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CULTURE

Berlin’s tale of two art scenes

The Berlin Wall might be a thing of the past, but Daniel Miller believes there might as well be a death strip dividing the German capital's art scene.

Published: 11 November 2008 14:41 CET
Berlin's tale of two art scenes
Photo: Susanna Majuri via Art Forum Berlin

Berlin these days is being touted in some quarters as the current hotspot of the contemporary art world. But the historically divided city hasn’t managed to forge a common art scene.

This was made abundantly clear last week as the German capital hosted two separate art world events, radically different in scale and ambition.

From October 31 to November 3, the 13th annual Art Forum Berlin returned to the gigantic fair grounds in the city’s well-heeled Charlottenburg district. Featuring 127 galleries from 26 countries, showcasing a total of around 2,000 artists, the high-profile event was even opened by Mayor Klaus Wowereit.

The mayor’s presence was called for, since Art Forum Berlin exists at the commercial heart of the city’s art scene and it plugs it into the international cash nexus. Berlin may yet “be creative,” as Wowereit’s current city-branding campaign “Be Berlin” suggests. Yet, like most of Berlin’s money, most of the finance that fuels this creativity comes from outside the city.

The forum is primarily a magnet for moneyed investors, even though the event attempts to be coy about this by hosting a series of lectures and a curated special programme alongside its spread of commercial galleries. But in the end, Art Forum Berlin is a trade fair, with priorities to match. This year, a performance by the art collective Fame – which would have involved handing out free bowls of soup – was cancelled after the official caterers, fearing for their profit margins, applied pressure.

A number of gallerists believe that this commercial focus is about to intensify further. Art Forum Berlin 2008 will be the last one directed by Sabine van der Ley, who has managed the fair for the last eight years. From next year, the helm will be taken by two former Art Basel employers. Eva-Maria Haeusler and Peter Vetsch.

“Art Basel is a more strictly commercial affair,” noted Hajnal Németh of the artist-run Lada Project. “In the future, it’s possible that there won’t be space here for galleries like ours.”

Along with this commercial question, the size of the fair also caused problems for visitors. “I see many people walking through here hands behind their backs, strolling through like a walk in a park,” observed Hans Gieles of the Amsterdam gallery VOUS ETES ICI. “As a result, they never really have an encounter with any particular work. Other people go up to every piece and stare at it intently and then at the end of the day are exhausted.”

Gieles suggested that there is an art to attending an art fair: “What my wife and I say, is that if you go home with three or four really memorable works stuck in your mind, you’ve done pretty well.”

Of course, the other alternative is to avoid the trade fair entirely by going underground.

Bang in the middle of Art Forum Berlin a very different kind of art event took place in the city’s gritty Neukölln district. Essentially a sort of urban safari involving a good deal of walking – despite the free taxis – the neighbourhood arts festival Nachtundnebel presented art in the context of a living, breathing city, as opposed to the context of a shop floor.

Nachtundnebel, which means “Night and Fog” and is the German phrase for “cloak and dagger,” was organized by Markus Pachowiak of the Schillerpalais gallery. Pachowiak set up the festival in 2002 and for the past seven years it has served as a way of linking Neukölln’s burgeoning art scene together.

“Neukölln is the place were something new can develop,” he said. “There is a still a lot of empty space here, with new artists moving in every day.”

There is a widespread idea in the art world that fairs offer the widest variety of contemporary art works and trends. In fact, this is only partially true. Because fairs only exhibit works which can easily be sold as a commodities, they tend to be more restrictive than they seem at first glance.

The range offered by Nachtundnebel was more genuinely diverse. The attractions included an amateur fashion show, a talking dragon in a shipping container, live performances and a playful installation consisting of old arcade games. Perhaps none of the work on display was as accomplished or smart as the best at Art Forum Berlin, but unlike the trade fair, the safari in Neukölln was greater than the sum of its parts.

And one project – a richly atmospheric “art apothecary” devoted to deploying art towards therapeutic ends – seemed to mirror how one half of Berlin’s burgeoning art scene is contributing to the rapid transformation of a troubled neighbourhood like Neukölln.

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DISCOVER GERMANY

Eight amazing German museums to explore this spring

With thousands of years of history in Germany to explore, you’re never going to run out of museums to scratch the itch to learn about and fully experience the world of the past.

Published: 5 April 2024 10:46 CEST
Eight amazing German museums to explore this spring

Here are eight of our favourite museums across Germany’s 16 states for you to discover for yourself. 

Arche Nebra

Nebra, Saxony-Anhalt

One day, around 1600 BCE, local Bronze Age peoples buried one of their most precious objects – the Nebra Sky Disk, a copper, gold, and bronze disk that acted as a calendar to help them plant crops. This was a matter of life and death at the time. 

Over three thousand years later, in 1999, it was uncovered by black market treasure hunters, becoming Germany’s most significant archaeological find. 

While the Sky Disk itself is kept in the (really very good)  State Museum of Pre- and Early History in nearby Halle, the site of the discovery is marked by the Arche Nebra, a museum explaining prehistoric astronomy and the cultural practices of the people who made it. 

Kids will love the planetarium, explaining how the disk was used. 

Atomkeller Museum

Halgerloch, Baden-Württemberg

From the distant to the very recent past – in this case, the Nazi atomic weapons programme. Even as defeat loomed, Nazi scientists such as Werner Heisenberg were trying to develop a nuclear bomb. 

While this mainly took place in Berlin, an old beer cellar under the town of Halgerloch, south of Stuttgart, was commandeered as the site of a prototype fission reactor. 

A squad of American soldiers captured and dismantled the reactor as the war ended. Still, the site was later turned into a museum documenting German efforts to create a working reactor – one that they could use to develop a bomb.

It’s important to note that you don’t need to be a physicist to understand what they were trying to do here, as the explanatory materials describe the scientist’s efforts in a manner that is easy to understand. 

German National Museum

Nuremberg, Bavaria

Remember that scene at the end of ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’, where an unnamed government official wheels the Ark of the Covenant into an anonymous government warehouse? This could possibly be the German equivalent – albeit far better presented. 

The German National Museum was created in 1852 as a repository for the cultural history of the German nation – even before the country’s founding. In the intervening 170 years, it’s grown to swallow an entire city block of Nuremberg, covering 60,000 years of history and hundreds of thousands of objects. 

If it relates to the history of Germany since prehistoric times, you’re likely to find it here.

Highlights include several original paintings and etchings by Albrecht Dürer, the mysterious Bronze Age ‘Gold Hats’, one of Europe’s most significant collections of costuming and musical instruments, and a vast display of weapons, armour and firearms. 

European Hansemuseum

Lübeck, Schleswig-Holstein

In the late Middle Ages, the political and economic centre of the world was focused on the North Sea and the Baltic German coasts. 

This was the domain of the Hanseatic League, one of the most powerful trading alliances in human history. Centuries before the Dutch and British East India Companies, they made in-roads to far-flung corners.

The European Hansemuseum in the former Hanseatic city of Lübeck tells the story of the league’s rise and eventual fall, its day-to-day operations, and its enduring legacy.

This museum is fascinating for adults and kids. It uses original artefacts and high-tech interactive elements to tell tales of maritime adventure. Younger visitors will also be enchanted by the museum’s augmented reality phone app that asks them to help solve mysteries. 

Fugger & Welser Adventure Museum

Augsburg, Germany

The Hanseatic League was not the only economic power in the late Middle Ages. The Fugger and Welser families of Augsburg may have been the richest in the world until the 20th century.

From humble beginnings, both families grew to become incredibly powerful moneylenders, funding many of the wars of the 16th century and the conquest of the New World.

The Fugger & Welser Adventure Museum not only explains the rise of both patrician families but also the practices that led to their inconceivable wealth—including, sadly, the start of the Transatlantic slave trade. 

The museum also documents the short-lived Welser colony in Venezuela, which, if it had survived, could have resulted in a very different world history.

This museum has many high tech displays, making it a very exciting experience for moguls of any age.

Teutoburg Forest Museum

Kalkriese, Lower Saxony

Every German child learns this story at some point: One day at the end of summer 9 AD, three legions of the Roman army marched into the Teutoburg forest… and never came out. 

Soldiers sent after the vanished legions discovered that they had been slaughtered to a man.

Arminius, a German who had been raised as a Roman commander, had betrayed the three legions to local Germanic tribes, who ambushed them while marching through the forest. 

Today, the probable site of the battle – we can’t entirely be sure – is marked by a museum called the Varusschlacht Museum (Literally ‘Varus Battle Museum’, named after the loyal Roman commander). 

The highlights here are the finds – made all the more eerie by the knowledge that they were looted and discarded from the legionaries in the hours following the ambush. 

German Romanticism Museum

Frankfurt, Hesse

The Romantic era of art, music and literature is one of Germany’s greatest cultural gifts to the world, encompassing the work of poets such as Goethe and Schiller, composers like Beethoven and artists in the vein of Caspar David Friedrich.

Established in 2021 next to the house where Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was born, the German Romanticism Museum is the world’s largest collection of objects related to the Romantic movement. 

In addition to artefacts from some of the greatest names in German romanticism, in 2024, you’ll find a major exhibition exploring Goethe’s controversial 1774 novel, ‘The Sorrows of Young Werther’, and another on the forest as depicted as dark and dramatic in the art of the period. 

Gutenberg Castle

Haßmersheim, Baden-Württemberg

Sometimes being a smaller castle is a good thing. The relatively small size and location of Guttenburg Castle, above the River Neckar near Heilbronn, protected it from war and damage over eight hundred years – it’s now the best preserved Staufer-era castle in the country.

While the castle is still occupied by the Barons of Gemmingen-Guttenberg, the castle now also contains a museum, that uses the remarkably well-preserved castle interiors to explore centuries of its history – and the individuals that passed through it.

After you’ve explored the museum—and the current exhibition that uses Lego to document life in the Middle Ages —it’s also possible to eat at the castle’s tavern and stay overnight!

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