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World of Art
The Berlin Gallery
English, German (translation)
308 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 1971
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May 29, 2016
The first section of The Berlin Gallery is a fascinating history of how the art collections in the Prussian state collections were compiled over 2-300 years and how they fared during and after WWII. The edition I read was published in 1971, lent to me by a friend who visits Germany often and who bought this soon after it was published. At the time Klessmann was writing, the collections that had been assembled for the great art museums on Berlin's Museum Insel were split between East and West Germany. Hundreds of great works stored in a 'safe place' in Berlin were destroyed in a fire not long after the Soviet occupation. fortunately, many more had been hurriedly removed von Berlin just weeks before it fell, hidden down salt mines in what became West Germany, some the taken to the US, returned in bad shape after long touring, and were shown for some years at the Berlin-Dahlem Gallery. before they began to filter back into Berlin from the 1960s onwards. in 1971 the collections were still split between East and West, and none really knew what the situation was in the east.
After this fascinating introductory section, many of the major works are illustrated with a full page full colour image and discussion on the opposite page. The much shorter last section has small black and white images of many more art works, most mentioned somewhere in the main text, but not given their own analysis.
The author, Rudiger Klessmann was wonderfully qualified to write about this collection. An art historian, he was a curator at the Art Gallery of the National Museums of Prussian Cultural Heritage in Dahlem, from 1957 to 1970 and so had unrivalled access to the works of art themselves and years in which to look at and research them.
His descriptions of each work cover social history, art history, artists' biography and characteristic techniques, iconography, and provenance (all legally acquired) - all on one page. It's a great achievement, and fascinating reading if you're interested in the histories and ethics of collecting and museums, as well as learning about these works that are now part of the art collections of post-Prussian Berlin. Klessmann gave only the lightest flick past the forced emigration of Jewish collectors and dealers in the 1930s. I'm not sure that he mentions the word Jew at all and, for readers at this remove, his failure to even mention the fates of Jewish artists, art collectors and collections under Nazism is a very loud silence.
At the end, I thought this is not only a fascinating history, it's a historical document itself because of the time and place at which it was written.
After this fascinating introductory section, many of the major works are illustrated with a full page full colour image and discussion on the opposite page. The much shorter last section has small black and white images of many more art works, most mentioned somewhere in the main text, but not given their own analysis.
The author, Rudiger Klessmann was wonderfully qualified to write about this collection. An art historian, he was a curator at the Art Gallery of the National Museums of Prussian Cultural Heritage in Dahlem, from 1957 to 1970 and so had unrivalled access to the works of art themselves and years in which to look at and research them.
His descriptions of each work cover social history, art history, artists' biography and characteristic techniques, iconography, and provenance (all legally acquired) - all on one page. It's a great achievement, and fascinating reading if you're interested in the histories and ethics of collecting and museums, as well as learning about these works that are now part of the art collections of post-Prussian Berlin. Klessmann gave only the lightest flick past the forced emigration of Jewish collectors and dealers in the 1930s. I'm not sure that he mentions the word Jew at all and, for readers at this remove, his failure to even mention the fates of Jewish artists, art collectors and collections under Nazism is a very loud silence.
At the end, I thought this is not only a fascinating history, it's a historical document itself because of the time and place at which it was written.
Displaying 1 of 1 review