw the freedom of art as an element returned by democracy.40 The collection, which was mostly composed of degenerate works of art, is reminiscent of the interwar spirit of hope, when Cologne, alongside Berlin, was Germany's most important centre of modern art. The name Josef Haubruch is not well known today, even though the founder was so important to the city of Cologne and moved a large amount of art. One explanation for this maybe that the donor did not condition the donation of his collection on the naming of a wing or a museum after him.41 Instead, the Haubrecht Collection is the basis of today's Ludwig Museum in Cologne, named after another collector.42
The collection of the entrepreneur Wilhelm Hack (1899-1985), who donated his collection to the city of Ludwigshafen because he had been rejected by the city of Cologne, constitutes another important collection formed in the middle of the 20th century. To a large degree, his collection consists of works by the Constructivists, such as Mondrian, and the collector was very involved in the Russian avant-garde. The museum is still called the Wilhelm Hack Museum Ludwigshafen.43
38 See: Op. Cit. Riedel, 36. 39 See: “Portal Rheinischer Geschichte.“ 40 See: Severin, Bausteine für die Museen nach 1945. 272. 41 See: Op. Cit. Riedel, 37. 42 See: “Museum Ludwig.” 43 See: “Wilhelm Hack Museum Ludwigshafen.“
18 Also important is the Sprengel Collection.44 With their donation, Margit and Bernhard Sprengel made the foundation of the Sprengel Museum in Hanover possible. The collection was donated by the lawyer Bernhard Sprengel (1899-1985) to the city of Hanover in 1969.45 His collection comprised approximately 800 works, and he made the following commitment to the donation: My collection offers a fairly good selection of valuable 20th century art. I see the gift as an obligation for the city of Hanover to continue collecting, to bring together truly valuable works according to high standards and not influenced by chance. I expressly do not give the collection as a foundation with the restrictive stipulation that everything must also be kept together for eternity; for in the long years of friendly contact with museum people, I have made the experience that such a stipulation has an inhibiting rather than a promoting effect [...].46 Here, Sprengel works with foresight and also thinks of the obligation of museums that will operate with his collection in the future. It is not possible to take this far-sighted decision for granted.47
Art collections that are built up over a long period of time often promise high quality, especially when they focus exclusively on one artist. The collection of the industrialist Hermann F. Reemtsma (1892-1961) stands out for this reason and achieved great importance. Over a long period of time, the Reemtsma exclusively collected works by Ernst Barlach. In 1934, he personally met the artist and sponsored him from then on. Even during the Nazi period, he continued collecting works by Barlach when the National Socialists removed them from the museums. So, the collector managed to set up a collection that thoroughly recorded the work of Barlach. The Ernst Barlach House/ Hermann F. Reemtsma Foundation was opened in Hamburg in 1962, one year after the collector's death.48
Private projects have largely defined the history of various art institutions in Germany and neighbouring countries.49 In 1902, in Wuppertal, the Von der Heydt Museum was opened. The
44 Both Sprengel and Haubrich described their visit to the exhibition "entartete Kunst" in Munich in 1937 as a decisive experience for their motivation to collect. Thus, the exhibition probably achieved the opposite of what this Nazi socialist initiative was supposed to achieve. See: Sprengel, Der Sammler und seine Sammlung. 22-23. 45 See: “Sprengel Museum.” 46 In German: „Meine Sammlung bietet einen recht guten Ausschnitt wertvoller Kunst des 20. Jahrhunderts. In dem Geschenk sehe ich für die Stadt Hannover eine Verpflichtung, weiter zu sammeln, wirklich Wertvolles nach hohen Maßstäben und nicht vom Zufall beeinflusst zusammen zu tragen. Ich gebe die Sammlung ausdrücklich nicht als Stiftung mit der einschränkenden Bestimmung, dass alles für die Ewigkeit auch zusammengehalten bleiben müsse; denn ich habe in den langen Jahren des freundschaftlichen Verkehrs mit Museumsleuten die Erfahrung gemacht, dass eine solche Bestimmung eher hemmend als fördernd wirkt […].“ See: Op. Cit. Sprengel, 24. 47 This is a very progressive way of thinking, which was also described as a thoroughly positive and promising option in the talks arranged with the various experts from the art, museum, foundation and collector sectors. 48 See: “Ernst Barlach Haus/ Hermann F. Reemtsma Stiftung.” 49 See: Op. Cit. Riedel, 40.
19 museum has one of the richest foreign collections in Germany, primarily due to the patronage of the August (1851-1929) and Eduard (1882-1964) von der Heydt, part of a family of Elberfeld bankers and art collectors. Since 1961, the museum has kept the names of the donors.50 From 1907 to 1920, the German collector Helene Kröller-Müller (1869-1939) curated an extensive collection of modern art exhibited at the Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo, Holland. She put all the works into a foundation in 1928 and donated them to the Netherlands. The Kröller-Müller-Müller Museum has the second largest Van Gogh collection in the world. 51
There have also been cases in the 20th century in which the wishes of donors do not come true. In this case, the Darmstadt entrepreneur and owner of Karl Ströhler (1890-1977), a cosmetics business, might be cited. After the Second World War, Ströhler collected expressionist and abstract art and later focused on extreme modern art.52 In 1968, the American collector Leon Kraushar purchased the entire Pop Art collection, making Ströher and another art collector Peter Ludwig the first German collectors to dedicate themselves to contemporary American art. Ströhers private house in Darmstadt had an exhibition wing added to it, thereby making his collection public, and he also made a large part of his artworks available on permanent loan to the Hessisches Landesmuseum Darmstadt. Ströher attempted to build a trust for this museum, but without success, since the criteria for its foundation - the building of a new modern art museum with a well-funded acquisition budget. The Ministry of Culture in Hesse judged that Ströher didn’t meet the criterium. After the death of the collector, the works of art were then removed from the museum in Darmstadt and sold by the group of relatives. The Museum für Moderne Kunst in Frankfurt acquired part of the collection, which forms the basis of the museum, so that all of this significant and deliberate private collection could be kept together.53
Karl Ströher's great-niece is the art collector Sylvia Ströher (1955). She is one of the wealthiest women in Germany since selling the Wella empire.54 She created a large collection of informal art together with her partner, Ulrich Ströher, and bought the collection of real-estate millionaire Hans Grothe in 2005. (1930-2019). At the time, this was one of the largest acquisitions of private art which had taken place in Germany. After 1945, the private collection of Sylvia Ströher, which had until then been obscure, became one of the most important private collections of German art. In 1999, in order to display some of the 600 works here, the Küppersmühle Museum in Duisburg was built. A loan
50 See: “Von der Heydt Museum.” 51 See: “Kröller Müller Museum.” 52 See: “Stadtlexikon Darmstadt.“ 53 See: Op. Cit. Riedel, 40-41. 54 See: https://www.welt.de/wirtschaft/article754090/Die-Top50-der-deutschen-Milliardaere.html (accessed February 4,2021)
20 arrangement is in effect with the city of Duisburg until 2025. A loan arrangement with the Kunstmuseum Bonn once existed, but this was terminated in 2007. 55With almost 1500 works, the whole Ströher Collection is currently on display at the Küppersmühle Museum. The collection offers an overview of the primary art-creation roles in Germany from the post-war era to the present.56
Paul Maenz (1939), the former gallery director and owner run his own gallery between 1970 to 1990 in cologne, after this he donated his private collection to the Neues Museum in Weimar since 1999. He had strong relations with artists such as Sol Le Witt, Daniel Buren and Robert Barry, who supported the museum with installations. Five years later, however, Maenz withdrew his collection, as he did not believe that people would be interested in the collection, and thus he felt the mediation, presentation and promotion of excitement in this work was hopeless. Nor did he have the impression that his decision would disappoint the city of Weimar. A significant issue for the former gallery owner was the mediation of art, and the incorporation of an audience far removed from art, as was briefly the case in Weimar shortly after German reunification. Maenz’s collection had been one of the first private collections to move to the new Federal States following reunification.57
One of the collectors who was really serious about art and education is Henri Nannen (1913-1996), the editor-in-chief of the Stern newspaper for many years and a long-term art collector. In 1983, to foster an appreciation of the visual arts of the 20th century and the present, the collector founded the Henri Nannen Foundation. The Kunsthalle Emden was opened in 1986 with the help of his private fortune and numerous donations and sponsors.58 Unlike the large museum foundations in Frankfurt, Cologne, Stuttgart, Düsseldorf, Monchengladbach and Munich, the architectural design at Kunsthalle Emden is simple. Nannen's collection was built up over several years; the collector had no consistent concept but pursued his passion and art love. The centre of his collection is German Expressionism and Neue Sachlichkeit painting. The Musuem's collection was enlarged to include large groups of works of art created after 1945, thanks to donations from the Munich gallery owner and collector, Otto van de Loo.59 The collection is described by Nannen as follows: “Legally, the collection is no longer mine, but I can see it every day, much better than before, when everything was hidden between beds, under beds, in cupboards, above cupboards, behind cupboards, in the cellar and on the floor. And inside, the pictures still belong to me, and now the visitors also belong to me”.60
55 See: Op. Cit. Riedel, 41. 56 See: “Museum Küppersmühle.” 57 See: Schuster, Weimar Kulturhauptstadt? – Der Rückzug der Sammlung Paul Maenz aus dem Neuen Museum. 58 See: “Kunst Halle Emden.” 59 See: Op. Cit. Riedel, 43. 60 Sager, Die Besessenen. 236.
21 As the stocks in the depots of private collectors expand and many passionately purchased works remain unseen and unnoticed there, the need emerges among many collectors to make the art collected available to the public. This was also the wish of the art dealer Heinz Berggruen (1914- 2007), who, before moving his collection to the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz in Berlin, displayed it for several years at the National Gallery in London.61 Works by Picasso, Klee, Martisse and Giacometti are included in the Berggruen Collection. Berggruen entered into a loan arrangement with the city of Berlin in 1996 for a term of ten years, less than four years after which the collection was purchased for Berlin at a symbolic price, sealing the transfer to the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz of the Berggruen Collection on the occasion of the collector's 90th birthday.62 The collection was called the Berggruen Collection, and is located in the Stüler Building opposite Charlottenburg Palace.63
Hans Berggruen is an impressive example of a Jewish men who had to leave Berlin during the Nazi period. Two important points merge here, firstly the exile and expulsion of the Jews from Germany and secondly the outstanding quality of the collection, both of which are of great importance and interest for the former Nazi capital Berlin. Nevertheless, with his collection, he returned to his hometown of Berlin and left his collection for the city. This was a model for other collectors here, such as Friedrich Christian Flick (1944)64 and Helmut Newton (1920-2004), both born in Berlin, both of whom also gave Berlin their collections.65 At 2003, the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz was able to conclude contracts with both the Helmut Newton Foundation and Friedrich Christian Flick. The loan arrangement with Flick, however, will end in September 2021. Since 2004, the Flick Collection has been housed next to the Hamburger Bahnhof in the adapted Rieckhallen.66 The Marx67 and Marzona68 Collections are also housed in the Hamburger Bahnhof. It was negotiated with Flick in 2004 that the collection would initially be shown for seven years at the Hamburger Bahnhof, which was then extended again until 2021. The collector himself funded the restoration of the Rieckhallen and the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz undertook to fund the continuing expenses of the
61 See: The National Gallery, “The Berggruen Collection.” 62 See: Museumportal Berlin, “Musuem Berggruen.“ 63 See: Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin Preußischer Kulturbesitz, “Museum Berggruen.“ 64 The exhibition of the collection was followed by a lengthy debate as to whether Friedrich Flick's grandson, in whose armaments business thousands of slave workers were demonstrably forced to serve as prisoners of war, should be permitted to publicly position himself with his art collection. 65 See: Museumsportal Berlin, “Helmut Newton.“ 66 See: Friedrich Christian Flick Collection, “The Collection in Berlin.” 67 The purchase of the collection of Erich Marx was the impetus for the refurbishment of the Hamburger Bahnhof and the opening in 1996 of the Museum of Contemporary Art. 68 See: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin Preußischer Kulturbesitz, “Hamburger Bahnhof Museum der Gegenwart Berlin: Marzona Sammlung.“
22 exhibition venue. The Flick Collection includes important works by Bruce Nauman, Georg Baselitz, Paul McCarthy, Douglas Gordon, Rodney Graham and Sol LeWitt, among others. 69
On the long history of the relationship between private collections and public museums, on the kinds of terms that private collectors impose on public museums who display their collections, and on the difference between the donation of collections and the loan of collections it becomes apparent that not every public museum and not every city is suitable for every private collection, but that historically there has always been a desire for private collectors to present their collections to the public. They even often took over from the state institutions and, for lack of museums, founded their own museums to contribute to the social mission of transmitting knowledge, such as those of the collectors Osthaus and Schnütgen. A very noble and important task that this patron has taken on here. The collections of Osthaus, Schnütgen and Sprengel showed that these collectors strongly held positions that are elementary for public museums today, such as not keeping the collection closed, but linking it with other collections, bringing the collection into the public sphere and building the museum not for representational purposes, but with the aim of fulfilling the educational task of the public.
In retrospect, one can say that these collections were very advanced in their thinking. The examples from the 20th century presented here showed that there were very well functioning models of private collections and public museums at that time, such as the Ströher Collection with the Kunstmuseum Bonn, the Berggruen Collection in the National Gallery and also the Friedrich Christian Flick Collection in the Hamburger Bahnhof. The conditions under which musuems and private collectors have worked togehter seemed to fulfil both interests, as well the collectors as the public museum.
2.2.2 Event Machine Museum
Art has become a commodity in recent decades and is treated and exhibited accordingly. Society demands a constant production of new content and new performances, both from the artists but also from the museum program. The private museums submit to the sensationalism of the audience, differently from the state public museums, public museum develop a program that appeals to a wide audience, but also challenges them intellectually.70 Whether this type of marketing by private
69 Ibid. Flick Sammlung. 70 See: Grasskamp, Wie der Erfolg der Kunst ihren Betrieb verändert hat. 65.
23 museums does sufficient justice to the educational mission of the art museum will be discussed in this section.
Society today is an experience society that is constantly on the lookout for events and sensation. The over-saturated consumer society always demands something new, something unprecedented, but it is becoming increasingly difficult to meet this demand. In order to understand the concept of experience society, which is central to the recent popularity of private museums, the words themselves need to be explained further. The term Erlebnisgesellschaft was coined by a German sociologist, Gerhard Schulze and was translated into English as experience society. There are important the differences in the meaning of the German word Erlebnis and the English word experience, which means Erfahrung in German. The German Duden defines Erlebnis as an event that has impressed someone in a certain way. 71 If one looks up the term experience in the Duden, one gets four meanings, first the knowledge gained by "practical work or by repeating a thing," then the "experience, experience through which someone becomes wiser," followed by the "knowledge gained through contemplation, perception, sensation as the basis of knowledge," and the fourth is the "phrases, idioms, proverbs such as bringing something into experience." 72 The term experience, is described in the Cambridge dictionary as follows: “the process of getting knowledge or skill from doing, seeing, or feeling things.”73 This simple clarification of terms based on the definitions of recognized dictionaries already makes it clear that the terms have different meanings. The German word Erlebnis makes a more differentiated and precise statement than the English word Erfahrung. The term 'experience society' was coined by a German. Therefore, one could make the assumption that the term has a sharper expressiveness in the German language than in its translation into English: 'experience society'.
Schulze describes in his book Die Erlebnisgesellschaft, published in 1992, that due to a change in society, life has become an experience project. This is a consumer society oriented towards pleasure and free of patience, which is particularly characterized by hedonistic values, where 'pleasure' plays a central role.74 In 1999 Schulze changed the term to event culture, which he published in a group of essays “Kulissen des Glücks. Streifzüge durch die Eventkultur.” Society tries to optimize its own world, which Schulze calls experiential rationality. “Experiential Reality” describes the endeavor to perfect the external world, which in this case is the offer of leisure, in relation to the subjective
71 The Duden is a spelling dictionary of the German language. Duden, “Erlebnis.” 72 Duden, “Erfahrung.” 73 Cambridge Dictionary, “experience.” 74 See: Schulze, Die Erlebnisgesellschaft: Kultursoziologie der Gegenwart.
24 internal world, which is one's own wishes, needs and intentions. Experience orientation is the immediate form of the search for happiness.75
This constant expectation that society will present something new and unprecedented is exemplified in the search for the unique experience. It creates pressure on artists and museums to produce works and create so-called buzz experiences. The production of new work and buzz experiences both are placed in the position of serving the system and it is the decision of the individual and the institution whether to submit to it. The Society is hungry and wants to be fed, and since the 1990s it seems that private museums are taking up this demand and public museums are sticking to their traditions. A good example that a person submits to the sensation addiction of society is the French luxury entrepreneur and private collector François Pinault, who in 2006 had the Palazzo Grassi in the Punta della Dogana converted by the Japanese star architect Tadao Ando. The collection contains around 2500 works, many of which are highly priced. As the German art historian Niklas Maak sharply puts it: 'Pinault art must bang, make a visual noise, it is characterized by an excess of colors and shrill effects (...)'. 76 This reflects the new type of collector who sees art above all as a hedonistic goal. The Pinault collection is a pleasurable reflection of François Pinault's working and living environment. The private collector makes his art collection public and, in the best case, makes a valuable and individual, but definitely subjective contribution here, both in terms of content and exhibition. The collector uses of the urge of the society for something new, unique and exclusive - the private collection ideally reflects the concept of the experience society.
These days visiting a museum is a leisure activity for the majority of the population. The concept of leisure gained its meaning in 1974, when the 40-hour, 5-day week was introduced in Germany, causing a change in the relationship between work and leisure. The concept of leisure and the leisure society also found their way into the museum, through the wide range of reading rooms, cafeteria and children's program. From its once posh, stiff and elitist atmosphere, the museum became a meeting place for the general public.77 Here the aspect of leisure is combined with the museum for all.
Society's identification with museums encourages communication and provides a balance to the constraints of life. In the 1970s, there was an increased skepticism about the future, as contemporaries saw their present as incredibly accelerated and subject to change, due to the ever-
75 See: Schulze, Kulissen des Glücks: Streifzüge durch die Eventkultur. 76 Maak, “Between Pinault and Pinchuk. The network and rituals of a new transnational system of collectors.“ 49. 77 See: Op. Cit. Roos. 330.
25 increasing size of buildings and machines and technical inventions.78 In this regard, the museum should create a place of orientation for people as a place of new awareness of changes in society.79
The classic elements of a museum included collecting, preserving, researching and exhibiting, plus the activity of education. The educational mission became a natural element in public museums in the 1970s.80 That they came to the conclusion, Ross describes, that “only educational activities can serve as proof of their raison d'être.”81 Therefore, Ross continues, it is necessary to ensure the financing of public museums, as they play an important role in the educational mission of society. This again illustrates the importance of the educational mission as one of the main tasks of the museum. The public museums are committed to this, the private museum is only committed to its own taste.
The art museum has therefore developed into an entertainment space, a phenomenon further strengthened by the arrival of new media such as performance art, expansive installations, and video and dance performances.82 A change is recognizable from the museum as a site of interpretation to one of experience.83 The American art critic Hal Foster describes this phenomenon as an entertainment society, which Foster bases on the observation of the new museum buildings. If we look at the spatial arrangement of these museums, it becomes clear that a large part of the space is used for entertainment program and consumption. In summary, Foster notes that in many museum buildings the exhibition space has been displaced by rooms for lectures, concerts and research facilities. It is no longer just a museum, but a multifunctional meeting place for society. The offer of opening events and live events seems to attract more audiences, as do the museums' special exhibitions. The ephemeral seems to achieve greater enthusiasm among the population than the museums' traditional permanent exhibitions.84 This depiction by Foster is more reminiscent of a leisure center, a place where different people come and pursue different interests, than a place that preserves historical events and fulfils its educational mission to society.
That museums serve as entertainment spaces in this way is further fueled by a global recognized trend and popilarity,85 Blue chip artists such as Takashi Murakami, Damien Hirst or Jeff Koons are part of the network, as are the major galleries, like Larry Gagosian, David Zwirner or Hauser & Wirth.
78 Ibid. 337. 79 Ibid. 338. 80 Ibid. 346. 81 Ibid. 247. 82 See: Foster, The Architecture complex. 119. 83 See: Serota, Experience or interpretation. The Dilemma of Museums of Modern Art. 84 See: Op. Cit. Foster, 119. 85 See: Op. Cit. Maak, 49.
26 Private collections, together with the artists and the galleries, form an “aggressive parallel universe to the classical world of public art institutions.”86 An example of this was the exhibition Skin Fruit curated by Jeff Koons at the New Museum in New York in March 2010.87 The Greek-Cypriot industrialist and art collector Dakis Joannou presented part of his collection at the same exhibition. Maak has criticized this exhibition and sees it as a programmatic announcement; the power constellation seems to be dominated by financial wealth and influence and no longer by quality; consequently, there has been a shift in interpretive sovereignty. The aim of this exhibition was not to link up with current discourses and debates; on the contrary, the works were presented as if at an automobile exhibition. The impression was that the primary aim was to develop a 'show event' that would attract an audience to the museum that would otherwise have no interest in contemporary art.88 Here it becomes clear that, in this case, the institution of the museum was used as an event machine.
Another phenomenon that can be found in the contemporary museum world is the need for the everyday and the drag for a certain desire of privacy. What is the appeal of the everyday context and what impact does it have on art museums and their tasks? Private collections have been booming since the 1990s, it seems that the private nature of the collection is of particular interest to the visitor. The definition of private describes a place that is not accessible to the public.89 The concept of the private museum creates a contradiction in itself or forms a threshold between public and private. The intimate, individual and unofficial setting, as well as an everyday mood, possibly form precisely this attraction. Historically, there have always been developments against the public state institutions; the art historian Wilhelm von Bode pleaded in year for an exhibition model of art that moves away from a public representative appearance towards a private and intimate form.90
Curators today have also been trying to bring the private and the intimate into the public exhibition spaces, through communal dinners in the exhibition space or even overnight stays. In this private form of exhibition, the artist and the curator are concerned to use the museum as a platform for communication with visitors, which is in constrat to the silent and sacred nature of the traditional museum space. One example of this was the exhibition 'Gifts and Rituals' by the American artist Lee Mingwei in the Gropiusbau in Berlin 2020 where vistiors can eat and sleep in the exhibition.91 The American author Donna Haraway and the American poet Fred Moten describe different forms of
86 Ibid. 87 See: https://archive.newmuseum.org/exhibitions/1038 (15 March 2021) 88 Ibid. 89 See also: chapter 2.1.4 90 See: Baier, “Berlins größter General.“ 91 See: Rosenthal, “Lee Mingwei. Geschenke & Rituale.“ 14 – 19.
27 sociality as equally valid ways of transmitting knowledge. All three, Haraway, Mingwei and Moten, see interpersonal exchange and the creation of different relationships as something essential in our decade.92 These intimate encounters generate interpersonal exchange and create a new form of experience. This highlights the mixing of the visitors' everyday context with the conventions of the institution, private and public. According to Horst Bredekamp, the more the concept of the museum varied, the more the abolition of the museum was demanded.93
Public institutions have already understood that the task of mediation between education and acceccibility has become a very central aspect of the museum. Especially in contemporary art where knowledge of iconography can no longer be assumed, and society and collective life has changed significantly in recent decades. Klaus Dieter Lehmann, the former president of the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz, emphasized in an interview in January 2021 that "(...) we have to reach new target groups through the museums. Therefore, the educational task for museums is becoming more important and bigger."94 Interactive programs such as a joint dinner or an overnight stay in the museum have an event character, as they are something special and only possible for a limited number of visitors. Nevertheless, their purpose is to enable the public institution to enter into dialogue with the population and to engage in discourse around art. Lehmann continues that "a private museum can't do that at all in this way, because it can't make this differentiation of professional images available."95 The exhibition of Mingwei at Martin Gropius Bau, whose claim was to do justice to the educational and mediation task through the program accompanying the exhibition, is clearly in contrast to the exhibition curated by Koons at the New Museum, where the event and the show were in the foreground.
The German sociologist and cultural theorist Andreas Reckwitz describes in his book Die Erfindung der Kreativität. Zum Prozess gesellschaftlicher Ästhetisierung, that in contemporary society the demands and desires for creativity and the creation of something new have spread to a considerable degree throughout society. What was once the preserve of subcultures of artists has now become a generally valid cultural model of society. 'Be creative!' has been the announcement since late modern times. Reckwitz establishes a relationship between desire for creativity and the imperative to create, which represents a fine line between desire and social expectation. People want to be creative, but they are also supposed to be.96
92 See: Op. Cit. Rosenthahl,12. 93 See: Bredekamp, Sankt Peter in Rom und das Prinzip der produktiven Zerstörung. 46. 94 Lehmann, Interview. 14 January 2021. 95 Ibid. 96 See: Reckwitz, Die Erfindung der Kreativität. Zum Prozess gesellschaftlicher Ästhetisierung.
28
In the late 1990s, the creative industry and the creative economy emerged as the core and avant- garde of the post-Fordist economy, also involving the fields of architecture, design and exhibition.97 According to Reckwitz, innovation in post-Fordism is no longer just the production of new processes and objects, in the sense of research and development, but a 'permanent innovation' becomes a permanent feature of social organization.98 Following Reckwitz, aesthetic capitalism is based on a specific motivational culture, a satisfying job is a 'creative job,' which implies a varied and challenging production of something new.99 The Arts and Crafts movement of the late nineteenth century? Or was it the mid-19th C had its interest in the handicraft and aesthetic quality of goods, they were against standardized industrial production and demanded an alternative understanding of work and production. They were concerned with the dissolution of the separation of work and art by reverting to traditional craftsmanship.100 Thus, the Arts and Crafts movement was directed against the mass production of industrial capitalism.101 Since the 1970s, the 'creative industry' has become the leading industry of aesthetic capitalism.102
The creative urgency that is linked to the capitalist structures of our system creates a permanent pressure to produce and invent. The private museums submit to this system and produce unique opening parties, arrange events with star artists. In doing so, they fully submit to the system and serve it. They produce events that are suitable for marketing, present works of art that are easy to understand and are shown to good advantage on social media; it is also a successful event for people who are not interested in art, who can enjoy the exclusive company of the private museums.
According to the German historian Julia Roos, there have been three conceptions of museums since the 1960s and 1970s: the museum as a democratic place of learning, the museum as a place of leisure and entertainment, and the museum as a place of compensation for a deformed everyday life; the common denominator of all three is the museum's task as an educational institution.103 Seeing the museum as a democratic place implies an expectation of transparency and thus the disclosure of the collection criteria, information about the collectors and the prominence of the works, likewise the exhibition criteria should follow a critical form of presentation.104 An objective presentation of the research and circumstances of production and acquisition is necessary so that
97 Ibid. 140. 98 Ibid. 141. 99 Ibid. 142 100 Ibid. 146 - 147. 101 Ibid. 148. 102 Ibid. 164 - 165. 103 See: Roos, Ausstellungen als öffentliches Ärgernis? 318. 104 Ibid. 320.
29 the viewer can make his or her own decisions based on the information obtained.105 The concept of democracy, freedom to knowledge merges with emancipation, freedom of choice.
A public museum is under the permanent observation of the public sponsors and the public, so transparency about its activities is a key factor. This involves the process of acquiring artworks and contracts with collectors, as well as the prominence of the works themselves and the past history of the collector, as is the case here with the Friedrich Christian Flick Collection and the Hamburger Bahnhof. In this case, a public institution offers the platform for a moderated discussion and reappraisal of the past, and at the same time it makes the private collection with important works of art accessible to the public. The private museum in Zurich once planned by Friedrich Christian Flick could not have fulfilled this task; a public objective institution was necessary for this.106
In summary, it is clear that society wants to consume, and preferably in the most conspicuous and outlandish ways, which the writings of Foster, Schulze and Reckwitz make clear. These theorists all illustrate that the concept of the experience society has become a significant part of our everyday life, which illuminates the pressure public institutions are under today. Public institutions try to meet the demands of society for something new and special, but they have no interest in becoming an event machine like private museums. The artist and art critic Barzon Brock describes the task for museums in the future quite aptly: We have to orient the audience towards something other than the highlights of high-priced market successes, because achieving a price is not the criterion for the significance of art. So, the museums must now take their mission of education seriously, that is: beyond the market, develop criteria by which something is considered significant. And this scheme is predefined in the field of science as well as in the field of art. It is called musealisation (...).107
3. Part II: Case Study Flick Collection at Hamburger Bahnhof
3.1.1 Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz
The Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz (Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation) hosts the Friedrich Christian Flick Collection and the contemporary art museum Hamburger Bahnhof. The Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz is one of the largest cultural institutions in the world and a gigantic cultural
105 Ibid. 317 - 327. 106 See: Knapstein. Interview, 19 January 2021. 107 Brock „Was wir im Museum sehen ist Dreck!“
30 apparatus that covers the three classical cultural areas, archives, libraries and museums. The main sources used here are the interviews conducted by the author and the exhibition cataloge “Friedrich Christian Flick Collection im Hamburger Bahnhof” as well as information available on the institution's website. It is important to describe the structure of the institution in order to illustrate why it was a more than suitable location for the Friedrich Christian Flick Collection.
Berlin was a very unique situation after the reunification of Germany for musuems, artists and galleries. Politics and art do not exist without one another, each medium is free in itself, but can be influenced by one another, in this case art can be understood as an alternative language to politics. After the Second World War, Germany was in ruins; coming to terms with the past and rebuilding society was the top political mission. Dealing with the past and confronting the present are the duties of a museum.
The name of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin already demonstrates how little one can separate art from politics. They are state museums, not, as one might assume, of the Federal Republic of Germany, but of the state of Prussia, which disappeared in 1947. In the museum system, this forms a unique connection between politics and art. Under the umbrella of the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz, the Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin are thus an organization of the state that no longer exists. As a result, financial responsibility for the Berlin museums is assumed by the federal government and all the states of the Federal Republic of Germany. Peter-Klaus Schuster describes the institution of the vanished state as the starting point of a mission to make art and culture accessible to the public throughout the centuries. “Emerging from the ruins of history as the flagship of German cultural federalism, the mission of the Berlin museums from the very beginning was to compose a universal picture of the art and cultures of the whole world by collecting all antiquities, wherever they came from and whatever they were made of.”108
The cultural federalism in Germany ensures that the individual states finance their museums, theatres, archives and other cultural institutions. The Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz is an unusual construction, with the federal government providing 75 per cent and all the individual federal states
108 Most of the sources used for this chapter, such as newspaper and magazine articles, exhibition catalogues and books, are written in German. For the continuous text, the author has translated these quotations into English. This applies to all quotations in this master’s thesis unless otherwise stated. In German: “Als Flaggschiff des bundesdeutschen Kulturföderalismus aus dem Trümmerfeld der Geschichte hervorgegangen, war es die Mission der Berliner Museen von Anfang an, aus diesem Trümmerfeld der Geschichte durch das Sammeln sämtlicher Altertümer, woher sich auch kommen und woraus sie auch immer gemacht sind, ein universales Bild der Kunst und Kulturen der ganzen Welt zu komponieren.“ See: Schuster, Das Museum als Ort des Dramas der Deutschen mit der Kunst, 10.
31 together providing 25 per cent.109 To that the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz is Germany's largest cultural institution, and its unique feature is that it houses the three classic spheres of cultural heritage under one roof: museums, libraries and archives.110 This construction of the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz is a gigantic apparatus that employs more than 2000 people.
The following institutions are important for this master's thesis: the umbrella structure is formed by the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz with its President Hermann Parzinger, followed by the Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin (National Museums) with their Director General Michael Eissenhauer, and on the third level there is the Nationalgalerie, currently headed by Joachim Jäger. Six museums belong to the Nationalgalerie, in addition to the Alte Nationalgalerie and Neue Nationalgalerie, the Museum Berggruen and the Collection Scharf-Gerstenberg, as well as the Friedrichswerder Church and the museum that is analyzed in more detail, the Hamburger Bahnhof, which is directed by Gabrielle Knapstein.
The Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin had its own collection, but it was too limited to guarantee high quality in the long term, and it became clear that the budgets were too low to acquire the desired works. Therefore, a cooperation with private collectors seemed to be a good way forward. The then- Director General of the Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin, Wolf-Dieter Dube, was in office between 1983 and 1999. Dube was determined to find private collectors again to supply art for the public museums in Berlin.111 In doing so, Dube revived an old tradition, as the character of the National Museums in Berlin has been shaped by private collections since the 19th century. Klaus-Dieter Lehmann explained in the interview, that the impression often arises that the Berlin collections come from kings, emperors and princes, but this is not the case since most are from bourgeois collections.112 Thus, Dube's ambitious drive revived the tradition of Berlin museums, the collecting of collectors and collections. This collecting strategy gave the Berlin museums a chance to catch up with other major museums in Europe. It was through the support of collectors that Berlin's museums became great at the end of the 20th century.113 The collection of Erich Marx, the collection of Egidio Marzona and the collection of Friedrich Christian Flick, who placed their collections under the care of the Nationalgalerie, have played an important role in these transformations.
109 Hermann Parzinger explains this connection in an interview. See: Parzinger, Interview. 07 January 2021. 110 The Smithsonian Institution in Washington D.C. in the United States of America has a very similar structural organisation the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz, but is significantly larger again, as it also houses natural and technical history in addition to art and cultural history. They also house museums, libraries, archives and additionally research institutions. 111 See: Schuster, “Das Museum als Ort des Dramas der Deutschen mit der Kunst,“ 9. 112 Klaus-Dieter Lehmann explained this connection in an interview. See: Lehmann, Interview. 07 January 2021. 113 See: Op. Cit. Schuster, 9.
32 3.1.2 Hamburger Bahnhof
The Hamburger Bahnhof includes the building of the Rieckhallen which are located right next to the former trainstation together they form the Contemporary Museum of Berlin. At the moment the Rieckhallen houseing the Friedrich Christian Flick Collection but they will be justified demolished in September 2021 by the Austrian investor CA-immo. The historical events concerning the Hamburger Bahnhof illustrate the consequences of the division of Germany after the Second World War and the lack of attention to art collections paid by some of those involved, such as the federal government, the city of Berlin, but also cultural institutions such as the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz. The Hamburger Bahnhof property, represents a historically complex past, which is important to illuminate to explain the departure and its consequences of the Friedrich Christian Flick Collection.
Converting industrial and transportation buildings into museums and cultural centres was a project all over the world in the 1980s and 1990s, the most prominent example being the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, which opened in 1986 and was designed by the Italian architect Gae Aulenti.114 The Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin, today's Museum for contemporary art, was formerly designed as a terminus station for the railway line between Berlin and Hamburg. The Rieckhallen were a warehouse. The Hamburger Bahnhof was the only partially preserved station from the period. The train station was designed by Georg Ernst Friedrich Neuhaus and Ferdinand Wilhelm Holz between 1845 and 1847. The building was rebuilt several times, and from 1905 the station was used by the Bau- und Verkehrsmuseum (Construction and Transport Museum).115
The ownership of the Hamburger Bahnhof was impacted by the division of Germany and Berlin after World War Two and later through the reunification of Germany. After the end of the Second World War Germany was divided into four occupation zones, and Berlin into two, a Soviets taking the eastern and the Allies the western part of the city. The operation of the railway lines fell into the hands of the East.116 In the turmoil of the end of the war, the Red Army mistook the Hamburger Bahnhof for a railway station. The station, which had not been used as a railway station since 1884, had been operating as a museum since 1906. In the West, however, the Reichsbahn was not allowed to operate, except to run rail services, so the Hamburger Bahnhof remained closed. After the reunification in 1989, all the parties represented in the Berlin House of Representatives decided that the Hamburger Bahnhof should become an art museum, as the collector Erich Marx offered his
114 More examples are: Deichtorhallen in Hamburg Germany, Arp Museum Bahnhof Rolandseck in Remagen Germany, Estación Mapocho in Santiago de Chile, Chile 115 See: Scheer, Hamburger Bahnhof: Museum für Gegenwart Berlin, Josef Paul Kleihues. 116 The Hamburger Bahnhof fell under the management of the Deutsche Reichsbahn (GDR) in the Federal Republic it was called Bundesbahn.
33 collection to the city. In the early nineties, the Reichsbahn was merged with the Bundesbahn and Deutsche Bahn AG was founded. The real estate not related to the railway was to be sold from 1996 on.117 The National Train company remained part of the Federal Government, which wanted to sell unused property in order to minimize existing debts. In 2001, Deutsche Bahn AG founded a property company, Vivico Real Estate GmbH, which owns around two thousand properties, including the Hamburger Bahnhof, for which the City of Berlin has a right of first refusal.118 On 4 July 2003, Berlin does not exercise this right of first refusal, and the city relinquished Hamburger Bahnhof, in which it had already invested a hundred million marks for its reconstruction.119
A Europe-wide bidding process followed, which was put out to tender by the Federal Government and won by Austrian real estate company CA-immo in 2007. In this process, the entire real estate portfolio of Vivico Real Estate GmbH was purchased, which included the Hamburger Bahnhof. In 2004, a development plan was drawn up for the area where Europa City is located today, in the immediate vicinity of Berlin's main railway station. This development plan provided for residential and office use on the site where the Rieckhallen was located.120 The Head of Corporate Communications Germany at CA-immo, Markus Diekow explained in the interview how the public was involved in the preparation of this land-use plan. In the publicly accessible process from which the land-use plan emerged there were eight citizens' workshops and there was an urban and landscaping competition, from this competition a framework plan for Europa City emerged. Diekow clearly emphasizes “It is important to note that no development plan was ever changed, it was just drawn up. At no time was the Rieckhallen and its cultural use discussed. It was different with the Hamburger Bahnhof, where it was decided that it should be used for cultural purposes, even for exhibitions.”121
The Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz was only informed after the sale to CA- immo had taken place. Hermann Parzinger, the acting president of the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz, expresses his disappointment about how the Confederation had proceed in the interview: “What one could have expected is that the federal government would say, here is a huge area that we have to sell, there is
117 See: Pofalla, “Wie die Berliner Tragödie doch noch ein glückliches Ende nehmen kann” 118 The city of Berlin had a right of first refusal for the Hamburger Bahnhof property, which means that as soon as the property is sold, the city of Berlin had the right of first refusal for this property. 119 Ibid. This is currently 51,129,200 € in Euro. (March 12, 2021) 120 Markus Diekow explained this situation in an interview. See: Diekow, Interview. 27 November 2020. 121All interviews carried for this master’s thesis were conducted in German. The author translated the interview passages in English for the continuous text. This applies to all quotations in this master’s thesis unless otherwise stated. In German: “Wichtig ist hier, es wurde nie ein Bebauungsplan verändert, er wurde erst aufgestellt. Es ist zu keiner Zeit über die Rieckhallen und die Nutzung Kultur diskutiert worden. Anders war es beim Hamburger Bahnhof, hier wurde festgelegt das er für Kulturnutzung sogar Ausstellungsnutzung zu benutzen ist.“ See: Ibid.
34 a museum of yours on it, or at least talk to the responsible ministry, if not to the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz.”122 Since then the property prices increased especially in the 2000s and a new city district was developed around the Hamburger Bahnhof. The development of it has been taken over by the CA-immo. Neither the state parliament nor Friedrich Christian Flick who loaned and partly donated his collection to the Nationalgalerie, was aware of the ownership situation of the Hamburger Bahnhof and the Rieckhallen. The Senate had never broached Berlin's right of first refusal and this right presence has never been made clear to the administration of the museum or to the Presidium der Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz.123
After reunification, Berlin had become a magnetic hub for creative workers, artists and galleries. Berlin's wounds from the Second World War and the history of divided Germany became a source of inspiration for many. A former curator of the Hamburger Bahnhof and now the director of the Nationalgalerie, Joachim Jäger, explains that a new and dynamic art scene had settled in Berlin and was rolling over Berlin like an avalanche. “There was a unique situation in Berlin, also the real estate situation was very good, that will never happen again, there were huge areas that were unused, in the middle of a big city in Europe, that simply attracted a lot of cultural people here because they saw possibilities that didn't exist in other cities. Berlin was an experimental field.”124
The Hamburger Bahnhof was opened in 1996 as the Museum of Contemporary, and the Marx and Marzona collections focus mainly on art from the 1960s-1980s. Therefore, in order to do justice to the name, Museum of Contemporary, it was important to acquire a collection and works that also had pieces beyond this period, which was the case with the collection of Friedrich Christian Flick. The importance that the Friedrich Christian Flick Collection had for Berlin is described by Max Hollein in a 2002 in an interview on whether the collection should come to Berlin. “That Berlin can make good use of the collection is certain. But it is also true that the presence of this outstanding collection still does not provide the urgently needed institutional bridge to Berlin's highly active cultural scene. However, this is neither a problem of the collection nor of the collector, but rather one of the capital.”125 Hollein saw the city's task as significant; contemporary art was lacking in Berlin and it
122 In German: ”Was man hätte erwarten können ist, dass der Bund sagt hier ist ein riesiges Areal, das wir verkaufen müssen, da ist ein Museum von Euch drauf, oder man redet dann wenigstens mit dem zuständigen Ministerium, wenn man schon nicht mit der Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz redet.“ See: Parzinger, Interview. 07 January 2021. 123 See: Op. Cit. Pofalla. 124 In German: “Es gab eine einzigartige Situation in Berlin, auch die Immobiliensituation war sehr gut, das wird es nie wieder geben, es gab riesige Areale die Ungenutzt waren, mitten in einer Großstadt in Europa, das hat einfach viele Kulturmenschen hierhergelockt, weil sie Möglichkeiten sahen, die es in anderen Städten so nicht gab. Berlin war ein Experimentierfeld.“ See: Jäger, Interview. 11 January 2021. 125 In German: “Dass Berlin die Sammlung gut brauchen kann, ist sicher. Dass die Präsenz dieser herausragenden Sammlung aber noch immer nicht den dringend notwendigen institutionellen Brückenschlag
35 considered was necessary to bring contemporary art to the city beyond the collection of Friedrich Christian Flick.
In this sense the Hamburger Bahnhof was opened in 1996 and formed the third house of the Nationalgalerie, the first to be completely devoted to contemporary works. It was situated on Invalidenstraße precisely on the old frontier between the two parts of Germany, exactly between the Alte Nationalgalerie on the east of the Museum Island and the Neue Nationalgalerie on the west of the Kulturforum.126
Even though it is the same museum, the tenancies of the Hamburger Bahnhof and the Rieckhallen are fundamentally different. There are two structures, one is the classic use of the Hamburger Bahnhof for exhibitions: for which the Nationalgalerie has is an unlimited right, regardless of ownership. The Rieckhallen are the second part, added later, which houses the Friedrich Christian Flick Collection. It was originally planned to add two wings to the northern part of the station: one on the eastern side was completed by the architect Josef Paul Kleihues in year, but there were no funds for the second. Today, the so-called Kleihueshalle houses the Marx Collection. The Rieckhallen were considered to be a secondary wing, for these halls were only rented, and they did not have an unlimited use for the Nationalgalerie.127
The Hamburger Bahnhof, the museum of the present, was intended to speak the language of the new generation. However, neither the architectural language of the building nor the art presented in it reflected the revolution of the new generation. Referring to this new dynamism and energy Joachim Jäger stated in the interview, when asked what significance the Hamburger Bahnhof had for Berlin, that the Hamburger Bahnhof was very conservative in the way it was opened in 1996. It was rebuilt by Josef Paul Kleihues, which was a traditional architectural firm. The elaborate heating cladding and the shell limestone floor were both quite posh; they were born out of Western thought in the 1980s, but it didn't catch the spirit of the adventurous Berlin of the mid-90s. The result was, “ultimately much too noble for what the ‘New Berlin’ actually stood for. If the Hamburger Bahnhof
zur hochaktiven Berliner Kulturszene ausmacht, ebenso. Das ist allerdings weder ein Problem der Sammlung noch des Sammlers, sondern vielmehr eins der Hauptstadt.“ See: Joop, ”Soll die Sammlung Flick nach Berlin?“ Quote: Max Hollein. 126 See: Op. Cit. Schuster, 11. 127 See: Lehmann, Interview. 14 January 2021.
36 had been opened with the Rieckhallen instead of the noble main building, it would have had a very different reception in the city."128
At that time, the museum was not yet architecturally at the point of view that the young creative generation would have wished for. Likewise, Jäger stated in the interview that it was undeniable that the notion of the contemporary in relation to the museum was not there as the museum it was not defined in a way that included a notion of the contemporary. There was criticism in the conservative press as to whether that was possible to have a museum that is only connected to the contemporary. For the young art scene in Berlin, by contrast, it was completely clear that a museum did not have to be something historical. “It was an interesting process, the museum opened at a time when some thought that a museum couldn't be contemporary, while others had already been thinking and acting in these patterns for a long time.”129
It was difficult to open a contemporary art museum in terms of having access to the new art. Without the collection of Erich Marx, the Hamburger Bahnhof would not have been able to open its doors as a museum of the present in 1996. Here the importance of private collections for public museums in Berlin becomes apparent. For a public museum like the Hamburger Bahnhof, the assurance of curatorial freedom is essential so that it can perform its task of a liberal and objective educational mission.
The German building contractor Erich Marx was very important figure for the opening of the Hamburger Bahnhof; through his collection it was possible to establish the Hamburger Bahnhof as a museum of contemporary art. He had offered his collection in the 1980s to the city of Berlin; a collection that contained important works by Joseph Beuys, Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Rauschenberg, Cy Twombly, Anselm Kiefer, Donald Judd, Julian Schnabel and Eberhard Havekost.130 Each of these artists represented an important position in the contemporary art scene after the 1960s.
During 1983 and 1999, the general director of the Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin, Wolf-Dieter Dube, was in charge and responsible for the negotiations with Art Collector Erich Marx in 1996. The state
128 In German: “ (…) letztlich viel zu edel für das, wofür das „Neue Berlin“ eigentlich stand. Hätte man den Hamburger Bahnhof mit den Rieckhallen eröffnet statt mit den Edlen Hauptgebäude, dann wäre der Hamburger Bahnhof ganz anders angekommen in der Stadt.“ See: ibid. 129 In German: “Das ist ein interessanter Prozess gewesen, das Museum eröffnete in einer Zeit in der die einen Meinten, ein Museum könne doch nicht Gegenwart sein, während die anderen schon längst in diesen Mustern dachten und handelten.“ See: ibid. 130 See: Maak, “Bahnhof verstehen.”
37 institution and the patron formed a common interest in presenting the Erich Marx collection in the Hamburger Bahnhof. Klaus-Dieter Lehmann, who was the acting president of the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz between 1989 and 2008, explained the original contractual situation with Erich Marx did not reflect his ideas of a relationship between public museum and private collector so Lehmann had adjusted the contract when he came into office. In Lehmann's eyes, the contract was designed too much for the requirements of the collector than for the public museum. The most important point for Lehmann was that the curatorial direction always lies with the public institution and not with the collector or delegates of the collector, so the contract was adjusted in this term. “This contract is very much in line with the collector's interests. We had a conflict situation between the influence of a collector and the influence of a museum. I firmly believe that museums must always ensure that the independence of curatorial responsibility must be with the museums.”131
The Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz had a heated argument with the curator of Erich Marx Collection, Heiner Bastian, who wanted to be the curator of the new museum. Lehmann declared in the interview, that it was not justifiable to make the art consultant of Erich Marx as a curator of the Marx Collection in the Hamburger Bahnhof. Lehmann felt that responsibility for the hanging, the content of the exhibitions and for the selection of pieces of art should always be with the museum. The contract with the Marx Collection was changed in terms of that the presentation of the collections was arranged only by the curators of the museum. This was the main factor of Lehmann concerns that there should be no influence by the collector on the exhibitions; Heiner Bastian had helped to build up the Erich Marx Collection and, if he had been installed as the curator of the new museum, he would thus have represented the collector's interests. This contradicted Lehmann's view and was not compatible in his eyes with the duty of a public museum.
The Erich Marx's collection complemented the holdings of the Nationalgalerie quite well. Dube's collecting strategy, collecting from collectors and collections, was continued. It was followed by the acquisition/loan of Egidio Marzona's collection, which had a focus on international art since 1968: concept art, minimal art, and intimate style Arte Povera. The Egidio Marzona Collection can be understood as an artistic visual laboratory of the present, as Marzona also includes invitation cards, posters, manifestos and the like in a comprehensive archive as an integral part of the collection.132
131 In German: “Dieser Vertrag ist sehr stark auf die Interessen des Sammlers eingegangen. Wir haben diesen Vertrag nochmal geändert, als ich in das Amt kam. Wie haben eine Konfliktsituation gehabt zu der Einflussmöglichkeit eines Sammlers und der Einflussmöglichkeit eines Museums. Ich bin der festen Überzeugung, dass Museen immer dafür sorgen müssen, dass die Unabhängigkeit der kuratorischen Verantwortung bei den Museen sein muss.“ See: Op. Cit. Lehmann. 132 See: Op. Cit. Schuster, 10.
38 The third major collection to come to the Nationalgalerie was that of Friedrich Christian Flick. Here, in Berlin Friedrich Christian Flick took an active interest in his family history and found the place where he could present his collection to the public. In 2003 it was decided that the Friedrich Christian Flick collection would be shown in changing exhibits in the Rieckhallen after the opening show, which took place in the entire building. The collection's size dictated that it was possible to present the collection only once after seven years.133 This allowed the Hamburger Bahnhof to become even more the museum it was named in 1996: Museum of the Present134. The complexity and size of the collection of Friedrich Christian Flick allowed the museum to participate in the art historical discourse through ever-changing views. Peter-Klaus Schuster welcomed the opportunity that one of the largest private collections of contemporary art, was redeemed from its previous storage and became the joint property of the collector and the public.135
Its was not simple to find a suitable place for the Friedrich Christian Flick Collection, because the collection had many large scales works and was also in itself enormous with over 2000 objects. When options were being sought to house the Friedrich Christian Flick collection, Eugen Blume was the first to notice that the freight forwarder had vacated the Rieckhallen, and he made the suggestion that the hall would be the ideal location for the Friedrich Christian Flick collection.136 The Rieckhallen were already marked on the 1875 city map as potentially the longest building at the time in Berlin. The warehouse is 250 meters long and on the upper floor it has 4000 square meters of floor space and a similarly wide room in the basement. It had been the headquarters of the international freight- forwarder Rieck since the opening of the Hamburger Bahnhof. The halls provided enough space for Friedrich Christian Flick's collection and their simple and robust structure also made them an excellent fit for the collection's content. The close proximity to the Hamburger Bahnhof was an additional plus point, so that the collection of Friedrich Christian Flick moved to the Rieckshalle in 2004.
Unlike the renovation of the Hamburg Bahnhof, where the competition was won by the conservative Kleihues office, the renovation the Rieckhallen consciously awarded in favor of a young architectural office Kuehn Malvezzi, whose design retained precisely this charm of the raw architecture of the halls. Since the costs in this case were covered by Friedrich Christian Flick, there was no need for a public competition. To keep the Rieckhallen in their original state explained Lehmann in the interview as followed: "They left this raw architecture in place so that it wasn't the architecture that played the
133 See: Op. Cit. Schuster, 10. 134 In German: Museum der Gegenwart 135 See: Op. Cit. Schuster, 10. 136 Ibid, 10.
39 role, but the artworks that played the role. And when you see these installations, you realize how important and right that was.”137 In the interview, Jäger described very pragmatically that the halls were free at the time and also felt their rawness was ideally suited for the Friedrich Christian Flick Collection. The theme of the existential, a socio-critical trait that is strongly represented in the collection by artist such as Bruce Nauman and Paul McCarthy, was well suited to the Rieckhallen. The collection includes many installations, which came into their own on the industrial floor, but also the practical component was an advantage here, that one could work with the raw materials of the hall without fear of breaking something.138 There are artworks where artists have taken the architecture as an opportunity to find integrative forms, like Jason Rhoades, for example, who created a work of art that combined architecture and his objects to create a new work of art. The architecture was also a stimulating element for the artist to use it for themselves.139
Friedrich Christian Flick's collection required a huge space because many of the artworks are large and the Rieckhallen provided enough of that. Lehmann elaborated in the interview, when asked how the Rieckhallen represented an architecturally suitable space for Friedrich Christian Flick's collection that the Rieckhallen architecturally formed a unity with the contemporary collection of Friedrich Christian Flick. The Rieckhallen was not a strange body, it was actually a wing oriented in this form of the Hamburger Bahnhof. I think that's why it was so painful for Flick that this time, these 17 years, were not used to change the intended use in such a way that it was either a purchase or a long-term arrangement. The possibilities, such as building a tower, among other things, do not correspond to the approach that does justice to this art and the whole concept, in this respect the Rieckhallen and the Flick Collection, were actually a very interrelated form of architecture and art.140
I argue that the interaction of the architectural space and the works of a collection are essential when it comes to the ideal presentation of artworks in space. The contemporary collection of
137 In German: “Sie ließen diese rohe Architektur an Ort und Stelle, so dass nicht die Architektur, sondern die Kunstwerke die Rolle spielten. Und wenn man diese Installationen sieht, erkennt man, wie wichtig und richtig das war.“ See: Op. Cit. Lehmann. 138 See: Op. Cit. Jäger. 139 Ibid. 140 In German: “Die Rieckhallen waren kein Fremdkörper, es war tatsächlich ein Flügel, der sich in dieser Form der Hamburger Bahnhofes orientierte. Ich glaube deshalb ist es für Flick so schmerzhaft gewesen, dass diese Zeit, diese 17 Jahre nicht genutzt worden sind, um den Nutzungszweck in der Weise zu verändern, das es entweder ein Kauf ist oder eine Langfristigkeit. Die Möglichkeiten, wie unteranderem einem Turm zu bauen, das entspricht nicht dem Ansatz, der dieser Kunst und der ganzen Konzeption gerecht wird, insofern waren die Rieckhallen und die Flick Collection, tatsächlich eine sehr aufeinander bezogene Form von Architektur und Kunst.“ See: Ibid.
40 Friedrich Christian Flick includes not only paintings that could be hung on the wall, but also room- sized installations that could never have achieved their effect in a classical museum space, however the former warehouse created this possibility and an ideal location with its raw architecture to present such contemporary collection.
For this reason, an architectural firm was chosen that was able to respond to the needs of contemporary art and explicitly to the needs of the Friedrich Christian Flick Collection. The young architect’s office Kuehn Malvezzi was selected who previously had built the Binding-Halle at the Documenta. All parties involved agreed that the Rieckhallen could be transformed into ideal spaces for contemporary art as unadorned warehouses without incurring undue costs.141 A close discussion between the architects and the museum building department had to be held, as the planning had to take into account all the conservation needs that were necessary for the good presentation of the Friedrich Christian Flick Collection's media diversity. There had to be a close conversation between the architects and the department of museum construction, as the planning had to take into account all the conservation needs that were required for the good presentation of the media diversity of the Friedrich Christian Flick Collection.142
In the immediate vicinity of Hamburger Bahnhof, the location of the Rieckhallen made it a special exhibition venue for Friedrich Christian Flick's contemporary collection. It was also in line with the framework developed at that time in Berlin by the Staatlichen Museen. The aim was to construct museum quarters over the centuries in order not to create arbitrary extensions of the cultural landscape, but rather to profile the traditional museum quarters by reinforcing the focal points already present there. The division was already then: the all-contemporary Hamburger Bahnhof, the all-modern Kulturforum, the intimate private collections of modernism in Charlottenburg opposite the Palace of Charlottenburg, the art history of the 1900s and its predecessors on the Museum Island and the non-European cultures and arts in the Palace district, built opposite the Museum Island, where the former City Palace is now housing the Humboldt Forum. Schuster expressed how perfectly the collection fitted the Nationalgalerie. “This is the blueprint for the state museums, which even the Flick collection, as one of the largest private collections of contemporary art, would fit into the right place.”143
The Rieckhallen and Freidrich Christian Flick's collection were an architectural perfect match, but now this relationship is coming to an end. Based on the evidence of all parties involved; the
141 See: Op. Cit. Schuster, 10. 142 Ibid. 143 Ibid.
41 unresolved ownership of the Hamburger Bahnhof, the demolition of the Rieckhallen, as well as the departure of the Friedrich Christian Flick Collection in September 2021, are of the belief that it was not their fault. To be sure, there was a chance for each party: the City of Berlin could have made the Senate aware that the Hamburger Bahnhof has been a museum for more than 100 years, and likewise the City of Berlin and the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz had the chance to ensure that the Rieckhallen were not marked as residential and office space in the development plan. These two scenarios are completely independent of the fact that the federal government sold the properties without informing the parties involved: the city of Berlin, the responsible ministries and the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz.
There were efforts from the investor side in 2014 to build a multi-story new museum building as a replacement for the Rieckhallen, this contradicted not only Friedrich Christian Flick, but also Klaus- Dieter Lehmann made it clear that the collection and the Rieckhallen are an ideal unit. It is not possible to replace the Rieckhallen with a standard new building like suggested by the CA-immo.
Certainly, the architecture of the Hamburger Bahnhof was well adapted to present contemporary art, as the exhibitions are mostly spacious works; here they were unfolding and truly come into their own. In addition, took the Hamburger Bahnhof an important role at the time, that they began to show contemporary art and pursued to bring important private contemporary art collections to the Nationalgalerie in order to make the contemporary art accessible to the public. They drew up clear contracts with the private collectors, which placed them alone in charge of the curatorial direction. In closing, the Rieckhallen and the collection of Christian Friedrich Flick represented a unique option and other possibilities currently under consideration cannot replace this harmony of the collection and the Rieckhallen. If no appropriate solution is found, the collection will leave Berlin in September 2021.
3.1.3 Collection
The Friedrich Christian Flick Collection is one of the most important contemporary collections in Europe, which is distinguished by its high quality. Since 2004 till now the collection is accomendatetd in the Rieckhallen of the Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin. In addition, it has an enormous concentration of works and was collected with a museum character, making the collection ideally suited for presentation in public museums. First, the collector himself is briefly introduced, followed by a presentation of the most important artists and groups of works in the Friedrich Christian Flick Collection, then the problems and potentials that both sides saw in concluding the contract with
42 each other, and finally why the collection is ideally suited to the holdings of the Hamburger Bahnhof. The essence of this paragraph is to demonstrate the special importance of this collection for the public sphere and how well a collaboration between private collectors and public museums can function in terms of content, so that both Friedrich Christian Flick and the Hamburger Bahnhof live up to their expectations.
This section starts with a short introduction to Friedrich Christian Flick. The collector was born in Sulzbach-Rosenberg in Bavaria in 1944 and is a collector of contemporary European and American art, he has long lived in Switzerland and is a well-known person in the international art world. Repeatedly, Friedrich Christian Flick lent significant pieces of his artists to major exhibitions in Europe and the United States of America. However, before the Hamburger Bahnhof exhibition in September 2004, no full exhibition of his collection had ever been put on display. It is a great opportunity for all involved, both the Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin, that the collection came to them, and the collector himself, who could now finally make his art completely accessible to the public and in parallel he had to face his family history and the public got access to this high-quality collection. The then-General Director of the Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin, Peter-Klaus Schuster described it as follows: “The collection thus grew into a mythology, in terms of its uniqueness, its variety, and its sheer scale, into which the collector, too, became interwoven, so problematic for recent German history.”144 It was only through the art collection that the discourse became possible to come to terms with the family past of Freidrich Christian Flick.
The collection of Friedrich Christian Flick comprises a very large body of works. The collection includes about 2500 works by 150 artists from the 20th and 21st centuries. It is an accumulation of similar objects that are connected with a logical and comprehensible collecting concept. The collection is built on artworks from the 1960s onwards and they are largely arranged around three collection blocks. The art of the second half of the century forms the starting point and focus of the show, with some historically significant pieces in classical modernism. While the collection is largely complete in these areas, the collector's ongoing focus is predominantly directed towards contemporary art with an eye on the 21st century. It consists mainly of works by European and North American artists, but also Asian artists.145 Due to its high quality and the dimensions of the collection, it is justified and necessary to display it in public.
144 In German: “Die Sammlung entwickelt sich somit im Hinblick auf ihre Besonderheit, ihre Vielfalt und ihre schiere Größe zu einer Legende, in die auch der Sammler, mit dem für die jüngste deutsche Geschichte so problematisch hinein verwoben wurde.“ See: Op. Cit. Schuster, 9. 145 See: Friedrich Christian Flick Collection, “Sammlungskonzept.”
43 The collection is formed by three collection blocks. There is the block of artworks and work complexes that deal with the themes of extreme violence, sexuality and pornography: this block shows a world of obsessions, a world of surveillance verging on repression. Here, the Friedrich Christian Flick Collection includes artists such as Bruce Nauman, Paul McCarthy and Mike Kelly. In their works, they all reflect a totalitarian society with alienation and violent reactions. Complementary to this is the second block of the Friedrich Christian Flick Collection, in which an almost cheerful and playful as well as subversive wisdom is depicted in works which execute completely unorthodox and anti-authoritarian changes of style paired with Dadaist irony and a philosophical ramification. Representative of this second block are artists such as Dieter Roth, Martin Kippenberger, Peter Fischli David Weiss or Pipilotti Rist. The third element is the world's accumulated memories as it is, as it was, and what it was deformed for. Representatives of this are extensive photo cycles by Thomas Struth, Thomas Ruff, Wolfgang Tilmans or the photo staging by Jeff Wall as well as the huge room installations by Jason Rhoades.146
The German curator, art collector and art consultant Heiner Bastian described the Friedrich Christian Flick Collection as a collection that derives its power from its contradictions: "It is the boundlessness of this reality that forces the most recent art to degrade itself. Its tragedy knows no more promises, no strangeness, no beyond. Separation and rupture dominate this collection."147 These three blocks contradict each other, the brutal sexuality, the ironic anti-authoritarian creeds and the different perspective views on the world. From the beginning, the collection was structured around these three themes. At this point, it would be interesting to understand how these thematic blocks were selected and what meaning they hold for the collector. It can only be assumed that Friedrich Christian Flick found it essential to deal with social and socio-critical themes. His preference seems to be for works that are complex in content, but which also fulfil a certain aesthetic requirement, as do the works of Bruce Nauman.
The Friedrich Christian Collection covers works from all media, drawing, printing and painting to sculpture and the atmosphere, photography, video and film. The collection also includes works by artists such as Paul McCarthy, Peter Fischli/David Weiss and Stan Douglas who focus especially on large scale: intricate installations as well as complex spaces for film. The primarily focus is on classical modernist positions that are closely connected to artists of the next century within the collection, to works and groups of works by contemporary artists, including such artists as Stan Douglas, Isa
146 See: Op. Cit. Schuster, 9. 147 In German: “Es ist die Grenzenlosigkeit dieser Realität, welche die jüngste Kunst zur Entwürdigung zwingt. Deren Tragik kennt keine Versprechen mehr, keine Fremdheit, kein Jenseits. Die Trennung und der Bruch beherrschen diese Sammlung.“ See: Bastian, “Jetzt sprechen die Bilder: Ein Gang durch die Sammlung Flick.“
44 Genzken, Rodney Graham, Andreas Hofer, Jason Rhoades, Pipilotti Rist, Anri Sala, Beat Streuli, Wolfgang Tillmans and Jeff Wall. There are comprehensive blocks of classical works of art in the field of photography, such as works by Albert Renger-Patzsch, Walker Evans, Alfred Stieglitz and Bauhaus photography. These works form a point of departure, as it were, for photographic attitudes that can also be found in the collection, such as those of Bernd and Hilla Becher and their students, but also for conceptual photography, for example by Vito Acconci, Dan Graham or Gordon Matta-Clark.148 With primarily German artist such as Sigmar Polke, Gerhard Richter, Georg Baselitz and Blinky Palermo, but also with younger ones such as Neo Rauch, Daniel Richter and Luc Tuymans, the medium of painting, which takes its starting point with Francis Picabia, is present.149
The fact that the collections are linked to classical modernism is something very rare and very unique. Peter-Klaus Schuster describes that in addition to the size of the collection, it was extraordinary that such a contemporary collection also took up targeted accents in classical modernism. He further outlined that the collection is intrinsically reflective, something that is completely unusual for such a purposefully contemporary collection: Its foundations in classical modernism with specific references, for example, to the Miseria hominis by Alberto Giacometti. Within the collection, the subversively protean pictorial worlds of Kippenberger are preluded by the almost obscene stylistic changes of Picabia, as is his Dadaism by Schwitters. And finally, for that side of the artistic documentation of the world as it is, there is a collection of classical photography up to the New Objectivity of a Renger-Patzsch.150
The complexity and diversity of Friedrich Christian Flick's collection, which has just been presented, is becoming evident. Friedrich Christian Flick began collecting art in the mid-1970s during which time he left the family company. He initially received support to build up his collection from the Swiss
148 Ibid. 9. 149 See: Modersohn, “Friedrich Christian Flick: Sammler, 75, reich, sucht Museum.“ 150 In order to better understand the context, here is a brief information on the term “miseria hominis” it is the ranking of man in the Renaissance. The persons who are mentioned in this quote first was Alberto Giacometti (1901 – 1966) was a Swiss sculptor, painter, draftsman and printmaker then the French avant-garde painter, poet and typo graphist Francis Picabia (1879-1953). Thirdly the German artist Kurt Hermann Eduard Karl Julius Schwitters (1887-1948) who worked in different styles and media, including Dadaism, Constructivism, Surrealism, Poetry, Sound, Painting, Sculpture, Graphic Design, Typography, and what became known as Installation Art. Martin Kippenberger (1953 – 1997) he was a German artist and sculptor renowned for his extremely prolific output and lastly the german photographer Albert Renger-Patzsch (1897 – 1966) who was mainly associated with the New Objectivity. In German: “(..) Ihre Grundlagen in der klassischen Moderne mit gezielten Ausgriffen etwa auf die Miseria hominis bei Alberto Giacometti. Mit Ausgriffen auf die geradezu obszönen Stilwechsel von Picabia werden innerhalb der Sammlung die subversiv proteischen Bildwelten von Kippenberger präludiert wie sein Dadaismus durch Schwitters. Und schließlich gibt es für jene Seite der künstlerischen Dokumentation der Welt, wie sie ist, eine Sammlung klassischer Fotografie bis hin zur Neuen Sachlichkeit eines Renger-Patzsch.“ See: Op. Cit. Schuster, 9.
45 artist and curator Stefan Banz, who later withdrew his support on Friedrich Christian Flick because the collection was developing too much in the direction of blue chip art.151 The author of DIE ZEIT International, August Modersohn notes in the article “Friedrich Christian Flick: Sammler, 75, Reich, sucht Museum” that the collection may have grown too quickly: "On average, Flick bought a new work of art every day.152
In the 1990s the Swiss art dealer Iwan Wirth became his permanent advisor.153 Wirth supported Friedrich Christian Flick in building up and expanding his modern and contemporary art collection. Hauser & Wirth represented artists such as Jason Rhoades, Paul McCarthy, Stan Douglas, Rachel Khedoori, Raoul de Keyserm, Luc Tuymans, Swiss Pipilotti Rist, Fischli/Weiss or Roman Signer, all these artists can also be found in the collection of Friedrich Christian Flick.154 Peter-Klaus Schuster described the collection of Friedrich Christian Flick as a project in which all those involved were very conscious of what the collection was to achieve. “This collection, as intense and rapturous as it must have been gathered over more than a decade, was and it was powerful in its own right. This collector and his advisors knew what they were doing.”155
Such large collection has a broader base than a smaller collection and thus is less reflective of the individual opinion of the collector. Gabrielle Knapstein explained in the conversation that everyone involved was aware that it took a great effort on the part of the museum to house such a large collection, but also a collection with the loaded name Flick, in the Nationalgalerie. The quality of the works that have come here through this collection is extraordinarily high. That is, of course, the decisive consideration, if we were offered another collection with a thousand works of which we were only interested in a hundred, then we would certainly not make such an effort. It's clearly a question of quality, just as it was with the Marx Collection and the Marzona Collection, the quality of the private collections decides to what extent they are also suitable for a museum narrative.156
151 'Blue chip,' in the art world, refers to desirable art that is continuously lucrative and intended to retain or rise in value independent of general economic ups and downs. 152 In German: “Im Schnitt kaufte Flick jeden Tag ein neues Kunstwerk.“ See: Op. Cit. Modersohn. 153 Hauser & Wirth are one of the largest and most renowned galleries for modern and contemporary art in the world. See: https://www.hauserwirth.com 154 See: Landolt, Schindler, “Flicks Erbe in Zürich.“ 155 In German: ”Diese Sammlung, so intensiv und raptisch sie in über einem Jahrzehnt gesammelt worden sein muss, sie war und ihr ihrer selbst mächtig. Dieser Sammler und seine Berater wussten, was sie tun.“ See: Op. Cit. Schuster, 9. 156 In German: Die Qualität der Werke, die durch dieses Konvolut hierhergekommen sind, hat eben eine außerordentlich hohe Qualität. Das ist natürlich die entscheidende Abwägung, wenn wir eine andere Sammlung angeboten bekommen mit tausend Werken, von denen uns aber nur hundert interessieren, dann würden wir so ein Aufwand sicher nicht machen. Es geht hier eindeutig um die Qualitätsfrage, genauso war das auch bei der
46 The significance of the Friedrich Christian Flick Collection was also explained by Joachim Jäger, who described it as a collection which refers to currently important themes: “Mr. Flick's works were not simple works, artists like Bruce Nauman who ask very existential questions, so it is not a decorative collection at all, but a very challenging collection.”157 The Friedrich Christian Flick Collection shows an affinity of interest in artists to the Nationalgalerie and its associated collections in the Hamburger Bahnhof. The Hamburger Bahnhof wanted to acquire works of art but was unable to do so due to the high sales prices of the works. Fortunately, some of these works were then found in the collection of Friedrich Christian Flick. This made the collection an ideal cooperation partner for the Hamburger Bahnhof. The private collection of Friedrich Christian Flick was designed for the Nationalgalerie, Gabrielle Knapstein emphasizes in the interview when asked what the determining factor for the decision for a collection are, that the collections always have to fit the respective museums and their holdings, since private collections can have a different structure. In the case of the Marx, Marzona and Flick collections, together they represent a great deal of the art history of Europe and North America, with a focus on the 1960s up to the present.158 Due to its diversity and opulence, the collection was therefore particularly well suited to complement and continue the holdings of the Nationalgalerie.
Leaving the curatorial task to the public museum is essential in order to fulfil the educational function of a public institution. In the conversation, the director of the Hamburger Bahnhof, also mentioned that in contrast to many other private collectors, Friedrich Christian Flick took the view that the art historical expertise lies with the museum. Kanpstein described Friedrich Christian Flick as curious and interested because he wanted to see what was developed with the holdings and also took part in it, but it was always very clear to him that the curatorial responsibility lay with Hamburger Bahnhof.159
The collector understood what possibilities the public institution offers for his collection. The research and the corresponding selection of the exhibitions lay with the Nationalgalerie, that is a significant point and stands in contrast to other collectors.160 Looking back, Lehmann described in the interview, that Friedrich Christian Flick saw the potential in the large institution of the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz. "I think he saw the chance that in this complex of a large institution like the
Sammlung Marx und bei der Sammlung Marzona, es entscheidet die Qualität der privaten Sammlungsbestände, inwieweit sie sich auch für eine museale Erzählung eignen.“ See: Knapstein, Interview. 19 January 2021. 157 In German: “Die Werke von Herrn Flick waren keine einfachen Werke, Künstler wie Bruce Nauman, die sehr existenzielle Fragen stellen, es ist also keineswegs eine dekorative Sammlung, sondern eine sehr fordernde Sammlung.“ See: Op. Cit. Jäger. 158 See: Op. Cit. Knapstein. 159 Ibid. 160 See: Op. Cit. Jäger.
47 Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin, he could build up so many references to his own collection, so that a much greater impact could be achieved than if it was an isolated collection."161
This aspect not only applies to the Friedrich Christian Flick Collection, but to the entire institution of the Nationalgalerie; Lehmann was very concerned as earlier mentioned about the contract, which was assembled with Erich Marx by Wolf-Dieter Dube, he therefore adjusted the contract when he started his position as the president of the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz.162 In terms that the works of the collections are curated by the curators of the Nationalgalerie with no exception. They provided exhibitions with changing focal points to present the content to the public. In the case of the Friedrich Christian Flick Collection the exhibitions with his works are mainly shown in the Rieckhallen, which have been converted for this purpose, but it is also contractually agreed that the works from this collection can also be shown in other houses of the Nationalgalerie.163
The collector was not only known in the world of collectors, the name Flick was also familiar in politics and and he took advantage of this to make his collection public. Friedrich Christian Flick's collection was established through his good political contacts with Klaus Wowereit, the Mayor of Berlin at the time. Friedrich Christian Flick intended to make his collection public and was actively looking for opportunities, Berlin was to be one of them. It was a win-win situation for both sides: the Nationalgalerie needed contemporary art collections and Friedrich Christian Flick was keen to share his collection with the public.
The first time Friedrich Christian Flick made an appearance for the Nationalgalerie was at the annual meeting of the "Verein der Freunde der Nationalgalerie" (Association of Friends of the National Gallery) in February 2002, where he was to take part as a guest. The collector had many contacts to other collectors, individual members of the "Verein der Freunde der Nationalgalerie" and was in talks with the then Governing Mayor of Berlin Klaus Wowereit. In May 2002, Wowereit sent a comprehensive dossier with images of numerous works from the Friedrich Christian Flick Collection to the Nationalgalerie, asking whether such a collection of contemporary art could be of interest to the Nationalgalerie. The dossier was very convincing for Schuster and Blume, it contained artists like Bruce Nauman, who are elementary cornerstones of the Friedrich Christian Flick Collection. Important works of Nauman are already present in the Marx Collection. Schuster outlined that these
161 In German: “Ich glaube er hat die Chance gesehen, dass er in diesem Komplex einer großen Institution wie es die staatlichen Museen zu Berlin sind, soviel Bezüge zu seiner eigenen Sammlung aufgebaut werden konnten, damit eine wesentlich größere Ausstrahlung erreicht werden konnte, als wenn es eine isolierte Sammlung ist.“ See: Op. Cit. Lehmann. 162 More information can be found in the chapter Hamburger Bahnhof. See: Op. Cit. Lehmann. 163 See: Op. Cit. Jäger.
48 works, which are in the dossier of the Friedrich Christian Flick Collection, had long been unfulfilled acquisition wishes of the Nationalgalerie.164
Thus, the dossier was met with great interest at the Nationalgalerie, so that a conversation was initiated by Wowereit between Friedrich Christian Flick and the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz.165 The talks on the part of the Nationalgalerie, the Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin and thus the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz were led by Klaus-Dieter Lehmann, the President of the Foundation. Lehmann's task was to approve all steps towards realization and to provide the political sponsors with the necessary information. Peter-Klaus Schuster described Lehmann's role as follows: “He was the first to approve the joint project and all steps towards its realization and to convey this to the political sponsors of the Foundation. As events unfolded, the president became more and more of a central figure and his head office the administrative staff unit of the project.”166
The talks went well, so the question of a suitable building for the Friedrich Christian Flick Collection moved onto the agenda, a challenging task given the size of the collection. Eugen Blume was the first to mention the Rieckhallen as a place for this large contemporary collection. At Art Basel 2002, as a potential place to display his collection, the Rieckhallen was presented to Friedrich Christian Flick. Shortly after, Friedrich Christian Flick traveled to Berlin to see the situation in Berlin for himself. As Schuster described it in the exhibition catalogue, Friedrich Christian Flick was immediately fascinated by the Rieckhallen proximity to the Hamburger Bahnhof and the contemporary art collections there. He recognized the opportunity for unique synergy, in the Rieckhallen themselves, their sheer size, as well as the possibility of conceiving of them as a second wing of the Hamburger Bahnhof.167
The Nationalgalerie discussed in parallel also with the collectors whose collections are already in the Hamburger Bahnhof. Erich Marx was pleased about the prospect of his collection being placed next to that of Friedrich Christian Flick in the future. The positive feedback from collector Marx and also Berggruen, both of whose collections were already at the Nationalgalerie building, seemed to further strengthen the initiative with the Friedrich Christian Flick Collection.168
164 See: Op. Cit. Schuster, 9. 165 This is explained in more detail in the chapter 4.2.2.1 166 In German: “Er hatte als erster das gemeinsame Vorhaben und alle Schritte zu seiner Verwirklichung zu billigen und den politischen Trägern der Stiftung zu vermitteln. Im Laufe der Ereignisse wurden der Präsident immer mehr zu einer zentralen Figur und seine Hauptverwaltung zur administrativen Stabstelle des Projektes.“ See: Op. Cit. Schuster, 9. 167 Ibid. Schuster, 9. 168 More information on Hans Berggruen and his role for the Nationalgalerie in relation to the Friedrich Christian Flick Collection can be found in the chapter Arrival.
49 The then-President of the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Lehmann, described the signing of the contract as an ‘engagement’ of seven years in order to get to know each other. It was important to Lehmann to discuss issues concerning the handling of the Friedrich Christian Flick Collection, both in terms of the size of the collection and the Flick family name, during the seven years. “That means we then had these seven years to acquire exhibitions, to set priorities, to examine our own independence. These were really all things that we wanted to exhaust in order to make sure that we would really achieve everything when we entered into such a commitment.”169 Lehmann describes here very clearly that it was a test to see whether the cooperation between the collector Friedrich Christian Flick and the public museum Hamburger Bahnhof works. This was followed by an extension of the contract by another ten years until 2021.
Great collections of art belong in the public domain, as do those with a prejudiced German history. After all, no one is helped if high-quality art collections lie dormant in depots. A public museum is even obliged to conduct the discourse of the past and to ensure that these collections and the past are accessible to the public. My argument is that collections with a prejudiced German past belong in a public museum, in order to make the discussion present and to deal with the past. One additional link between the Friedrich Christian Flick Collections and existing work within the Nationalgalerie was a commitment to exploring and confronting the German past.
The German history is always closely connected with museum work in Berlin wrote Peter-Klaus Schuster, in the exhibition catalog for the first exhibition of the Friedrich Christian Flick Collection in the Hamburger Bahnhof. Berlin museum history has always been German history as well, with all its hopes and upheavals. This has been true from the very beginning, especially for the Nationalgalerie, and the fierce debate about the collection of Friedrich Christian Flick as a long-term loan for the National Museums in Berlin once again confirms this close link between German history and Berlin museum history.170
169 In German: “Das heißt wir hatten dann diese 7 Jahre Zeit, Ausstellungen zu akquirieren, Schwerpunkte zu setzten, unsere eigene Unabhängigkeit zu prüfen. Das waren wirklich alles Dinge, die wir ausreizen wollten, um sicher zu gehen das wir all das auch wirklich erreichen, wenn wir eine solche Bindung eingehen auch wirklich erreichen.“ See: Op. Cit. Lehmann. 170 In German: “Berliner Museumsgeschichte war immer auch deutsche Geschichte mit all ihren Hoffnungen und Verwerfungen. Das gilt von Anfang an, für die Nationalgalerie zumal, und die heftig geführte Debatte um die Sammlung von Friedrich Christian Flick als langjährige Leihgabe für die Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin bestätigt erneut diese enge Verknüpfung zwischen deutscher Geschichte und Berliner Museumsgeschichte.“ See: Op. Cit. Schuster, 7.
50 The moment the collection was shown to the public, the Flick family history was also to be dealt with, the collector's family past was just as present as his collection. It was also the Nationalgalerie’s duty to the public to come to terms with this topic. That is one of the tasks of museums, to research history, to present it, and then to discuss it. This was probably a stroke of luck for Friedrich Christian Flick, because the public institution had this obligation towards the public that it had to fulfil. As a private person with a private museum, Friedrich Christian Flick could have evaded this discourse more easily. Thus, at Hamburger Bahnhof, the Flick family history, but also the extraordinary art collection, was presented to the public for the first time in changing exhibitions.
The grandfather Friedrich Flick, who was active in the Nazi armaments industry, and the uncle Friedrich Karl Flick, whose tax affair made negative headlines, do not exactly make the family name shine in a positive light. The collector's motivation was also based on the history of the past. Modersohn's article quotes a personal written document, a message that Friedrich Christian Flick sent to an uncle living in Austria at the end of 1997, in which he asks him for money to finance a museum. It is quoted: "(his) children and descendants will one day build a meaningful way to identify with our name.“ 171 Friedrich Christian Flick seemed to have wanted to add a positive story to the name Flick.
He tried to implement this in Berlin, there was no more talk of an isolated private Friedrich Christian Flick Museum, unlike Zurich. Instead, it was about the concept of making a collection available to the public under the care of the Nationalgalerie and its curators as a long-term loan, specifically in a space where the Nationalgalerie itself was already present with its contemporary art collections.
Where Zurich struggled, Berlin seemed to have succeeded. Under the leadership of the public institution of the Nationalgalerie, which is part of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin and is in turn part of the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz, a gigantic public cultural institution, the Hamburger Bahnhof became a display of a private collection. The museum in all definitive questions, must obtain the consent of its political backers and is also likely to be permanently subject to public observation, like hardly any other private organization, and is therefore to obtain the consent.172
171 In German: "(seinen) Kindern und Nachkommen einmal eine sinnvolle Möglichkeit zur Identifikation mit unserem Namen aufbauen.“ See: Op. Cit. Modersohn. 172 In the interview Hermann Parzinger hinted at the transformation of the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz, saying the institution is a huge apparatus that is sometimes difficult to operate. He explains that the Nationalgalerie should continue to belong together, but that there should not be only one head, he sees the benefit in strengthening the autonomy of the individual houses and no longer to be responsible centrally. See: Op. Cit. Parzinger.
51 When it became evident that the collection could be shown in Berlin, the Flick family's past became relevant. There were voices advocating that the past of the Flick family should first be dealt with and only then should the art be shown. In the case of the Friedrich Christian Flick Collection, the exhibition enabled the discourse of the family past of Friedrich Christian Flick. The then General Director of the National Museums in Berlin Peter-Klaus Schuster wrote: We are the moratorium, and we enable at least seven years of discussion, which is by no means to be denied by the Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin, which definitely lack the expertise of historians and contemporary historians. However, the Nationalgalerie can promote these discussions in the Hamburger Bahnhof and organize ever new events of those who are able to discuss these problems publicly with far greater competence. No one can predict the outcome of such a moratorium on discussion in the Hamburger Bahnhof, but it will be a place for learning about German history.173
As previously explained the importance to present the Friedrich Christian Flick Collection in relation to the name Flick in a public institution; now the significance of the contemporary collection of Friedrich Christian Flick for the Nationalgalerie and for Berlin will be elucidated. Public museums have the ability to professionally relate various collections to each other. In this way, they ensure that collections can be made accessible to the public from different points of view and on diverse themes, and the collector always receives new perspectives on his or her own collection.
The Friedrich Christian Flick Collection was ideal to relate to other collections in the Nationalgalerie. It was also a basic requirement for the Nationalgalerie to relate the collection to other collections and artists. In contrast to his plans for a private museum, which was the idea for Zurich, Friedrich Christian Flick saw this as a way of making his collection more versatile, so that the collection could be involved in different themes. This is difficult to do in a closed collection of a private museum or in a collection determined by the collector to remain exclusively together. Lehmann emphasized that it was a condition for the Nationalgalerie to relate the collection to other collections. I made it very clear to Flick that we assume that we relate this collection to other collections and artists, and he understood that this is actually a huge opportunity. (...) that questions that simply exist in the discussion of art for this time can be dealt with much better with this
173 In German: “Wir sind das Moratorium und wir ermöglichen mindestens sieben Jahre lang die Diskussion, die keineswegs von den Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin zu bestreiten ist, denen die Fachkompetenz von Historikern und Zeithistorikern durchaus fehlt. Die Nationalgalerie kann diese Diskussionen im Hamburger Bahnhof jedoch befördern und immer neue Veranstaltungen jener organisieren, die diese Probleme mit weit größerer Kompetenz öffentlich zu erörtern vermögen. Das Ergebnis eines solchen Diskussionsmoratoriums im Hamburger Bahnhof kann niemand voraussagen, aber es wird ein Ort des Lernens über deutsche Geschichte sein.“ See: Op. Cit. Schuster, 11.
52 concept, and yet we know that the core of all these possibilities lies in the transfer of the Flick Collection. So, he hasn't lost his opportunities as a collector, but he has taken advantage of the opportunities that we have made by embedding it in an overall show of artistic possibilities.174
In Berlin Friedrich Christian Flick faced these discussion topics, as Jäger described it in the interview, as very fruitful collaboration. Jäger emphasizes that Friedrich Christian Flick was open to the ideas of the institution and at the same time the collector let the institution deal with this collection freely as many collectors don’t. It is common to have collectors who have very narrow ideas about how their collection can be shown, and that was not the case here at all.175 Which is understandable, because every art collection is also something personal and the collector has his own history and emotions possibly in the collection, however in a public institution like the Hamburger Bahnhof is, the presentation should take place in an objective way.
Friedrich Christian Flick was different: he respected Eugen Blume as a person and as an expert in his field of art history. Even if this should not actually be surprising, to show human respect and appreciation for one's counterpart, it is not a self-evident scenario in the art world and in an avoidably different power relationship, the ‘patron’ and the ‘beneficiary’. Here, Friedrich Christian Flick has demonstrated his humanity and interest in art as he also showed in terms of his family history: an open minded engaging in discourse. The collector was interested in art and wanted to learn from it and with it. You really have to give Flick credit for that, he was someone who really learned, who wanted to learn. The relationship with Eugen Blume, who was the curator of the Hamburger Bahnhof, that was such a close relationship about the questions of artistic considerations that I was amazed at how openly he entered into this connection with the curator, where the curator was the pretender, so to speak. That was really an amazing experience.176
174 In German: “Ich habe mit Flick sehr deutlich thematisiert, dass wir davon ausgehen, dass wir diese Sammlung in Beziehung setzten zu anderen Sammlungen und Künstlern und da hat er Begriffen, dass darin eigentlich die riesige Chance besteht. (…), dass man Fragestellungen, die einfach in der Kunstauseinandersetzung für diese Zeit bestehen, mit diesem Konzept sehr viel besser zu leisten sind und trotzdem weiß man, dass der Kern dieser ganzen Möglichkeiten in der Überlassung der Sammlung Flick besteht. Also er hat nicht damit seine Möglichkeiten als Sammler verloren, sondern er hat die Chancen genutzt, die wir mit dem Einbetten in eine Gesamtschau künstlerischer Möglichkeiten gemacht haben.“ See: Op. Cit. Lehmann. 175 See: Op. Cit. Jäger. 176 In German: “Das muss man Flick wirklich zugutehalten, er war jemand der wirklich gelernt hat, der lernen wollte. Das Verhältnis zu Eugen Blume, das war der Kurator des Hamburger Bahnhofs, das war ein so enges Verhältnis über die Fragen von künstlerischen Überlegungen, das ich erstaunt war, wie offen er sich in diese Verbindung zu dem Kurator begeben hat, wo der Kurator sozusagen der Vorgebender war. Das war wirklich ein erstaunliches Erlebnis.“ See: Op. Cit. Lehmann.
53 The price increase for contemporary works of art is enormous and it is questionable who is still able to spend these prices on art. Gabrielle Knapstein described in the Interview that the Friedrich Christian Flick Collection was an opportunity to discuss the art market itself and the problematic acquisition budgets of public museums in Berlin. These themes were already in the air at the beginning of the 2000s and are still important today almost 20 years later. Since Friedrich Christian Flicks Collection has been a widely discussed case, also questions like; What funds are flowing into the acquisition of contemporary art into this art market? And where does the money actually come from that pumps these sums into the art market? The prices on the art market increased in the past few years due to the auction business. Knapstein pointed out the “(…) gap between what public museums can collect and what private collectors can collect is widening in a way.” 177 This was a debate that could be conducted with the help of the Friedrich Christian Flick Collection, probably at a time when it was not yet as present as it is today, when one looks at the booming auction market, where prices are achieved that are inhuman to imagine.178
This situation in the early 1990s was a unique one for Berlin. Reunification, the still visible damage of the Second World War and the associated open spaces in Berlin, a European capital, made the city an attractive territory. Especially for art and culture, Berlin offered fertile ground. There were many gallery owners who saw the potential and thus the necessity of establishing a branch of their gallery in Berlin.
The art scene has changed in the 2020s from the 1990s. To open a new branch encourages new artists to be approached by the dealer. Harry Blain, the British art dealer, opened the Haunch of Vension gallery branch in Berlin in September 2007. His main intention in this case was not to sell art, for that there are cities with already eager clients, but Berlin had a vibrant art scene and Blain saw the potential in representing some of these artists in his galleries in Zurich and London. 179 Klaus- Dieter Lehmann described in the interview when asked what impact the departure of the Friedrich Christian Flick Collection will have for Berlin as a very similarly phenomenon as Blain. Berlin aroused the interest of many people from the culture field, after reunification and around the turn of the
177 On German: “Die Schere zwischen dem, was öffentliche Museen sammeln können, und dem, was private Sammler sammeln können, in einer Weise aufgeht.“ See: Op. Cit. Knapstein. 178 At this point, the following experiment can be considered. Who pays a decaying shark $12 million? Steve Cohen is an example of the buyer of the financial sector that drives the high-end contemporary art market. In Greenwich, Connecticut, he is the director of SAC Capital Advisors. He oversees assets of $11 billion and is said to gain $500 million annually. It is important to understand how rich really are wealthy to place the $12 million price tag in perspective. Assume that Mr. Cohen has a net worth of $4 billion to go with an annual income before tax of $500 million. His gross revenue is just over $16 million a week, or $90,000 an hour, even a 10 percent rate of return - far less than he currently receives on the assets he controls. The shark cost him five days' income. See: Thompson, “The $12 million stuffed shark: The curious economics of contemporary art”,3. 179 See: Thompson, “The $12 million stuffed shark: The curious economics of contemporary art,” 41 - 42.
54 century, but times have now changed twenty years later, this urge for everyone to want to go to Berlin is no longer present. As Lehmann explained "Well, I have to say that I had a good time, the 2000s were such that we had a high number of enquiries from interested collectors, but that has changed in the meantime, Berlin is no longer necessarily the big magnet to which all collectors aspire.”180 At the end of the 1990s at the beginning of the 2000s important collections came to Berlin and to the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz, such as Berggruned, Newton, Schaf-Gerstenberg. Lehmann continued that “today it is more the case that Berlin is experiencing emigration. So, you have to be very careful with collectors in order to really get them excited about Berlin again.”181
Based on the evidence public museums are nowadays dependent on loans from private collectors, as their low purchasing budgets are not sufficient to acquire the quantity and quality of works needed to continue the museum's work at a high level of quality. A contemporary museum without contemporary art functions only to a limited extent, so loans of private collections are of great importance for public museums. However, these permanent loans can present the museum with unexpected challenges if the owner of the works decides to withdraw his collection at the end of the contract. It is still only a loan and not a donation or property of the institution.
Private collections need to be donated to the public museums since the donations are the works that are permanently preserved in public museums in order for them to continue their museum work, even if the private collections of the collectors are withdrawn. In spring 2008, 166 works from the Friedrich Christian Flick collection were donated to the Nationalgalerie by the collector, including outstanding works by Georg Baselitz, Bruce Nauman, Paul McCarthy, Dieter Roth, Richard Artschwager, Isa Genzken, Wolfgang Tillmans, Stan Douglas, Rodney Graham, Pipilotti Rist, Urs Fischer and Christoph Büchel. The collector chose excellent and representative pieces from the artist's overall oeuvre that, on the other hand, meaningfully compliment the Hamburger Bahnhof's holdings.182
The fact that the Friedrich Christian Flick Collection will leave Berlin in September of this year, 2021, has been widely discussed in the press and in politics since the beginning of last year. The planned demolition of the Rieckhallen, which houses the Friedrich Christian Flick Collection, means that the
180 In German: “Also, da muss ich sagen, da hatte ich eine gute Zeit, also die 2000 Jahre, die waren so, dass wir eine hochwertige Anzahl an Anfragen hatten, von interessierten Sammlern, aber das hat sich inzwischen geändert, Berlin ist nicht mehr unbedingt der große Magnet, zu dem alle Sammler streben.“ See: Op. Cit. Lehmann. 181 In German: “Heute ist es eher so, dass Berlin Abwanderung zu verzeichnen hat. Also, man muss schon schauen, dass man da sehr sorgfältig mit Sammlern umgeht, um sie auch wirklich für Berlin in dieser Weise wieder zu begeistern.“ See: Ibid. 182 See: Friedrich Christian Flick Collection. “Schenkung an Berlin.“
55 once explicitly chosen location for one of the largest and most important private collections of contemporary art will disappear. Friedrich Christian Flick has therefore decided to bring his collection back to Zurich and not to renew the contract with the Nationalgalerie. His collection manager, Patrick Peternader, reported in a personal conversation in January 2021 that the collection will be first returned to storage in Switzerland.183
It was always the goal of the Nationalgalerie and the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz, emphasizes Klaus-Dieter Lehmann, to find a permanent solution with the Friedrich Christian Flick Collection. As President of the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz, he led the negotiations with Friedrich Christian Flick in 2003, and even then, it was important for the institution to conduct the negotiations on the basis of finding a permanent solution. As the current director of the Hamburger Bahnhof, Gabriele Knapstein can give a first-hand account. She also emphasized that the goal was to develop a permanent solution for the Friedrich Christian Flick Collection. Mr. Flick has observed what we are working on here and that it is also designed with a perspective. The situation with the Rieckhallen, which has not yet been clarified and whether it could still have a perspective for the building and the city of Berlin, is still open. That took too long, and Mr. Flick then made his decision. And all I can say is that we still haven't got our act together.184
Gabriele Knapstein also expresses her gratitude toward the collector for making the Friedrich Christian Flick Collection accessible to the public in Berlin for 17 years. She described the importance of considering which private collections to enter into a relationship with and that the factors always have to be decided individually in each case.185 In DIE ZEIT, Modersohn reported in September 2020 that Gabriele Knapstein "is trying to turn the wheel again.”186 She states in the interview conducted by the author in January 2021: "As long as the excavators have not rolled in, we will not give up hope. Maybe the Rieckhallen can be saved from demolition after all."187 Half a year later, she still maintains her statement, which shows clearly how important it would be for her museum that the collection of Friedrich Christian Flick remains.
183 The process is described in more detail in the chapters 'Hamburger Bahnhof' and 'Departure'. 184 In German: “Her Flick hat beobachtet, was wir hier erarbeiten und dass das dieses auch perspektivisch angelegt ist. Die Situation mit den Rieckhallen, die bis jetzt nicht geklärt ist und ob das noch eine Perspektive bekommen könnte für das Haus und die Stadt Berlin ist bis jetzt noch offen. Das hat zu lange gedauert und Herr Flick, hat dann seine Entscheidung getroffen. Und ich kann nur sagen, wir sind immer noch nicht zu ‘Potte‘ gekommen sind.“ See: Op. Cit. Knapstein. 185 Ibid. 186 In German: “Versucht das Rad noch umzudrehen.“ See: Op. Cit. Modersohn. 187 In German: "Solange die Bagger nicht angerollt sind, geben wir die Hoffnung nicht auf. Vielleicht können die Rieckhallen doch noch vor dem Abriss gerettet werden." See: Ibid. Quote by Gabrielle Knapstein.
56
The Senate had every right to sell the property but was probably not aware of the consequences. The art historian and author Boris Pofalla wrote an article for the newspaper Die Welt in June 2020, for which he researched the history of the Hamburger Bahnhof in more detail and focused in particular on the ownership of the site. His research showed that the post-war history of the building is based on a lie, invented by the GDR. The Hamburger Bahnhof came to Berlin through an informal deal negotiated under Cold War conditions. Only the Unification Treaty finally regulated the handling of the former Reichsbahn assets. These assets revert to the federal government upon reunification, paragraph 26 states – ‘unless they have subsequently been dedicated to another purpose with the consent of the Deutsche Reichsbahn’. Since then, courts have repeatedly ruled that assets given to third parties and rededicated after 1945 by the Reichsbahn fell to the users of the buildings and properties. In the particular case of Hamburger Bahnhof and Rieckhallen, either the City of Berlin or the Foundation for the Prussian Cultural Heritage would have been involved.188
Klaus-Dieter Lehmann stated the importance of Friedrich Christian Flicks donation to the Nationalgalerie. The pieces of art have been wisely selected and speak to a mutual appreciation of art. A pivotal piece by Bruce Nauman was among the works, ’Room with my soul out, room that doesn't care’, from 1984, this is Naumans' incredibly important work. Equally, the 'Saloon Theater' of Paul McCarthy, an important work by the American, was a benefit for the Nationalgalerie as was Dieter Roth's core work 'Garden Sculpture.' Lehmann declared that “this donation is the most extensive to date by an individual since the founding of the Nationalgalerie in the 19th century.”189 The interplay of collection and space is necessary to give the works of art their justified power of radiance. Every epoch has its own space ideal for displaying works of art; for contemporary art, robust large rooms are ideal, such as the Rieckhallen for the Friedrich Christian Flick Collection.
CONCLUSION:
The Friedrich Christian Flick Collection is a collection of great opulence and of a high quality, due to the large body of works it reflects less the subjective taste of the collector. The selection of works and groups of works in the collection is precise and arranged around three blocks of works where all have a socially critical approach. The collection was built up from the outset with a collection concept and designed to be accessible to the public, thus giving the collection a museum-like character. In addition to the size and quality of the collection, what was extraordinary was the fact that it was possible to establish very good links between contemporary works and works of classical modernism.
188 See: Op. Cit. Pofalla. 189 Ibid.
57
Friedrich Christian Flick enlisted the support of external professionals, particularly worthy of mention here is the gallery owner Ivan Wirth. Moreover, there was kinship between the collection ideas of the Nationalgalerie and the Friedrich Christian Flick Collection, in that the collection additionally possessed works that the Nationalgalerie had wanted to acquire for a long time and complemented the holdings and the other collections already at the house very well. This led to a permanent loan from collector Friedrich Christian Flick to the Nationalgalerie in 2004 resulted in the size, variety and outstanding quality of the Flick Collection. For seven years, the deal was set. In 2011, the permanent loan agreement issued by Friedrich Christian Flick was extended to September 2021. This fixed permanent loan at Hamburger Bahnhof was periodically extended by new works obtained by Friedrich Christian Flick. The collector funded the conversion into an exhibition building of the former railway station's shipping hall, and the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz undertook to bear the operating costs of the new exhibition room. An agreement that met with approval from both sides.
The fact that the Rieckhallen were located in the immediate vicinity of Hamburger Bahnhof and were also free at the time was an ideal situation. In addition, these halls were simply a perfect location for contemporary art and explicitly an ideal place for the collection of Friedrich Christian Flick. This direct neighborhood made it possible for the various collections and the Nationalgalerie to work together well, especially with regard to linking the contents of the various collections with each other, which was a special situation. It can be assumed that this was one of the important and decisive points in Friedrich Christian Flick's decision to show his collection in the Nationalgalerie. The collector recognized that this offered him the opportunity to present his collection under a wide variety of themes, which would not have been possible with a closed collection, as is often the case with private collections. Friedrich Christian Flick was not one of those collectors who interfered in the curatorial process, even though that was of course part of the contract with him, he stayed in the background but was happy to help when help was needed and was also always interested in what exhibitions were being created with his collection. He believed that the curators should be free to work with his works because they were the experts in that field. The Nationalgalerie always had priority when loans were made to other houses, and the Nationalgalerie also always had priority on the additional works that were acquired if there were several interested parties for a work. This scenario describes an actually 'perfect' private collector, a person who makes their works available so that the curators can use them to create exhibitions for the public.
It is a challenging situation, today even more than in 2000s as the acquisition budgets of the Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin is still very low and the purchase of contemporary art very expensive.
58 The acquisition budgets of the Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin have not decreased, but the financial resources required to acquire the pieces of art have increased significantly. The interesting thing is that the value of a work of art is solely an idealistic one, with few exceptions, the material value of a canvas and the oil paint on it often does not reflect the price of the work. Of course, under no circumstances should the intellectual part of the work by the artist be undervalued here. The only question to be asked is in what millions this intellectual achievement differs and who determines that. In any case, these gigantic prices for contemporary art make it largely impossible today to acquire top pieces for public museums, at auctions or in galleries.
The private collection of Friedrich Christian Flick is ideal for the Hamburger Bahnhof. The public institution has the competent and trained staff to judge the quality of the artworks and the collection as a whole. However, the institution itself is not in a position to acquire high-priced works of art to the same extent as Freidrich Christian Flick. The cooperation between collector and museum in this case has advantages for both, it brings the quality of the collection of Friedrich Christian Flick through the quality of the exhibitions organised by the staff of the Hamburger Bahnhof into a new context and into interaction with the public.
3.1.4 Arrival
The name Flick was a contaminated one, the Nazi past of Friedrich Christian Flick's grandfather was more present in people's minds than curiosity about the contemporary art collection that had never been shown before. It is important to understand this fully in order to explain why Berlin was the appropriate place for the collection and what are the conditions under which private collections can be successfully displayed in public musums. For this, first of all Friedrich Christian Flick's family history is briefly explained, followed by the situation with Zurich where the art collector tried to open a private museum, and then the arrival of the collection in Berlin is discussed and presentet in detail. Finding a suitable location for the collection thus proved difficult: why Berlin was the most suitable location is argued here.
Friedrich Christian Flick's grandfather was Friedrich Flick (1883-1972), a German entrepreneur who had extensive company holdings at the time of the Second World War, particularly in the armaments sector. He was an important arms supplier to Hitler and employed thousands of forced laborers during the war.190 In 1947, in the fifth of a total of twelve Nuremberg succession trials, Friedrich Flick, as head of the firm, had to stand trial before a U.S. military tribunal for war crimes and crimes against
190 See: “Jetzt sprechen die Bilder“
59 humanity. The prosecution charged Friedrich Flick on a gigantic scale with slave labor. He was sentenced to seven years in prison in December 1947 but was released in the spring of 1950. He always considered this sentence to be unjust.191 In the post-war period, his resurgence began, making him the owner of the largest private fortune in Germany.192
The grandson of Friedrich Flick, Christian Friedrich Flick has been collecting art since the 1980s, and in the early 2000s he decided to open his collection to the public. The past of Friedrich Christian Flick's grandfather made it difficult for the grandson to find a place to show his contemporary art collection.193 The collector tried to make his collection accessible in several places, starting in Zurich in 2001 when he announced his idea for a private museum, continuing via Munich where he was supposed to hold an exhibition at the Haus der Kunst194 in 2002 and then leading him 2003 to the Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin. It as useful at this point to list various opinions and voices from Zurich in order to get a sense of the importance of dealing with the Nazi past, the choice of location and the institution itself, a private museum or a public institution.
In 2001 Friedrich Christian Flick shared his idea to build a private museum in Zurich, the building was designed by the Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas.195 For the Friedrich Christian Flick collection three curators had already worked on the inventory of the approximately 2000 works: the director Eva Meyer-Herman196, Kathleen Bühler and Dörte Zbikowski as well as the communication and education director Peter Schüller.197 Friedrich Christian Flick’s private museum was to be built on the former model factory of Sulzer-Escher Wyss AG (Zürich West Quatier).198 Everything seemed to be arranged on the side of Flick.
However, the press like the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung the swiss newspapers WoZ and the Tages-Anzeiger but also from the side of the art historians and especially from the Schauspielhaus directorate formed a counter-initiative against the construction of the private Flick
191 See: Langels, “Bahlsen, Flick und Co. Wie Familienunternehmen NS-Zwangsarbeit aufarbeiten.“ 192 See: Keller, “Unangemessene Tiefenschärfe.“ 193 See: “Kontoverse um Flick-Collection.“ 194 The Haus der Kunst is a public museum in Munich and a leading global location for contemporary art without a collection of its own. It is dedicated to the study of modern art history and stories. 195 See: Architectural office OMA; https://oma.eu/projects/flick-house 196 Since 1999, Eva Meyer-Hermann has been working for Friedrich Christian Flick. She came from the Nuremberg Kunsthalle to St. Gallen, where, on the one hand, she was head of the Hauser & Wirth collection and, on the other, she had already worked for Friedrich Christian Flick, until recently moving entirely to the latter. See: Frehner, “Mit der grossen Kelle - das geplante Flick-Museum für Gegenwartskunst in Zürich.“ 197 Ibid. 198 Landolt and Schindler, „Flicks Erbe in Zürich.“
60 Museum .199 Christoph Marthaler, a member of the Zurich theatre scene, publicly spoke out against the construction of Flick's private museum, citing the Flick family's past as his reason.200 Marthaler and other representatives from the Board of Directors of the Zurich Schauspielhaus made the following statement: “We cannot separate the art in the collection from the knowledge that the Flick family still refuses to pay compensation to former forced laborer’s and concentration camp prisoners: In that case, art does not ennoble."201
The City President Josef Estermann of the ruling Social Democratic Party demanded that the Flick family should "make an appropriate contribution to compensating the forced laborers of the Third Reich."202 The cultural commissioner Bert Badertscher said: "We want this museum. But above that, the background must not be forgotten. There is a clash of interests here that must now be resolved by politics."203 Jean-Daniel Blanc, chairman of the residents' "Initiativgruppe Hardturmquartier" demanded: "As long as Flick doesn't deal with the past, the museum is undesirable here. We are currently considering how to take action against it."204
The President of the Zurich Jewish Community, Werner Rom, spoke of a high-quality collection that was suitable for Zurich. However, the museum must be housed in an ethically clean room. His request: "If Flick has the money for this museum, why doesn't he also set up a foundation to research the economic history, including that of the Flicks during the Nazi era, so that it becomes known where part of the fortune came from?"205 Stefanie Carp of the Schauspielhaus directorate demanded that the art collectors first take care of something else: "The city should make it clear: Without compensation for the forced laborers, no museum."206 Despite all justified criticism, Rolf Bloch, president of the Swiss Holocaust Fund, warned against exaggerated reactions: "There must be no clan liability. If Friedrich Christian Flick distances himself from his grandfather with words and deeds,
199 See: Frehner, “Mit der grossen Kelle - das geplante Flick-Museum für Gegenwartskunst in Zürich.“ 200 See:“Jetzt sprechen die Bilder.“ 201 In German: “Die Kunst der Sammlung können wir nicht trennen vom Wissen darüber, dass sich die Familie Flick bis heute weigert, Entschädigungsgeld an ehemalige Zwangsarbeiter und KZ-Häftlinge zu bezahlen: Kunst veredelt in dem Fall nicht.“ See: Op. Cit. Landolt and Schindler. 202 In German: “… einen angemessenen Beitrag zur Entschädigung der Zwangsarbeiter des Dritten Reiches.“ See: Op. Cit. Lischka. 203 In German: “Wir wollen dieses Museum. Darüber aber darf der Hintergrund nicht vergessen werden. Hier gibt es einen Interessengegensatz, der von der Politik nun gelöst werden muss.“ See: Ibid. 204 In German: ”Solange Flick sich nicht mit der Vergangenheit auseinandersetzt, ist das Museum hier unerwünscht. Wir überlegen zurzeit, wie wir dagegen aktiv werden.“ See: Ibid. 205 In German: “Wenn Flick das Geld für dieses Museum hat, warum richtet er nicht auch eine Stiftung ein, welche die Wirtschaftsgeschichte auch der Flicks während der NS-Zeit erforscht, damit bekannt wird, woher ein Teil des Vermögens stammt?“ See: Ibid. 206 In German: ”Die Stadt sollte klarstellen: Ohne Entschädigung der Zwangsarbeiter kein Museum.“ See: ibid
61 he should be welcome." If Flick does not do so, Bloch has a simple solution: "You can go to this museum - or not."207
From the newspaper articles and statements that were given during that time period (2001) when Friedrich Christian Flick tried to open his private museum in Zurich, it is clear that the parties involved and the population are primarily concerned that Friedrich Christian Flick should pay into Compensation Fund of the Foundation “Remembrance, Responsibility and Future”208, and they also required transparency about the Flick’s family history.
After a public debate Zurich rejected Flick and his collection.209 Thereupon, Flick renounced the museum and also canceled the show of his collection planned for 2002 in Munich because it would do more harm than good to the artists.210 The first presentation of the collection was planned at the Haus der Kunst in Munich. Here the collection of 150 works was to be made accessible to the public for the very first time.211
Friedrich Christian Flick was criticized because he had not paid into the Fund of the Foundation Remembrance, Responsibility and Future, which was arranged by the government, for a long time, unlike his siblings. Friedrich Christian Flick, as a private person, first refused to pay into the fund set up by the business community to compensate forced laborers, despite protests.212 Instead in 2001 he founded his own foundation against Xenophobia, Racism and Intolerance with a share capital of five million euros.213 The foundation provides education on the topic of right-wing radicalism today. The president of the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz Klaus-Dieter Lehmann emphasised that he liked Friedrich Christian Flick's decision to set up his own foundation in order to use the foundation in today's world to reach those who are right-wing extremists or who are basically against an open, free society. “Basically, this was not simply a mainstream decision by Flick, but it was a personal decision.”214 The Friedrich Christian Flick Collection came to the Hamburg Bahnhof in 2004: the
207 In German: ”Es darf keine Sippenhaft geben. Wenn Friedrich Christian Flick sich mit Worten und Taten von seinem Großvater distanziert, soll er willkommen sein.“ Tut Flick dies nicht, hat Bloch eine einfache Lösung: „Man kann in dieses Museum gehen – oder auch nicht.“ See: Ibid. 208 In German: Entschädigungsfonds der Stiftung „Erinnerung, Verantwortung und Zukunft.“ Short EVZ 209 See: „Kontoverse um Flick-Collection.“ 210 See:“Jetzt sprechen die Bilder.“ 211 See: Op. Cit. Frehner 212 See: “Jetzt sprechen die Bilder.“ 213 See: Op. Cit. Langels. More information on the website of Flicks foundation: https://www.stiftung- toleranz.de 214 Op. Cit. Lehmann.
62 following year, Friedrich Christian Flick paid five million euros into the Compensation Fund of the Foundation Remembrance, Responsibility and Future in 2005.215
Coming to terms with the dark and difficult past of some German families requires courage, strength and perseverance. Society can be hard and sometimes also unfair, but it is necessary to demand the truth and in a democratic country this is also essential. The family past must be faced at the latest when you step into the public eye, because now you are visible to everybody which brings responsibility and a role model function with it and you need to live up to it.
Berlin, the capital of National Socialism, is a perfectly acceptable place for the collector Friedrich Christian Flick and his collection, which is burdened by the Nazi past of the collector's grandfather. Berlin slipped into the field of interest of the Friedrich Christian Flick Collection through a conversation between the Former Governing Mayor of Berlin Klaus Wowereit216 and Friedrich Christian Flick. Wowereit established the connection between Friedrich Christian Flick and the President of the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz Klaus-Dieter Lehmann and the General Director Peter-Klaus Schuster.217 These two last mentioned gentlemen then ultimately conducted the negotiations with Friedrich Christian Flick. Both were aware that the public perception of the Friedrich Christian Flick Collection would be a difficult situation. Lehmann describes that long talks were held so that they could be sure that there was a unified stance and position for many eventualities. “But first I wanted to know Flick’s relationship to his grandfather and to know why he did not pay into the compensation fund for slave laborers, he gave clear answers. I saw he had no sympathy for things that happened in his family and that he created a foundation to fight racism. I also saw that collecting art is his life.”218
In Berlin, as in Zurich, there were strong voices of dissent against Friedrich Christian Flick and his art collection. He was not greeted as ‘good news,’ and several concerns and demands on the historical figure of his grandfather, Friedrich Flick, began to be heard.219 There where artists who designed posters with the inscriptions ‘Tax evaders, show me your treasures!’ and ‘Free admission for forced laborers’.220 Similar movements and concerns appeared in Berlin in 2003 that had been prevalent in
215 See: Op. Cit. Langels. 216 Klaus Wowereit was a German politician and a member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany and Berlin's governing mayor from 21 October 2001 until 11 December 2014. 217 From August 1999 to October 2008, Peter-Klaus Schuster was General Director of the Staatliche Museen Berlin and Director of the Nationalgalerie in Berlin. 218 Op. Cit. Riding. 219 See: Op. Cit. Lehmann. 220 Various newspapers have reported on this, and these articles represent the main arguments. See: Horny, “Mit Geld kann das jeder“ and Spiegler, “Wie schmücke ich mein Bäumchen?“: Die viel diskutierte Sammlung von Friedrich Christian Flick wurde in Berlin eröffnet- eine Mega-Schau zeitgenössischer Kunst.“
63 Zurich. A grandson of a Nazi arms manufacturer, like Christian Friedrich Flick's grandfather, does not meet with the same sympathy from a large part of the population. Following the January 9, 2003 press conference, there was a growing sentiment that the actions of the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz and the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin were morally questionable.221 Peter-Klaus Schuster describes that the media attention of the debate about the Friedrich Christian Flick Collection was determined by a few but very loud voices. "Rather, it was a few, very vehement voices, which, by their cutting tone, got the attention of a broad public."222
The name Flick was widely known in German history but always through other actions. In his July 2004 post, Alan Riding, then the New York Times's European cultural correspondent, explains how the name Flick has appeared three times in recent German history. First, in the Third Reich, when, by the abuse of slave labor, Flick built up a huge economic fortune working for the Nazis and abusing humanity. Second, the name Flick is synonymous with one of the Federal Republic's biggest tax and bribery scandals. With a controversial art series, the name Flick appears for the third time. Riding describes that all three are a different person, grandfather Friedrich Flick, Uncle Friedrich Karl and then Friedrich Christian Flick himself.223 But in this case, it did not seem to matter to the public, to see the temporarily separate ones here together.
Max Hollein who was then the director of the Schirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt a.M. and is now the Director of Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York mentioned that Friedrich Christian Flick was facing his past in Berlin. “The fact that Flick is not avoiding this discussion and is looking for a solution - even apart from the establishment of a foundation against racism - is probably also shown by the potential location: Berlin. That should a priori be an even hotter spot than Zurich.”224
The decision to bring the Friedrich Christian Flick Collection to Berlin was made by Eugen Blume, Klaus-Dieter Lehmann and Peter-Klaus Schuster of the Nationalgalerie after many discussions with the collector Friedrich Christian Flick to see how critical he was of his own family history. Knapstein emphasizes that it was important to see the whole situation, the collection and the family history. Here it should be ensured that this impulse to bring such a collection with the family background into the public debate is also supported by both sides equally.225
221 See: https://www.berlin.de/rbmskzl/aktuelles/pressemitteilungen/2003/pressemitteilung.46406.php 222 In German: “Vielmehr waren es wenige, sehr vehemente Stimmen, welche durch ihren schneidenden Ton die Aufmerksamkeit einer breiten Öffentlichkeit fanden.“ See: Op. Cit. Schuster, 11. 223 See: Op. Cit. Riding. 224 In German: “Dass Flick dieser Diskussion nicht aus dem Weg geht, nach einer Lösung - auch abseits von der Gründung einer Stiftung gegen Rassismus - sucht, zeigt wohl auch der potenzielle Standort: Berlin. Das sollte a priori ein noch heißeres Pflaster als Zürich sein.“ See: Op. Cit. Joop. Quote: Max Hollein. 225 See: Op. Cit. Knapstein.
64 A public institution, such as the Hamburger Bahnhof, can moderate the dialogue between historically burdened collector and the public more objectively than a private museum. In the case of the Hamburger Bahnhof, this was achieved through a review of the materials in relation to the past. The current director, Gabriele Knapstein has worked at the Hamburger Bahnhof since 1999 and in the role of curator since 2003, so she has experienced the entire procedure with the Friedrich Christian Flick Collection. She described the process with the collection in the interview as first of all a necessary review of the holdings of the collection to see if there were interesting works for the Nationalgalerie and secondly it was essential to talk about the family history of 'Flick' and whether it could find a suitable place in Berlin."226 Joachim Jäger is the acting director of the Neue Nationalgalerie and director of the Nationalgalerie Berlin, like Knapstein, he was a curator at Hamburger Bahnhof when the inclusion of the Friedrich Christian Flick collection was debated. In the interview Jäger described that Eugen Blume, Gabrielle Knapstein, Peter-Klaus Schuster, Klaus-Dieter Lehmann and himself found that the Nazi capital was a good place to work through this loaded topic. The director at the Hamburger Bahnhof during that time, Eugen Blume227, took the view that it was about the work of art per se and that this was independent of the owner and the financial value of the work.228 Blume also explained to the Art Newspaper: “The public showing of it should not be obstructed. Only totalitarian States have stood in the way of art.”229
Lehmann adds to Blume’s view that there was, however, also an obligation to deal with the issues related to Friedrich Christian Flick's past. He emphasizes that they did everything they could to clarify the history of the ‘Flick’ family, they documented the relevant connections, attitudes and positions well and shared them with the public through panel discussions and conversations with interested parties.230 In order to create more information, certainty and transparency about the whole topic of the Flick family, the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz commissioned the Institute for Contemporary History Munich to look into Flick's family history. This expert report was published and shared with the public. Lehmann explained in the interview “that is to say, we did everything we could to deal with this aspect in public. Personally, I was also sure that Flick's view did not want to cover up anything in any way, but he was so clear and unequivocal in his assessment of his grandfather that it had been a crime and he could not gloss over that.”231
226 Op. Cit. Knapstein. 227 Eugen Blume is a curator and art historian from Germany. From 2001 to 2016, he was director of the Hamburger Bahnhof - Museum für Gegenwart in Berlin. 228 From 1981, Blume was at the National Museums in Berlin (GDR). 229 Op. Cit. Harris. 230 See: Op. Cit. Lehmann. 231 In German: „Das heißt wir haben alles getan, um quasi diesen Aspekt auch in der Öffentlichkeit aufzuarbeiten. Ich persönlich war auch sicher das die Auffassung von Flick in keiner Weise etwas zudecken
65
In addition, Friedrich Christian Flick faced an interview with Blume for the first exhibition of the Friedrich Christian Flick collection, that Blume curated. The conversation between curator and collector was published in a magazine that visitors to the exhibition received with their admission ticket. Blume mentioned to the Welt am Sonntag: "I say what I want to say. The conversation was painful for him at one point or another."232
The role of the media in the case of the Friedrich Christian Flick collection was important. The 'dark' history of the Flick family aroused great interest in the press, so that the artworks of the collection, which were actually at the center of attention, were completely neglected. It can be therefore concluded that the media considered it more lucrative to confirm the images that the readers already had in their minds; the rich collector who built his collection from Nazi money. In the press and in the public debate, Flick's family history slipped into the The lifestyle magazine Monopol ended their piece with the sentence: "The story is not over yet." In the exhibition catalog for the first exhibition of Friedrich Christian Flick, Schuster wrote in response: “Indeed, the story is by no means over, for history is never over and the discussion continues. This very fact is already the great merit of the Friedrich Christian Flick Collection in the run-up to its first publication in the Hamburger Bahnhof of the Nationalgalerie. Once again, Berlin museum history proves to be German history.”233
Whereas Friedrich Christian Flick's past had little to do with the aspect of the artists, important works are in the Friedrich Christian Flick Collection. Gabriele Knapstein explained in the interview, that the collection contained many important artists who have nothing to do with a Flick family history. These artists and their work are important to the public therefore should be shared. Like Lehmann, Knapstein also underlines the fact that these works should be placed in a different context and detached with other collections from the Nationalgalerie. So that the Friedrich Christian Flick collection could be presented at the Nationalgalerie in different contexts than if there had been a private museum of Friedrich Christian Flick, but that was only little discussed and considered in the press reports, as other aspects.234
wollte, sondern er war eindeutig in der Beurteilung seines Großvaters so klar und eindeutig, dass es ein Verbrechen gewesen ist und er das auch nicht beschönigen kann.“ See: Ibid. 232 “Jetzt sprechen die Bilder.“ 233 In German: “In der Tat ist die Geschichte mitnichten zu Ende, denn Geschichte ist nie zu Ende und die Diskussion geht weiter. Eben das ist schon jetzt das große Verdienst der Friedrich Christian Flick Collection im Vorfeld ihrer Erstveröffentlichung im Hamburger Bahnhof der Nationalgalerie. Erneut erweist sich Berliner Museumsgeschichte als deutsche Geschichte.“ See: Op. Cit. Schuster,11. 234 See: Op. Cit. Knapstein.
66
The question that must be asked at this stage is, does a public museum, by using art from a family with a nazi history, endorse that history or can the public museum present a new narrative and space for discussion? And did the Nationalgalerie really have a choice? They needed the art works of the Freidrich Christian Flick Collection and this collection was particullay high quality and large, so a perfect fit for the Hamburger Bahnhof. There is a big difference between Friedrich Christian Flick building his own collection, which the public can simply be vetoed, and a public museum being loaned art that it needs to continue working. Lehmann described it as follows: It was clear to me that Flick's attitude and the possibilities we used were really the ones that made it possible to accept the art in this way, that you don't lock it away, but that you make the art accessible, and it has also been shown in the 17 years in which this art has been mediated in the Hamburger Bahnhof. It has been accepted in a way, in a way in which it has been prepared, in a way in which it has been communicated, so that now there is actually more of a phantom pain when the Flick Collection goes, rather than saying, well, finally the spat is over. I think it was right that we worked on it and not that we withdrew when the first attacks came.235
Joachim Jäger also pointed out that it is important to come to terms with the Friedrich Christian Flick’s family past. Jäger’s argument was that no one has a problem to work with a Bosch drill but also the Bosch company was heavily involved in National Socialism. But when a collector like Friedrich Christian Flick enters the public with his collection, the public see alarm signs. This demonstrates that it is important to come to terms with the past in order to be accepted by the public. Everybody needs a drill, that's why they keep buying them, even with the knowledge of the 'dark' past, but a private art collection partly built up with a fortune from a 'dark' background, that society does not accept.236
Berlin, the capital of National Socialist Germany, creates a place where the collection of an arms company heir returns to the origins of the brutal extent of National Socialism. Knapstein explained that the Friedrich Christian Flick Collection itself, but also his family history, can be well prepared and
235 In German: “Mir war klar, dass die Haltung von Flick und die Möglichkeiten, die wir genutzt haben, wirklich diejenigen waren, die es ermöglicht haben, die Kunst dann auch in dieser Weise zu akzeptieren, das man sie nicht wegschließt, sondern dass man die Kunst zugänglich macht, und es hat sich ja auch gezeigt in den 17 Jahren, in denen diese Kunst im Hamburger Bahnhof vermittelt worden ist. Sie in einer Weise auch akzeptiert worden, in einer Art und Weise, in der sie aufbereitet worden ist, auch vermittelt worden ist, sodass eigentlich jetzt eher ein Phantomschmerz entsteht, wenn die Flick Sammlung weggeht, als das man sagt, na endlich ist der Spuck zu ende. Ich glaube es war richtig das wir daran gearbeitet haben und nicht das wir uns zurückgezogen haben, als die ersten Angriffe kamen.“ See: Op. Cit. Lehmann. 236 See: Op. Cit. Jäger.
67 discussed in Berlin because it had a prominent linkage of a history that is connected with German history, such as this family history of Flick. The presence of the Friedrich Christian Flick collection made it possible to able to discuss the aspects of the Flick`s family past. 237 Lehmann elucidated the Friedrich Christian Flick Collection and Berlin as an opportunity for a public debate, but he reported in the interview that it was not an easy task. The Nationalgalerie held a public debate in the Hamburger Bahnhof with a series of panel discussions. But these statements created additional difficulties, so that we really had trouble using the debate culture in a way to come to terms with this whole issue.238
However, amidst the many headwinds the Friedrich Christian Flick Collection was facing, there have also been some significant supporters from Jewish lobby groups. Flick won support from the Jewish leadership's endorsement. W. Michael Blumenthal, former Secretary of the Treasury of the United States and curator of the Berlin Jewish Museum, said: “This Flick is not guilty; he was not a Nazi. If he wants to show his collection, let him show it. He could show more commitment to using his money to fight anti-Semitism, but those who attack him should look to the future, not the past.”239 Heinz Berggruen, who had a significant voice for the Nationalgalerie, being a collector himself, who had just sold his collection to Berlin for a special price, and he was Jewish. Berggruen had to flee Berlin at those times and returned with his collection to the city of National Socialism. He was convinced that Friedrich Christian Flick's collection would be an excellent fit for Berlin and tried to convince the collector of this. “I told him, do it.” Berggruen reminded to not judge: “Flick should not be held responsible for crimes committed by his grandfather.”240
There were the basic requirements, first of all to make sure that the collection is of high quality, secondly that Friedrich Christian Flick is aware of his grandfather's guilt and wants to work on his family's past based on that, before the contract was signed on January 9, 2003. The entire elaboration and responsibility for the contract with Friedrich Christian Flick lay exclusively with the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz.241
Knapstein elucidated that showing the Friedrich Christian Flick Collection in a public museum is meaningful. A public institution has the responsibility to address and question these issues, and through this discourse many more questions arose about the acquisition of art and what money
237 See: Op. Cit. Knapstein. 238 See: Op. Cit. Lehmann. 239 Op. Cit. Riding. 240 Ibid. 241 See: Op. Cit. Lehmann.
68 generally flows into the art market. All these are questions that are still highly relevant today, if you look at the extreme prices that are achieved at auctions. 242
CONCLUSION: The interview quotes reveal a number of different factors and motivations that indicate that it is significant to deal openly and transparently with the historical past. The Friedrich Christian Flick Collection and the Flick family history are not so easy to separate from each other, this is clear from the interviews, even if Eugen Blume's philosophy is convincing too.
Christian Friedrich Flick represents an exemplary collector who has very large financial means, with parts of the money coming from a dark past. It was acquired through his grandfather Friedrich Flick, who was active in the armaments industry for the National Socialists and made a large part of his fortune here, which he then bequeathed to his grandchildren. It is precisely this coming to terms with the past of the family history that would not have been possible so easily if Friedrich Christian Flick had left his collection in his depots. It was only when he stepped into the public sphere with his important contemporary collection that the examination of the themes of Friedrich Christian Flick's past as a major industrialist began.
Berlin as the capital of National Socialist Germany offered a place where the past of the cruel National Socialism was present, it thus offers a good place to come to terms with the family history and offered a more suitable place than the city of Zurich. The debate in Zurich was dominated by the same issues as in Berlin. Flick was criticized for his behavior, the people expected him to deal with his family history, to distance himself and admit that his grandfather had committed a crime and he should finally pay into the Compensation Fund of the Foundation "Remembrance, Responsibility and Future". Friedrich Christian Flick's reaction was different in the two cities, probably taking something from his experience in Switzerland, mainly that if he did not face the debate with his grandfather, it would be difficult to find a place for his collection. He withdrew from Zurich with the ideas for his private museum, and in Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz, the Nationalgalerie and the Hamburger Bahnhof had intensive discussions with the collector, which showed that Friedrich Christian Flick was aware of his grandfather's involvement with forced labor and that it was now necessary to do justice to this topic. For the public institution, this was a basic requirement that both sides represent the same interests in coming to terms with the past before the contract was signed in Berlin. Here,
242 See: Op. Cit. Knapstein.
69 Friedrich Christian Flick faced the debate, and described it as follows: "I want to add a light side to the dark side of my family history."243
The support of Heinz Berggruen, who once had to flee from Berlin to escape National Socialism, also helped to bring the Flick Collection to Berlin. On the one hand, this speaks for the quality of the collection, as Berggruen himself was a collector of modern art, and on the other hand, for the fact that Friedrich Christian Flick is facing up to the debate about his family past. Peter-Klaus Schuster elaborated that Berggruen's approval was significant, he was a decisive moral authority for the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin in deciding whether to accept the Friedrich Christian Flick collection because of its past history. Berggruen was very supportive and convinced Friedrich Christian Flick to bring his collection to Berlin.244 In fact, so much that he even in his acceptance speech referred to the collection of Friedrich Christian Flick. Heinz Berggruen was awarded the honorary citizenship of the city of Berlin in the Rotes Rathaus on June 10, 2004. In his speech, he urged looking to the future. Ladies and gentlemen, you will forgive me if I turn for a moment in this ceremony to a subject that is very close to my heart. It concerns the contemporary art collection of Friedrich Christian Flick. For years, Mr. Flick has been passionately, generously and open-mindedly committed to art that strives to illuminate the currents and moods of our epoch. This collection is to be exhibited here next to the Hamburger Bahnhof and, as I see it, Flick's collection, despite any controversy, will be a great enrichment for us all. Let us not, stubbornly and with blinders on, look back and speak of clannishness of past misdeeds and white washing of blood money, but look tolerantly and open-mindedly to the future.245
In contrast to Switzerland, where Flick had planned a private museum, the public museum, Hamburger Bahnhof, has a greater obligation to the population to face this issue and to present the facts transparently and openly. This discourse only became possible because Friedrich Christian Flick has taken the step with his collection into the public. Dealing with the past is an important task of museums. The discourse about Flick's family history has made it possible to see art free of the
243 In German: “Ich möchte der dunklen Seite meiner Familiengeschichte eine helle hinzufügen.“ See: Op. Cit. Spiegler. Quote: Friedrich Christian Flick. 244 See: Op. Cit. Schuster, 10. 245 In German: “Sie werden mir, meine Damen und Herren, verzeihen, wenn ich mich in dieser Feierstunde einen Augenblick einem Thema zuwende, das mir sehr am Herzen liegt. Es geht um die Sammlung zeitgenössischer Kunst von Friedrich Christian Flick. Herr Flick hat sich seit Jahren leidenschaftlich, großzügig und weltoffen zu der Kunst bekannt, welche die Strömungen und Stimmungen unserer Epoche auszuleuchten sich bemüht. Diese Sammlung soll hier neben dem Hamburger Bahnhof ausgestellt werden und, so wie ich es sehe, wird Flicks Sammlung, jeglichen Kontroversen zum Trotz, eine große Bereicherung für uns alle sein. Lasst uns nicht, störrisch und mit Scheuklappen zurückblickend, von Sippenhaft vergangener Untaten und von Weißwaschen von Blutgeld sprechen, sondern tolerant und aufgeschlossen in die Zukunft schauen.“ See: Berggruen, „Dankesrede von Ehrenbürger Heinz Berggruen.”
70 collector. The collection was accepted by the public, otherwise it would not have been on view at Hamburger Bahnhof for 17 years.
The Friedrich Christian Flick Collection, with a stock of around 2,500 works, including many important works, belongs in the public sphere and not in repositories, because it is precisely here, in the public sphere, that one is confronted with issues and must accept them and discuss them, which is how society grows. It is clear from the interviews, but also from the newspaper articles, that the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz, the Nationalgalerie, and the Hamburger Bahnhof have repeatedly emphasized an open approach to the topic and have taken part in various panel discussions. Jäger emphasized the importance of the educational task of museums, which is strongly linked to the transparency of the collections: "Part of the educational effort, of course, is the transparency of how you got the collection, which includes the prominence, but also the transparency for how you handle the collection."246
Likewise, Egon Bahr247 wrote in the Tagespiegel in 2003 that he does not believe that it is possible to forget the past. This seems today an idea that the Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin have also taken to heart: The past cannot be corrected. It can teach us to consider the consequences for the future when making decisions in the present. But we should defend ourselves against all seducers who want to suggest or even morally oblige us to determine the future by our past. It would be tantamount to an indefinite permanent condemnation for indelible German guilt. That would be intolerable; it would deny Germany normality and the quality of being able to act or be treated like a normal state.248
The approval of the cultural population of Berlin of the Flick Collection also had significance for the Nationalgalerie. Thus, the Freunde der Nationalgalerie (Association of Friends of the Nationalgalerie)
246 Op. Cit. Jäger. 247 From 1972 to 1974, he was Federal Minister for Special Tasks and, from 1974 to 1976, Federal Minister for Economic Cooperation. He was one of the decisive masterminds and leading contributors to the East and Germany strategy launched by the government under Willy Brandt in 1969 under the guiding theory he coined, 'change by rapprochement.' 248 In German: “Vergangenheit ist nicht korrigierbar. Sie kann uns lehren, bei den jeweiligen Entscheidungen der Gegenwart die Konsequenzen für die Zukunft zu bedenken. Aber wehren sollten wir uns gegen alle Verführer, die uns nahe legen oder gar moralisch dazu verpflichten wollen, die Zukunft durch unsere Vergangenheit zu bestimmen. Es wäre gleichbedeutend mit einer zeitlich unbegrenzten permanenten Verurteilung für untilgbare deutsche Schuld. Das wäre unerträglich; es würde Deutschland die Normalität absprechen und die Qualität wie ein normaler Staat handeln zu können oder behandelt zu werden.“ See: Bahr, “Meinung Die selbstverständliche Kontinuität.“
71 unanimously elected Friedrich Christian Flick to the board of trustees of the association. From the side of politics, it was desired to support such a cooperation between the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin and the private collector Friedrich Christian Flick. The Board of Trustees of the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz was responsible for this communication. It was chaired by Christina Weiss, the then Minister of State for Culture and Media. On December 2, 2002, there was also a unanimous vote to authorize the President of the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz to conclude a loan agreement with the collector Friedrich Christian Flick for the presentation of his contemporary art collection for an initial period of seven years. This was done under the following conditions: Flick had to pay for the conversion of the Rieckhallen and to make his collection available free of charge; the Foundation payed the rent for the Rieckhallen to Deutsche Bahn or to its real estate company Vivico; the Foundation also payed the operating and guarding costs for the Rieckhallen and the costs for the changing presentation of the collection; the art-historical responsibility for the presentation of the collection lies with the curators of the Nationalgalerie in the Hamburger Bahnhof; all income from the presentation of the collection was to go the National Museums in Berlin.
This result was announced on January 9, 2003 by the President of the SPK, Klaus-Dieter Lehmann, in a press conference at the Hamburger Bahnhof in the presence of Mrs. Christina Weiss, Minister of State, and Klaus Wowereit, Governing Mayor of Berlin, in the presence of the collector Friedrich Christian Flick.”249
Berlin was a unique place to make the Friedrich Christian Flick collection for the first time publicly accessible, Heiner Bastian predicted that the public would come. “For in hardly any other city is the present of the present so ambivalent, so contradictory and Janus-faced as in the German capital. Where else but in this city of ceaseless upheaval and eternal failing hope could the contemporary collection of Friedrich Christian Flick have been shown?”250
249 In German: “Flick zahlt den Umbau der Rieckhallen und stellt seine Sammlung kostenfrei zu Verfügung; die Stiftung bezahlt die Miete der Rieckhallen an die Deutsche Bahn beziehungsweise an deren Immobiliengesellschaft Vivico; die Stiftung bezahlt ferner die Betriebs- und Bewachungskosten für die Rieckhallen und die Kosten für die wechselnde Präsentation der Sammlung; die kunsthistorische Verantwortung für die Sammlungspräsentation liegt bei den Kuratoren der Nationalgalerie im Hamburger Bahnhof; alle Einnahmen aus der Präsentation der Sammlung gehen an die Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin.“ Dieses Ergebnis wurde am 9. Januar 2003 vom Präsidenten der SPK, Klaus-Dieter Lehmann, in einer Pressekonferenz im Hamburger Bahnhof im Beisein von Frau Staatsministerin Christina Weiss und dem Regierenden Bürgermeister von Berlin Klaus Wowereit in Gegenwart des Sammlers Friedrich Christian Flick bekannt gegeben.“ See: Op. Cit. Schuster, 10. 250 In German: “Denn in kaum einer anderen Stadt ist das Gegenwärtige der Gegenwart so ambivalent, so widersprüchlich und janusköpfig wie in der deutschen Hauptstadt. Wo denn sonst als in dieser Stadt des unaufhörlichen Umbruchs und der ewigen scheiternden Hoffnung hätte die zeitgenössische Sammlung des Friedrich Christian Flick gezeigt werden können?“ See: Op. Cit. Bastian.
72 3.1.5 First Exhibition
This section introduces the first exhibition of the Friedrich Christian Flick Collection at the Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin. Its significance, the dimensions and themes that became present through it are explained and presented. It was the first show to display large parts of the Friedrich Christian Flick Collection. My argument is that a collection of almost 2500 works of high quality and significance for contemporary art belongs in the public domain. Due to the historical reasons of the German past, it is necessary to bring this history into the public and not to bury it in cellars.
From the art world and the reception of the art, the Friedrich Christian Flick Collection certainly caused great approval from the art historical side was a strong support, that the collection should be shown in Berlin. The art consultant and collector Heiner Bastian shared his enthusiasm for the Friedrich Christian Flick Collection already before the opening of the exhibition Christian Friedrich Flick Collection in the Hamburger Bahnhof, writing for the Welt am Sonntag on 19 September 2004: “It (the collection) drags the perverted of the world into the light, the repulsive, it shows us the painful that wants to be utopian. Its claim is not reconciliation. Like a never-formulated question, what terrible vision of art should stand up to the horror of reality runs through the collection?”251
In order to show Friedrich Christian Flick's collection for the first time, the Hamburger Bahnhof was cleared out. The collector Erich Marx was enthusiastic about the future proximity of his collection to the Friedrich Christian Flick collection and therefore complied with Friedrich Christian Flick's wish to use the entire Hamburger Bahnhof and the Rieckhallen for the first presentation of his collection. Only the Beuys block, which was on permanent loan from the collector Erich Marx, remained in the building.252 Beuys, while not collected by Friedrich Christian Flick, was thus to become a source of reference from which Friedrich Christian Flick had once sought his access to art.253
The exhibition was opened by the then-German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder on 21 September 2004. Also present at the ceremony were the collector Friedrich Christian Flick, the President of the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz Klaus-Dieter Lehmann, the Director General of the Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin Peter-Klaus Schuster and the Director of the Hamburger Bahnhof and curator of the exhibition Eugen Blume. Heiner Bastian introduced the collection in his article in WELT am
251 In German: “Sie (die Sammlung) zerrt das Pervertierte der Welt ans Licht, das Abstoßende, sie zeigt uns das Schmerzliche, das utopisch sein will. Ihr Anspruch ist nicht die Versöhnung. Wie eine nie formulierte Frage durchzieht die Sammlung: Welche schreckliche Vision der Kunst sollte dem Horror der Realität gewachsen sein?“ See: Op. Cit. Bastian. 252 Ibid 253 See: Op. Cit. Schuster, 10.
73 Sonntag, as a collection made for Berlin: "It (the collection) was already at home in this chaotic contemporary city before it arrived now."254
The main hall of the Hamburger Bahnhof forms the entrance to the museum and also the beginning of the exhibition. In the historic hall of the former train station, one was greeted by the hell of a labyrinthine fairground by the artist Jason Rhoades, who piled up construction and everyday materials to create a gigantic spatial installation.255 The above-mentioned Rhoades was the beginning of the show and is one of the two central figures in the first chapter of the exhibition, ‘the myth of creation’, which is a crucial material in the history of art: the myth of Genesis. Artists such as Dürer, Michelangelo and van Eyck were influenced by the biblical account of the development of the universe, and the results of the Big Bang hypothesis, space exploration and genetic science have also been brought into question in recent times. At the end of the 20th century, two American artists, Jason Rhoades and Paul McCarthy, picked up the biblical theme once more. All have relentlessly moved the story of creation to the present. Jason Rhoades with capitalist society's material insanity, and Paul MyCarthy with the advertising world's gross sexualization. Works by Charles Ray, Francis Picabia, Martin Kippenberger and Duane Hanson accompany them. 256 The next chapter was the ‘half-truth & raw material’. Here the American media artist Bruce Nauman was exclusively represented. Nauman forms an important center of the Friedrich Christian Flick Collection.257 Next comes 'The Third Space', which reflected on the space controversy, the 'spatial turn' in which space is perceived as a mechanism of speech and as a position-taking element, not as only an ontological substance anymore. Dan Graham, Rachel Khedoori, Gordan Matta-Clark and Jeff Wall are represented here.258 Chapter four, 'Work of Art, Careful Dry Storage - Musée d' Art Moderne', presented the role of art and the museum for society in the 20th and 21st centuries. Artists to be found here were Marcel Broodthaers, Marcel Duchamp, Candida Höfer, Jeff Koons and Thomas Struth.259
This was followed by 'The cult of eternity is the oldest disease of mankind', with the artists Peter Fischli and Davis Weiss, Nam June Paik, Dieter Roth and Roman Signer. This chapter argued against the cult of eternally valid values; the transience and fleetingness of everyday life slips into the center.260 Then by 'Body Inscription' with artists Larry Clark, Marlene Dumas, Dan Graham, Mike
254 In German: “Sie (die Sammlung) war schon in dieser chaotischen zeitgenössischen Stadt zu Hause, bevor sie jetzt angekommen ist.“ See: Op. Cit. Bastian. 255 Ibid 256 See: Jäger, “Schöpfungsmythos“, 21 - 24. 257 See: Blume, “Halbwahrheit & Rohmaterial.“ 25 - 28. 258 See: Göckede, “Der dritte Raum.“ 29 - 32. 259 See: Völlnagel, “Kunstwerk, Vorsicht trocken lagern – Musée d’ Art Moderne.” 32 - 34. 260 See: Knapstein, “Der Ewigkeitskult ist die älteste Krankheit der Menschheit.“ 34 - 38.
74 Kelley, Pail McCarthy, Raymond Pettibon, Richard Prince and Cindy Shermen. The focus here was on the body as a fascinating object of art.261 'The Scenographer's View' followed here. This chapter presents works of the moving image and the use of film in contemporary visual art. Works by the artists Eija-Lisa Ahtila, David Claerbout and Stan Douglas were shown here.262 The chapter five showed the topic 'Stillness in Motion' with the artist Rodney Graham. The methods of perception and processes of cognition, conventions of representation and behavior of expectation were addressed; ultimately, the question of the essence of the subjective was asked.263 ‘Service area ' is the next theme, represented by works by Martin Kippenberger and Franz West.264
Followed by ‘Being content here and now', here the artists Peter Fischli and David Weiss, Isa Genzken and Wolfgang Timans as well as Thomas Struth are represented. The focus is on sensitive self- questioning.265 Suburban Brain & Beauty Has Depth' was represented by the artists Pipilotti Rist and Diana Thater, who showed video installations tailored to the Rieckhallen.266 The theme of 'Heimat' was explored through works by the artists Thomas Ruff, Jean-Frédéric Schnyder, Wolfgang Tilman and Luc Tuyman. The word Heimat has the original meaning of the ancestral home of a family. This concept has experienced its deepest ideological distortion in the 20th century.267 The last chapter presented the theme 'Great Spirit', with works by Thomas Schütte. His works confront art criticism and defy the prevailing logic of the contemporary cultural establishment.268
This exhibition made Friedrich Christian Flick's entire collection visible for the first time; never before had it been shown on this scale. Heiner Bastian describes the exhibition as a "magnificent mirror of contemporary art. It is exemplary and outstanding in its monographically condensed groups of works. Where Flick concentrates on one artist, his collection becomes particularly good and valuable."269
The curator of the exhibition of Friedrich Christian Flick's Collection at Hamburger Bahnhof was Eugen Blume, who was also the director of the Hamburger Bahnhof - the Museum of contemporary. He had a very unique attitude to art. His view was that art always creates its own spaces and thus
261 See: Völlnagel, “Körpereinschreibung.” 38 - 40. 262 See: Knapstein, “Die Sicht des Szenografen.“ 41 - 43. 263 See: Hüsch, “Stillstand in Bewegung.“ 44 - 45. 264 See: Steingräber, “Raststätte.“ 45 - 46. 265 See: Jäger, “Hier und jetzt zufrieden sein.“ 47 - 48. 266 See: Steingräber and Göckede, “Vorstadthirn & Schönheit hat Tiefe.“ 49 - 50. 267 See: Blume, “Heimat.“ 50 - 53. 268 See: Göckede, “Große Geister.“ 53 - 54. 269 In German: “(…) grandioser Spiegel der zeitgenössischen Kunst. Sie ist allemal beispielhaft und in ihren monografisch verdichteten Werkgruppen überragend. Dort, wo sich Flick auf einen Künstler konzentriert, wird seine Sammlung besonders gut und wertvoll.“ See: Op. Cit. Bastian.
75 overrides episodic events in history. This attitude was strongly criticized, and even within the institution of the Nationalgalerie there were divided opinions on the matter. However, Eugen Blume had experience with controversial art; he was the curator of the East Berlin Nationalgalerie, and here it was necessary to endure the collisions of artistic qualities and party lines. Blume's hope was that when he looked at Bruce Nauman in the Nationalgalerie, it didn't matter who owned the work or how much was paid for it, the museum was a place for him that was something 'free', for him it was a work by Bruce Nauman that should be the focus. Jäger explained in the interview that they, a bit younger and coming from the west, were a bit sceptical about it. Joachim Jäger explained in the interview: “Eugen Blume has his own attitude; he came from the GDR and had a slightly different view of what was happening. He had much more idealistic ideas - to release Flick's art in the museum, where we, coming from the West with the 68 idea that everything we do is also political, were skeptical whether it could be understood so strongly as a place of freedom.”270 The Imagination thereof a museum as a place where the experience of art is in the focus and not the owner of the piece and it is also not important to know how much the piece is worth it, all participants found this idea justifiable. 271
Based on the evidence a public museum, unlike a private museum, creates an objective space. Here, there is the possibility to consider the work of art as a free object and to see it independently of its financial value and its owner. Even though these factors are essential, they should not harm the work itself and minimize the appreciation of the artist, who often represents a completely independent entity from the collector. The independence of art is part of the educational mission of the public museum, the conditions and circumstances of the private loan of the collection should be discussed transparently and openly.
CONCLUSION:
From today's perspective, it should be added to this discussion that the discourse about the Flick family past could only arise from the willingness of the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz to take in the collection of Friedrich Christian Flick, thus bringing it into the public debate. Before the art of the Friedrich Christian Flick Collection had been locked away in depots, then it would have been possible to avoid the debate about morality and politics, but isn't that precisely what a public institution is
270 In German: “Eugen Blume hat eine eigene Haltung, er kam aus der DDR und hatte nochmal einen bisschen anderen Blick auf das Geschehen. Er hatte viel mehr idealistische Vorstellungen – die Kunst von Flick im Museum freizusetzen, wo wir aus dem Westen kommend mit der 68-Idee, dass alles was wir tun auch politisch ist, skeptisch waren, ob man das als Ort der Freiheit so stark verstanden werden kann.“ See: Op. Cit. Jäger. 271 In German: ”Da waren wir als etwas Jüngere und aus dem Westen Kommenden etwas skeptisch, das wird wohl immer mit einer Rolle spielen, aber seine Hoffnung war anders und die ist auch schön – das Museum als Ort an dem wir die Kunst erleben und nicht ständig fragen wer hat es bezahlt und was kostet es, woher kommt es und so weiter.“ See: Op. Cit. Jäger.
76 obliged to do? At this point, however, it should be mentioned that in Zurich the debat became public even though no public institution was involved. Nevertheless, the pressure from the public institution to actively engage with the family debate is greater than simply rejecting it. It is part of the remit of a public institution such as the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz to bring topics that are relevant to the population into the public eye, and Friedrich Christian Flicks family history is part of German history. In addition, there was also a need and demand from a broad public to historically process and research this topic, and the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz took on this role. The first exhibition of Friedrich Christian Flicks Collection and also the debates before the exhibition have answered many questions of the interested public. In addition, it must be added at this point that the art collection of Friedrich Christian Flick is a magnificent one and therefore deserves a place in the public eye anyway. The Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz had chosen art and the discourse of the Flick family history.
3.1.6 Departure
The Rieckhallen will be legally demolished by the Austrian investor CA-immo and thus the Friedrich Christian Flick Collection, one of the most important contemporary art collections, will leave Berlin this year. The collector is already in the process of packing the artworks and returning them to Swiss depots. The impact and consequences of this are not yet foreseeable, but it is obvious that it will be difficult to find a replacement for this outstanding collection.
I argue for the need of a solid relationship between private collectors and public museums. It is necessary for an effective cooperation, as is mutual transparency of information so that no unexpected surprises arise. It was September twenty-first, 2004 when the Federal Chancellor Gerhard Schröder opened the Rieckhallen, right next to the Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin, one of the most important museums for contemporary art in Europe.272 He ended his speech with “Leave the works in Berlin … preferably forever.”273
Forever looks difficult at the moment, due to the planned demolition of the Rieckhallen, there is no longer a place for the Friedrich Christian Flick Collection, even though both the investor and the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz have put forward alternatives, there have been no concrete alternatives to date. It should also be noted that an alternative to the Rieckhallen is also difficult, as the situation was different when the collection arrived in Berlin. There were enough free-standing warehouses and properties with charm, the Rieckhallen and the contemporary collection of Friedrich Christian Flick were made for each other. The offer to place a new building for the collection behind
272 See: “Schröder eröffnet umstrittene Flick-Schau in Berlin.“ 273 See: Modersohn, “Friedrich Christian Flick: Sammler, 75, reich, sucht Museum.“
77 the Hamburger Bahnhof did not meet with a positive response from Friedrich Christian Flick. It is possible that the issue here is not exclusively that the building is a new construction, but that Friedrich Christian Flick was not involved in the processes and discussions that took place regarding the Rieckhallen. He was only informed when the options for the Rieckhallen were already very limited.
As mentioned in the previous section Klaus-Dieter Lehmann illustrated the deep connection between the Friedrich Christian Flick Collection and the Rieckhallen at the Hamburger Bahnhof. He is certain that Friedrich Christian Flick will withdraw his collection when the Rieckhallen are demolished, because it was the most attractive way for Friedrich Christian Flick to present his collection and it seems like there won't be any other solution in Berlin. The Rieckhallen created the identity of the place and content of the collection, it fits together, and everything else obviously doesn't fit.274
The Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz and Contemporary Art Limited have agreed to let the loan contract for the Flick Collection, which was concluded in 2003, expire on 30 September 2021. The reason for this is the demolition of the Rieckhallen next to the Hamburger Bahnhof, where works from the Friedrich Christian Flick Collection had been shown since summer 2004. In 2007, the federal government sold the site to an Austrian real estate company CA-immo that wants to erect new buildings in place of the exhibition halls.275 This is also what is planned in the development plan for the area. Boris Pofalla's findings which are mentioned earlier on are still leaving open the chance that the Hamburger Bahnhof and the Rieckhallen can continue to operate together. Because of the evidence Pofalla stated that through an informal agreement, the Hamburger Bahnhof came to Berlin. The post-war history of the building is based on a lie by the Reichsbahn Museum fabricated by the GDR. There are legal decisions where the assets were returned to their original users, in this case it would be the Land of Berlin or the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz.276
The current president of the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Hermann Parzinger, explained that a collector-lender relationship can also end one day, as is now the case with Friedrich Christian Flick. We have experienced this very painfully with Flick, at the moment when it is on permanent loan, you are not the owner, the owner is and remains someone else and he can also change his mind, he can be angry, whether he has reason to be or not, there are always different perspectives and then of course you come into a certain dependency, When such a large collection goes, first the world collapses, then the media, what happened there and why, you
274 See: Op. Cit. Lehmann. 275 See: “Berliner Museen verlieren wichtige Privatsammlung.“ 276 See: Op. Cit. Pofalla.
78 always have to know that, as much as you are happy when such a huge collection, which was Flick's collection, he also donated a large collection, when that goes one day, then you only look for culprits and that's a problem you have to be aware of.277
The acting director of the Hamburger Bahnhof, Gabrielle Knapstein, deeply regrets the departure and would welcome the Friedrich Christian Flick collection remaining at the Nationalgalerie especially for reasons of content: “This now leaves a gap in what we have available here on site to equip our presentations. In other words, having a large collection available here on site, for which we don't have to make use of costly loan traffic, transports and the like, but can work with holdings that are available on site. I continue to adhere to this idea.”278 Knapstein believes that there is a sensible perspective and one that will perhaps become even more important in the coming years. Berlin has smaller acquisition budgets, and its own collections are much smaller than those of the other cities. She makes it perfectly clear that it is of great importance to her to have such a large collection in her own house. “I thought it was a very sensible idea to have a large, high-caliber collection at our disposal for our own museum work and to use it for presentations. In addition to other special exhibitions, of course, which we have also done with younger artists who have been newly produced. Beyond these collection holdings that we have worked with.”279
Hermann Parzinger echoes Knapstein's concerns, emphasizing that the departure of the Friedrich Christian Flicks Collection is a loss that must be balanced: "You have to try to balance that out, you can't have a big gap here."280 The President of the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz adds that he would be in favor of public museums having a more flexible and agile approach to private collectors. “If things are not transferred, maybe you have to make the whole thing more flexible, you work
277 In German: “Wir haben das sehr leidvoll mit Flick erlebt, in dem Moment wo es Dauerleihgaben sind, ist man nicht Eigentümer, der Eigentümer ist und bleibt jemand anderes und der kann sich das auch anders überlegen, der kann verärgert sein, ob er dazu Grund hat oder nicht, es gibt immer unterschiedliche Perspektiven und man kommt dann natürlich in eine gewisse Abhängigkeit, wenn eine so große Sammlung weggeht, dann bricht erstmal die Welt zusammen, dann die Medien, was ist da passiert und warum, das muss man immer wissen, so sehr man sich freut, wenn so eine riesige Sammlung, was ja die Sammlung von Flick war, er hat ja auch einen großen Bestand geschenkt, wenn das eines Tages geht, dann sucht man nur nach schuldigen und das ist ein Problem das muss man sich bewusst sein.“ See: Op. Cit. Parzinger. 278 In German: “Das reißt jetzt eine Lücke in das, was wir hier vor Ort zur Verfügung haben, um unsere Präsentationen zu bestücken. Also ein großes Konvolut hier vor Ort zur Verfügung zu haben, für das man nicht aufwändige Leihverkehr, Transporte und dergleichen in Anspruch nehmen muss, sondern eben mit Beständen, die vor Ort zur Verfügung stehen, arbeiten kann. An dieser Idee halte ich auch weiter fest.“ See: Op. Cit. Knapstein. 279 In German: “Ich fand das eine sehr sinnvolle Überlegung ein großes hochkarätiges Konvolut zur Verfügung zu haben für die eigene Museumsarbeit, um daraus Präsentationen zu erarbeiten. Neben natürlich weiteren Sonderausstellungen, die wir ja auch gemacht haben mit jüngeren Künstlerinnen und Künstlern, die neu produziert wurden. Jenseits dieser Sammlungsbestände, mit denen wir gearbeitet haben.” See: Ibid. 280 In German: ”Man muss versuchen, das auszugleichen, hier darf keine große Lücke entstehen.“ See: Op. Cit. Parzinger.
79 together with the collector for a few years, so that it's not such a fixed relationship, then it's not a huge catastrophe and the end of the world when someone leaves. There are many collectors who would like to show their collection in Berlin for a while.”281
Parzinger also emphasizes, however, that the Nationalgalerie has many works in storage that can now be reactivated and points out that under Udo Kittelmann, the former director of the Nationalgalerie, many young artists were acquired.282 "Under Udo Kittelmann, a great deal was bought, even from artists who were not yet so well known; he had a very good eye and a very good hand."283
Joachim Jäger highlights that a lot has been collected in recent years and that the departure of the Friedrich Christian Flick Collection can also open up new opportunities to show artist that haven’t been on display before. It also gives the opportunity to take over an exhibition that was on display in other cities, Jäger explained that they have done little of that because they have just worked a lot from the collection.284 But he also states that his regrets to the departure of the Friedrich Christian Flick collection. It is very regrettable because the collection was great and there are a number of works in the collection that the Nationalgalerie does not have, but we believe that we can replace them with other private collections. I believe that these were good years that also made the Hamburger Bahnhof a world location, and we simply have to make use of that now. (...) This also creates the possibility to show other things here, art from Berlin or art from the Nordic countries, which are not so well represented in the Flick Collection.285
281 In German: ”Wenn Dinge nicht übereignet werden, vielleicht muss man das Ganze flexibler gestalten, man arbeitet mal ein paar Jahre mit dem Sammler zusammen dann mit dem, dass es nicht so eine feste Bindung ist, dann ist es nicht die riesen Katastrophe und der Weltuntergang, wenn so jemand geht. Es gibt viele Sammler, die Ihre Sammlung für eine Zeit auch mal in Berlin zeigen würden.“ See: Ibid. 282 Udo Kittelmann is a German curator and was director of the Nationalgalerie Berlin from November 2008 to October 2020. 283 In German: “Unter Udo Kittelmann ist sehr viel angekauft worden, auch von Künstlern, die noch nicht so bekannt waren, da hatte er einen sehr guten Blick und ein sehr gutes Händchen gehabt.“ See: Parzinger, Interview. 07 January 2021. 284 In German: “Die Nationalgalerie hat in den letzten 10 Jahren auch intensiv gesammelt, auch da sind viele Dinge zu zeigen, vielleicht gibt das auch die ein oder andere Möglichkeit eine Ausstellung zu übernehmen, die in anderen Städten zu sehen sind, das haben wir eher wenig getan, weil wir eben viel aus der Sammlung gearbeitet haben, wichtig ist einfach das der Standort als Standort erhalten bleibt.“ See: Jäger, Interview. 11 January 2021. 285 In German: “Es ist sehr bedauerlich, weil die Sammlung toll war und eine Reihe von Werken in der Sammlung sind, die die Nationalgalerie nicht hat, wir glauben aber schon, dass wir das ersetzten können durch andere private Sammlungen. Ich glaube, dass es gute Jahre waren, die den Hamburger Bahnhof auch zu einem Weltstandort werden lassen, haben und das muss man jetzt einfach nutzen. (..) Das schafft auch die Möglichkeit hier mal andere Sachen zu zeigen, Kunst aus Berlin oder Kunst aus den Nordischen Ländern, die in der Flick Sammlung nicht so vertreten sind.“ See: Jäger, Interview. 11 January 2021.
80
The reputation of the Hamburger Bahnhof that has been achieved through the Friedrich Christian Flick Collection is now being utilized and expanded. Through the interplay of the outstanding Flick Collection with the collection of the Nationalgalerie, the Hamburger Bahnhof became an internationally renowned hotspot of contemporary art.286 The then-director of the Nationalgalerie of the Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin, Udo Kittelmann explains: “The news that the Friedrich Christian Flick Collection, one of the world's most outstanding international collections of contemporary art, will be leaving Berlin cannot be foreseen in its entirety at this point in time. It is a great pain for all the staff of the Nationalgalerie and for me that we feel about this."287
CONCLUSION: The departure of the Friedrich Christian Collection is a great loss; Friedrich Christian Flick has donated important works to the Nationalgalerie that can continue to be worked with. However, new collaborations will be necessary in order to maintain the complexity and diversity of themes. The Rieckhallen provided a suitable location for Friedrich Christian Flick's contemporary art collection. The identity of the hall, with its robust industrial charm, and the content of the collection complemented each other very well.
The evidence makes clear how dependent public museums are on the collections of private collectors, their acquisition budgets are low, and it is not at all possible for the Nationalgalerie to acquire the same works as the private collector Friedrich Christian Flick is able to. Private collectors can, of course, withdraw their collections, and when a large collection like that of Friedrich Christian Flick leaves the house, many future exhibition ideas also leave the house. In the case of the Friedrich Christian Flick Collection, there is an additional very important factor: the collection fits in perfectly with the holdings of the museum and complements the other collections.
Different approaches and views became clear in the conversations, Hermann Parzinger explains that new methods should be considered, here he introduces the idea of cooperation with changing private collectors so that one does not become too dependent on one collection. The former president of the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz is very positive about private collections. He bases
286 See: Parzinger, “Über die Zusammenarbeit mit Friedrich Christian Flick.“ 287 In German: “Die Nachricht, dass mit der Friedrich Christian Flick Collection eine der weltweit herausragenden internationalen Sammlungen zur zeitgenössischen Kunst Berlin verlassen wird, ist in ihrer gesamten Tragweite zum jetzigen Zeitpunkt noch gar nicht absehbar. Es ist ein großer Schmerz für alle Mitarbeiterinnen und Mitarbeiter der Nationalgalerie und für mich, den wir darüber empfinden.“ See: Kittelmann, “Über die Zusammenarbeit mit Friedrich Christian Flick.“
81 this on the historical character of the state museums, which have consisted of private collections since the 19th century, and on the lack of funds, which makes the acquisition of contemporary art impossible. Gabrielle Knapstein emphasises that from her point of view it is necessary to have a large collection of works on site in order to be able to work with them. It saves a lot of organisational effort, such as drawing up elaborate loan contracts and taking out extra insurance, and she also emphasises the sustainability factor when works are moved around the world. Joachim Jäger points out the opportunities that are now available and also sees it as an advantage to show other artists again. Everyone agrees on one point: compensation is needed for the gigantic collection of Friedrich Christian Flick, but what form this will take is still open.
From the current perspective, it can be argued that it is quite positive when collections change their location but only as long as they are preserved for the public and made accessible to a broad audience in different locations but not if they move into storage. In the case of the Friedrich Christian Flicks Collection, this scenario has not yet been finally communicated, but the current status is that the collection will be transferred to Swiss depots. That would be a very regrettable event if they were to remain there. “Flick's collection has always been a passionate personal enterprise, built up with the aim of making it accessible to the public.”288
288 Harris, “Flick Collection finally opens to the public: A section of 400 works go on view in a converted warehouse”
82 4. Results of the Investigation
The study of Friedrich Christian Flick's private collection in the state-owned public museum Hamburger Bahnhof has demonstrated that public museums are unable to keep up with the financial expansion of contemporary art. Due to the rise in the price of art in the market, the acquisition and presentation of contemporary art has become a privilege of private collectors. Since there is no other alternative, public museums have to work together with private collectors and this collaboration can be advantageous for both, as is argued and confirmed in this work. Public museums are well suited to present private collections.
As this research suggests, it is important to look at the issue from an architectural and urban point of view, since exhibiting contemporary art in particular has an impact on public space and its perception. The departure of the Friedrich Christian Flick Collection, one of the largest and most important contemporary art collections in Europe, will have negative consequences for Berlin, but what these consequences will be precisely can only be assumptions at this point. However, something that is certain, is that the city will lose a beloved art venue and public access to a comprehensive collection of 20ths and 21st Century Art. This research provides evidence for this, through the conversations with Jäger, Knapstein, Lehmann and Parzinger that the departure will tear a large gap in the exhibition work at the Hamburger Bahnhof, but also in the mediation of contemporary art in the capital, as there are no other contemporary collections of this scale. The departure of the Friedrich Christian Flick collection will bring considerable challenges for the institution itself, but also for the city of Berlin, because only other contemporary collections can help to compensate for the Friedrich Christian Flick Collection.
Historically, we can already tell from the example of the Hamburger Bahnhof what influence the opening of a contemporary museum had on urban space. In the mid-1990s, Hamburger Bahnhof was built as a museum for contemporary art, which was far from being an accepted form of museum in the city, but the young dynamic generation of artists and creatives embraced the concept and strengthened its perception in the city. Today, the area surrounding the Hamburger Bahnhof is characterized by high end living and office high-rises, the museum was at the center of the transition of the area into a lucrative environment, it channeled the momentum started by a contemporary museum, that now that the area is stable and land price is high, can be withdrawn and the developers can enjoy all the benefits paved by the presence of such a popular public museum. The departure of the Friedrich Christian Flick Collection and the demolition of the Rieckhallen will not only visually change the urban space, but also the mentality of the place and the perception in the
83 city will not remain unharmed by this absence. The Friedrich Christian Flick Collection and the Rieckhallen, in which the collection was shown for the last 17 years, shaped the place and in many ways affected the entire city through its architecture and urban impact.
The Friedrich Christian Flick Collection was exemplary of how a private collector can make his collection accessible in a public institution. The collector gave the Nationalgalerie complete freedom to work with his large collection of works and supported the institution as much as he could. The people interviewed for this work, such as, Jäger, Knapstein, Lehmann and Parzinger, have all described the collaboration with Friedrich Christian Flick as fruitful and emphasized that the collector never interfered in the work of the curators, which is very rare among private collectors. They all underlined the importance and outstanding quality of the collection and therefore the importance of sharing it with the public. However, these types of collaborations should have as a goal the donation of the artwork, otherwise a catastrophe like the one that just happened with the Friedrich Christian Flick Collection can take place. The mistake here was that Friedrich Christian Flick did not give his entire collection to the Nationalgalerie. This meant that a lot of public money was invested in a loan that never became the property of the Nationalgalerie.
I argue that the Nationalgalerie as a public museum would have been an ideal permanent house for Friedrich Christian Flick's Collection. As has been shown in this work, public museums have a more democratic process for working with artists, collectors, acquiring artworks, interest in a long-term existence, as also the obligations to grapple with past and as well as the accomplishment of a lasting educational mission than private museums. Even though Zurich showed that the city had a voice. Basically, public museums are more transparent, since they are under the constant observation of public financiers and society. Conversely, what a private collector does with his self-financed museum is largely his own business since they are not necessarily liable to the scrutiny of the public in the sense of both the state and the public sphere. Based on the studied evidence, the collection of Friedrich Christian Flick, if it had been donated to the institution, it would have been under good care and permanent research by the staff and the art-interested public.
Besides, public museums have a board that discusses loans, collaborations and acquisitions. Collecting in a public institution is done by different qualified staff members, neutrally accountable, and scientifically based, and it actually occurs separately from the competitive art market. The work of art is evaluated by several experts, so a scientific assessment takes place. These experts ensure an acquisition and selection high quality art works and create intelligent and intellectual exhibition
84 content, which is always related to public relevance as it is requested by the public and also one of the key tasks of the museum.
The private collectors work alone or with advisors personally selected by them and is their collections are therefore one-sided. Public museums, like Hamburger Bahnhof, have the assignment of conveying general and objective knowledge, while private museums can afford to devote themselves to their personal tastes and preferences. The private collectors acquire, with their private means, the works of art that please them personally, and they can also present the works of art to the public according to their preferences. Often the collectors themselves become the curators or the collectors’ choses one curator according to their taste. Here, the art is displayed to the public which personally pleases the collectors. This cannot be described as a democratic process and in fact does not fulfil the social responsibility and the educational mission in any way.
My argument is that in terms of exhibiting art, social responsibility matters. As a museum, but also as a private collector, you have a social responsibility that is shaped by your own actions. This responsibility must be taken seriously in order to provide a good educational mission. In this context, it is important to present artworks that have a relevant role to play in current affairs and to present and at the same time question them in a critical and reflective manner. Museums are part of the public sphere and thus have a role as role models; people orient themselves to their exhibitions and the topics and discussions presented. Therefore, the content must be of high quality and this cannot be conveyed in simple show events. A museum is not a 'pop concert' or a 'catwalk for supermodels,' it is an institution that researches, processes and presents content and then conducts a discourse with the audience as the first exhibition of the Friedrich Christian Flick Collection showed.
Though it is absolutely necessary for public museums, such as the Hamburger Bahnhof, to attract private collections to their institution, it is also equally profitable for private collectors. By placing the collection under the care of a large institution, like Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz, the collection is presented to a broad audience. In addition, there is the financial advantage for the collectors, as the insurance and storage costs are covered, and all administrative and exhibition-related work is also carried out by the public institution.
Naturally, a private collection is only interesting for a public museum if it complements the holdings and opening new perspectives for exhibitions. The Hamburger Bahnhof had the opportunity to thematically connect the Friedrich Christian Flick Collection with other collections, like Marx and Marzona and holdings of their own of cause such thing has to be included in the contract with the
85 private collector as was the case with the Friedrich Christian Flick Collection, but also with all the other collections of the Nationalgalerie. According to Lehmann, it is essential for a public museum that the curatorial responsibility lies with the institution itself. In the case when private collections are exhibited in private museums, they have the fatal tendency to lose their profile because they are closed at one point in time, as the view of art can be changing, and the audience always demands to see something new, the collections cannot develop further.289 This is exactly what a public museum offers, the possibility of reinterpreting and connecting private collections with other works and artists in a public context.
Moreover, it became evident through this work that larger collections are more objective than smaller collections and for this reason particularly interesting for the Hamburger Bahnhof. Showing a large collection, such as the Friedrich Christian Flick Collection, is very beneficial. Knapstein believes this is a very significant advantage for public museums because the larger the collection, the less it represents the private taste of the collector.290 The focus of the public museums’ is always on the public with interesting views of art history, in order to repeatedly make other art historical references and not to make the perspective of a collector apparent. In principle, it should not be underestimated that the establishment of a collection is also a great achievement, which, however, plays no major significance for the public institution when presenting the art works.
As it was demonstrated the field of research is an essential part of a public museum, also in contemporary art it is necessary to have a research approach in art history towards to convey knowledge in different ways, and it is also needed in order to make the exhibitions meaningful, interesting and varied for the visitors. However, in order to understand works of art, it requires qualified staff that is able to read and interpret the works of art. The ability to objectively analyze a work of art, a style, or an artistic manifestation and identify it in terms of art history is known as perception. The skilled eye of Jäger, Knapstein, Lehmann and Schuster were required to recognise the high quality of the Friedrich Christian Flick Collection. It is the creation of theories that allow for the measurement of different potential meanings of a work of art. A public museum has these capabilities, they have diverse experts in several fields, whereas a private museum can hardly do this work, that’s why they can’t operate like a scientific institution.
However, Knapstein sees the problem mainly in the fact that the purchase budget is not equivalent to the current contemporary art market prices. Therefore, she feels the need of cooperation in the
289 See: Op. Cit. Lehmann. 290 See: Op. Cit. Knapstein.
86 future with private collectors, because it is necessary to have access to holdings and not just to make special exhibitions since lending is very complex and also not a very sustainable undertaking.291 As it has just been pointed out, a public museum represents, in terms of democratic and transparency a clearly preferable institution for social benefit than a private museum. If one relates now these two forms of exhibit, public museum and private museum, to the educational mission it becomes clear that public museums can be much more liberal, transparent and enlightened in their approach to the art than it is feasible for private museums.
The education mission forms a core task of the museums. As has been shown, the Hamburger Bahnhof endeavours to make exhibitions accessible to a large audience and not only to a small exclusive community as it is often the case with private museums, where the content shown is made for a certain age group or special interest group. Contemporary art in particular is a wonderful field to explore and experience, and thus demands and encourages intellectual engagement with the content presented in the exhibitions. Especially the mediation task is becoming more important and should also become more of a priority, as contemporary art no longer contains the knowledge of iconography furthermore society has changed and has new demands, to which museums must respond too. Lehmann emphasizes that the private museum is not able to carry out the mediation since they do not have the differentiation of the occupational profiles.292
It is impossible for public museums to acquire significant works of art on their own these days. The Hamburger Bahnhof, which is financed by public funds, has, like all of the Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin, a very low acquisition budget, which makes it problematic to acquire important works of contemporary art, as Jäger and Knapstein as well as Lehmann and Parzinger outlined. Without the private collectors, the Nationalgalerie could not afford this wealth of collections in their houses. Jäger and Knapstein, however, see it necessary that they receive public funds so that they can continue to set accents beyond their cooperation with private collections, permanent loans and donations, by acquiring works on their own, such as artists who are not yet so well represented in other collections. They consider it urgently necessary for public museums to keep their own purchasing budget in order to maintain a certain freedom and independence for public museums’.293
Since public museums rely on the help of private collectors, the place where the collections are shown is of primary importance. Lehmann sees a problem in the fact that Berlin no longer has the
291 Ibid. 292 See: Op. Cit. Lehmann. 293 See: Op. Cit. Jäger and Knapstein.
87 attraction it had in the 2000s.294 In current situation, there has been even a withdrawal of collections to increase in the recent past, such as the Hoffmann Collection and the Friedrich Christian Flick Collection. Both are outstanding contemporary art collections located in Berlin. A replacement for these two collections is essential especially for the Friedrich Christian Flick Collection to continue the museum's operations of the Hamburger Bahnhof. The necessity for cooperating with private collectors is also apparent at this point.
Today, when visiting museums’ can we still discover something? The event culture entered the everyday life and apparently inspires many people for art events, even those without an interest in art? Are we losing something in the process or are we just gaining in enjoyment and enthusiasm for the new thrill? Life turned into a fun society and it has become very difficult these days to separate events from education. Lehmann sees the event as the bait for the museums.295 It seems as if it is no longer possible without a big fireworks display, society lacks the desire for profundity, everyday life is fast and everything just flies by, no one wants to miss anything and therefore be present everywhere. A great challenge for a public museum that is designed for longevity.
Particularly a public museum can’t be organized as an event culture, but also can no longer manage without those kinds of events, as this is how it gets its public attention. This attention generates people's interest and brings them to the museum, they don't only come because of the events, but they discover the exhibition through the events publicity. Just as Lehmann described it, it is the 'bait' that attracts the population to the contemporary art museums. People have all kinds of reasons why they visit a museum, to meet friends, to experience new things and to see something different, but also to learn. In this case it became clear through the research that those event helps the public museums to position themselves in the public eye. Especially through the analyse of the first exhibition of the Friedrich Christian Flick Collection it became evident that through such public ‘event’ the family past and the collection itself was widely discussed in public.
However, it must never be the case that only the big numbers count, that would be the bestseller philosophy which would not be beneficial for public museums. A museum visit is about discovery, and that would no longer exist, simply because everything becomes mainstream, when only well- known artists are on display in every exhibition. The so call political interferes, the less famous artists should not be neglected, if public museums would do so they would not fulfil their social responsibility anymore. The museum's activities must not only revolve around the next big event or
294 See: Op. Cit. Lehmann. 295 See: Op. Cit. Lehmann.
88 the next blockbuster exhibition, even if public museums today are dependent on the event character, but it must by no means exclusively determine the museum's activities.
I argue that the task of a public museum is to make discoveries and to acquire or deepen knowledge, which is why the art that is shown must always be questioned anew. In addition to discovery, a visit to a museum should also offer an experience, whether that is sensory, visual or acoustic. It must touch the audience so that thought processes are stimulated. It should also allow for exchange and conversation to share and communicate what has been experienced. In performances, the visitor himself becomes an actor, as the experiences we have merge with the thought processes we go through as a consequence of the experience. Accompanying the exhibition of Friedrich Christian Flick's collection in 2004, the Hamburger Bahnhof gave visitors the opportunity to participate in collective conversations and discussion evenings. However, the size of the collection has also made it possible to produce new content and share it with the public during the 17 years of joint work. In addition, the collection has many installations works where the viewer often automatically becomes part of the interaction of the art object. All these experiences and debates with our own person and with our society are key elements of a museum visit. Museum work here signifies that it also addresses complex and difficult topics and breaks them down so that the visitor can absorb and process them in the form of discussions, for example.
With this work it becomes evident that the Friedrich Christian Flick Collection represents a solid example of how a public museum like Hamburger Bahnhof was able to deal with such a complex family past. The public institution could better take on the role of moderator between the collector and his family past on the one hand and the interested public on the other. The quality and the size of the collection did not allow any argument against making it accessible to the public. Jäger emphasized that such a collection as that of Friedrich Christian Flick is the property of the public and must be treated as such.296 Shutting down art because of a dark family past is not the right solution, and it is precisely the past that belongs also in the public discussion, specifically in order to build up the past in a transparent process. Lehmann considers his work a success and emphasizes that it was the right decision to bring this collection into the public eye and to face the heavy debates with the public. But not having such a large and important art collection as that of Friedrich Christian Flick in the public eye would have been fatal.297 Society loses a large part of its own identity when art is stored in depots, since art represents a large part of the perception of one's own identity.
296 See: Op. Cit. Jäger. 297 See: Op. Cit. Lehmann.
89 It can be argued that the case study with the collection of Friedrich Christian Flick and the Hamburger Bahnhof presents an ideal option. Here both benefit from each other, the collector brings the necessary financial resources, in this case the artwork, which is difficult for a public museum to purchase, and in turn the museum has highly trained professionals to curate high quality exhibitions. The public museums have a board that selects appropriate private collections for the museums through a democratic discursive process, rather than private museums’ that exhibits the personal taste and understanding of the collector.
Based on the evidence when Friedrich Christian Flick would have opened his private collection in Zurich, it would have been impossible for his subjective self to come to terms with this family's past. The Hamburger Bahnhof was a public institution that communicated openly and clearly with the collector and constantly involved the public in the dialogue. The departure of the collection from Berlin now leaves a huge gap for the Hamburger Bahnhof and also the city of Berlin, where it is now a matter of finding suitable new collectors or developing new concepts of how to work with private collectors in the future. Will it remain a system of a large collection covering a broad area or, as Parzinger would prefer, smaller cooperation’s with ever-changing private collectors?298 That the investor CA- immo is still being portrayed by the renowned newspapers as the ‘bad guy’ in the whole venture, which simply does not correspond to the facts found by this work. It rather clearly shows that the investor obviously saw the potential in the property, which the city of Berlin obviously did not see. It appears as if the media want to confirm socially shaped images. It looks like it sells better than the failure of the Senate, the city or Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz, even if all the facts contradict it.
Friedrich Christian Flick invested eight million euros in the renovation of the Rieckhallen before the city sold the building to the private investor CA-immo. The collector made his collection available to Berlin on permanent loan and financed the building in which the collection was displayed. Now the building is being demolished by the investor, with their good reason. Friedrich Christian Flick, too, has drawn his consequences and leaves Berlin with every right to be mad at Berlin. He gave Berlin an exhibition building, and his contemporary art collection and the city simply sold the property to a foreign investor. It seems that Berlin did not recognize both the potential of the land and the importance of Friedrich Christian Flick's contemporary art collection for Berlin.
The different perceptions between private collectors and public museums can also lead to considerable difficulties, as this work proves. The work shows that cooperation between the two
298 See: Op. Cit. Parzinger.
90 parties is essential for the survival of public museums but can also be an incentive for private collectors to place their collections in the care of a well-functioning institution that ensures that the works are well exhibited. But the case study also showed how fragile this relationship is and how easily it can break down. It is not an ideal system, but merely the best compromise in difficult financial times.
The questions that remain open are how the situation with the Friedrich Christian Flick Collection will finally end, perhaps a solution will be found after all? However, in order to prevent such a situation from happening again, it is much more important to investigate how to make public museums more interesting for private collectors and how to encourage private collections to be donated to public museums. In this way, long-term solutions could be found for public museums to balance low purchase budgets and to continue the educational mission at a high and qualified level.
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