NEWS FROM THE ARCHIVES

Rosa von der Schulenburg

“I know that it is inappropriate to narrate a photograph.” Hubertus v. Amelunxen1 quotes this first sentence from Michel Foucault’s La pensée, l’émotion. He goes on to discuss the desire “to begin a narrative precisely where it has found an end in our observation – in photography, which has elevated the becoming of an end to the status of an image”. “But one hesitates and is doubtful”, says Amelunxen, “about language being able to catch up with photography retrospectively”, concluding: “Our desire relapses into language.” For members of my guild (especially for readers of images and iconographers), the desire to approach the per se unattainable goal of narrating photography whilst being constantly reminded that words fail to catch up is, and always will be, strong. Nevertheless, read on.

Roll the film: A dark room. A close-up: his gaze concentrated, Beuys lights a cigarette with a match. / He pauses with the cigarette in his hand. / In close-up, his life-size face, eyes nearly closed, the discreetly tragic and sad expression of a Man of Sorrows. “The face lends itself as the place of heroic transfiguration. Like a spell, a natural phenomenon or a so-called blow of fate. One feels overpowered by them: there is something insurmountable about their authority”, states Gisela von Wysocki in Mitteilungen über das menschliche Gesicht (Messages about the human face), which she regards as “attempts to decipher it”.2 In the text accompanying his book on Beuys, the photographer Michael Ruetz writes that he was interested not in “a picture of a saint, but in the most possibly detailed observation”.3 And this is also what he provides with a dramaturgical flair for the sequencing of the photographs in the book. Back and to the next shot: Beuys from a little closer, in a typical thinker’s pose: chin in hand, eyes half-closed, brow furrowed. Then the camera pulls back and the room comes into view: Beuys elucidates or argues with his hands. / He fixes his gaze attentively on an invisible other. / Close-up of his calm hands with a shortened cigarette, fine smoke curling upwards from the ash tip – signs of concentrated contemplation.

For Ruetz, this is merely the prelude to Beuys’ entry onto the stage for the production Beuys bleibt.

On the next spread, on the left, a deserted, narrow room containing a narrow, roughly crafted workbench bearing materials, scraps of food – and a knife. On the right, a close-up of Beuys’ long-fingered hands. With an elegant gesture, one hand reaches for an espresso cup on a rusticated table. Next to it are the smoker’s paraphernalia – and an axe.

Then into view comes the legendary “Celtic” performance, which took place on 5 April 1971 in the construction site of a civil defence room in Basel. Beuys idiosyncratically quoted Christian rites and scenarios, such as the washing of feet and baptism. Ruetz allows us to identify the Saviour in the throng of his disciples and draws us close to the gleaming shirt-front of Beuys as a luminary who also shows us the way. The performance caused a media rumpus in its day. We see some familiar elements – and the nuances of the scrutiny by Ruetz, who was obviously granted a box seat during the performance. In the baptismal scene, for example, in which Beuys kneels in a metal tub to receive the water pouring out of a metal watering can, the change in his facial expression and those of the spectators becomes discernible in a rapid sequence of shots. Ruetz is just as interested in the equipment of the cameramen and press photographers, such as a microphone dangling into the picture, a ladder, and the reflections of the bright lighting, as he is in the abandoned space after the performance with carelessly scattered props and other remnants, and the small groups of people in conversation on the fringes. In the state of the space, the remaining items and people, Beuys remains visible in his absence. In more than a dozen photographs in the book, spaces and things loom large. Beuys is not present in person but visible only as an intervening hand or a figure viewed from behind. Beuys’ interiors with their specific furnishings and agglomerations of things and materials tell us no less about the artist’s singularity than his physiognomy and habitus. Much more than this is peculiar to Beuys, for essential to him are also his reflection and shadow.

In addition to the portraits of spatial and material surrogates, the group scenarios and observations of Beuys in his relations with others stand out. Among them is an extensive series of images showing him discussing students’ works at the art academy. Together with Ruetz’s observations in Beuys’ study, they form the nucleus of the book.

All photographs in the book were taken during the early 1970s, when Ruetz, with his camera but without any specific commission, visited Beuys at home and accompanied him to the art academy and elsewhere. “The act of photography is like going on a hunt in which photographer and camera merge into one indivisible function. This is a hunt for new states of things, situations never seen before, for the improbable, for information. The structure of the act of photography is a quantum one: a doubt made up of points of hesitation and points of decision-making”, writes Vilém Flusser in conclusion in his 1983 essay Für eine Philosophie der Fotografie.

4

The phenomenon of Beuys with his habitual appearance and impact has etched itself into the collective pictorial memory. Each picture portrays the person to whom it is devoted and, at the same time, its maker. Ruetz’s view of Beuys contributes subtle nuances – less veneration and more enlightenment – to the enduring collective image of Beuys. And that is by no means little.

1 Hubertus von Amelunxen, Theorie der Fotografie IV. 1980–1995 (Munich: Schirmer, 2000), p. 15. 2 Gisela von Wysocki, Fremde Bühnen. Mitteilungen über das menschliche Gesicht (Hamburg: EVA, 1995), pp. 14 and 18. She does not devote a portrait study to Beuys in this book.

3 Michael Ruetz, “Serendipity”, in Michael Ruetz,

Beuys bleibt. Beuys – A Close Up (Paris: éditions facteur cheval, 2021), p. 84. 4 An extract can be found in German in Amelunxen, Theorie der Fotografie IV, pp. 49–64, here p. 53. See also Vilém

Flusser, Towards a Philosophy of Photography, trans.

Anthony Mathews (London: Reaktion Books, 2000).

ROSA VON DER SCHULENBURG is head of the Art Collection of the Akademie der Künste.

Michael Ruetz, Beuys bleibt. Beuys – A Close Up was published by éditions facteur cheval, Paris, in January 2021. The photographer donated all of his Beuys negatives to the Academy Archives. A selection of photographic prints from these are printed in the book. The book is available at the Galerie van der Grinten (art@vandergrintengalerie.com).

ON THE FOUNDING OF DEUTSCHE FILM AKTIENGESELLSCHAFT (DEFA) SEVENTY-FIVE YEARS AGO

Torsten Musial

The slightly yellowing document – worn from much use and now very brittle – confirmed Kurt Maetzig was pursuing important cultural endeavours as editor-in-chief and production manager of the newsreel Der Augenzeuge (The eyewitness). This document allowed him to claim food stamps and to move freely in all four of Berlin’s occupation zones. But strictly speaking, when the pass was issued on 3 April 1946, the issuer, the Deutsche Film AG, did not as yet, exist. It was only officially founded a good six weeks later.

The Soviet occupying powers had already given the order to establish a new German film industry shortly after the war. One of the first to apply for this task to the German Central Administration for National Education was the then 34-year-old Kurt Maetzig, who had previously come into contact with the medium of film only through work in his father’s film-copying business. He and set designers Carl Haacker and Willy Schiller, actors Adolf Fischer and Hans Klering, and businessman and lighting technician Alfred Lindemann set up a working group in November 1945 to prepare for the resumption of film production. This “Filmaktiv” identified the available production facilities and film equipment, forged contacts with other film professionals, and set about building up the new company. Soon, a name was found: Deutsche Film Aktiengesellschaft, or DEFA for short. Hans Klering designed the logo – two stylised pieces of film reel side by side, one white and one black, each bearing two letters of DEFA in black and white respectively.

First, the Soviet occupying powers ordered the creation of a newsreel with a new artistic and journalistic profile. Maetzig took on this job and had already started filming in mid-January 1946. On 19 February 1946, the first German newsreel in post-war Germany had its premiere – the new film company’s very first production.

Maetzig worked as a director, author, and occasionally as a narrator together with his then-wife Marion Keller on the newsreel, which shortly afterwards was renamed Der Augenzeuge. For the show, they coined the slogan: “You see for yourself – you hear for yourself – judge for yourself!” Maetzig later recalled, “I felt completely free, and I was completely free in that initial phase. There was a censor there, but he hardly ever exercised his censorship powers. And that gave us a feeling of great freedom and sovereignty.”

Work on DEFA’s first feature film also got under way before the production company was actually founded. In the ruins of Berlin, Wolfgang Staudte began shooting Germany’s first post-war film, Die Mörder sind unter uns (The Murderers are Among Us), on 4 May 1946.

Finally, on 17 May 1946, the new company was officially founded on the premises of the Althoff-Ateliers in Alt Nowawes, Babelsberg. As the Soviet cultural officer Sergei Tulpanov put it, it was to “help restore democracy in Germany, free German minds from fascism and educate them to become socialist citizens”. Tulpanov presented the licence for the “production of films of all categories” to five licensees, among them Maetzig, who was appointed DEFA’s first artistic director.

A novella by Hans Schweikart arrived on Maetzig’s desk only a little later, based on the fate of the actor Joachim Gottschalk and his Jewish wife. The Gottschalks had committed suicide together when Mrs Gottschalk was to be deported to Theresienstadt in 1941. The material appealed to Maetzig, who saw parallels with the fate of his own Jewish mother. His parents had officially divorced in 1935 because of the Nuremberg Laws, but they continued to meet secretly. When his mother was threatened with deportation in 1944, she also took her own life.

Maetzig subsequently decided to film the story himself. In the winter of 1946/47, he wrote the screenplay for Ehe im Schatten (Marriage in the Shadows), and on 3 October 1947 the film was premiered concurrently in all four sectors of Berlin. It met with a huge public response. Within a short time, it was seen by over ten million filmgoers – making it the most successful German film of the period. In 1948, it was one of the first winners of the New Audience Award from the magazine Film Revue, which was sponsored by the publisher Franz Burda; this award was soon to become famous as the “Bambi”.

DEFA existed for over forty years, producing more than 700 feature films, 2,250 documentaries, and 750 animated films. With East Germany officially dissolved, the film studio was sold in 1992, and the new owner removed the abbreviation “DEFA” from the company name, renaming it Studio Babelsberg. Since 1998, the DEFA Foundation has been responsible for the production company’s cinematic heritage, as has the Akademie der Künste with the preservation of the archives of numerous artists who worked for DEFA.

TORSTEN MUSIAL is head of the Film and Media Arts Archives of the Akademie der Künste.

Kurt Maetzig’s employee pass for the DEFA newsreel Der Augenzeuge, 1946

HANS PURRMANN Bernhard Maaz Karl Scheffler was an almost disturbingly prolific author of books on, in most cases, bygone epochs and phenomena of art history. He “thinks art” not from the artist’s point of view, and certainly not from the perspective of the art writer that he himself was, but from that of the collector.2 This is not astonishing for his generation, which, like none before, witnessed private collectors as the driving force outside royal patronage. His writing, and above all his journal Kunst und Künstler, addressed this very clientele, the buyers. Since these circles were mostly unfamiliar with art but affluent, he couched many of his books in an accessible language that also sought to engage. In addition, to bridge the gap between artists and the public, he often invited artists to contribute pictures and articles.

Among the authors permitted to print both their thoughts and art in Kunst und Künstler was Hans Purrmann. Such collaboration presupposes a rapport, which will have grown from both sides. Liebermann was also in direct contact with Scheffler from 1904 at the latest. In 1906, the painter stated that he “value[s] Mr Scheffler as one of the most competent writers on art”.3 However, a bond was also forged when Liebermann – after the war, the revolution, and the founding of the republic – wrote to the author in 1919: “Not until Expressionism brings forth a genius that sets the rules for art will it be art; until then it will be nonsense.”4

The journal Kunst und Künstler was the mouthpiece of the Secession artists, who demonised the Expressionists, but such a shared publication also fostered community. The publisher Bruno Cassirer was certainly as open-minded as his brother Paul, who had remarked: “My basic idea [...] is not that one generation should be succeeded by the next or that the gap between one generation and the next should be widened, but rather the

WRITING TRADITIONS

Writers and painters pursue separate disciplines, yet strive towards each other. This has been the case in the modern age and especially since the culture of letter writing became popular in the 18th century, and paper and postage affordable. The resultant collections of letters gave rise to entire books – one prime example being Goethe’s biographical text arrangement on the life and work of Jakob Philipp Hackert, based on his correspondence.

Correspondence between artists in the 19th century reached a high point with Konrad Fiedler, the Leipzig patron and art theorist, who engaged in weighty exchanges with the painter Hans von Marées and, more importantly, with the sculptor Adolf von Hildebrand in theoretical, life-based letters. With the theoretician engaging with the practitioner, they enriched each other’s perception of the world and art, and chose to hold the conversation by post. For subsequent generations this is a blessing, as they can see right into the foundations of the intellectual edifice and gain insights that they would never have gained otherwise.

And then there was the painter and socialite Max Liebermann, who corresponded with the Hamburg museum reformer Alfred Lichtwark and the Berlin museum director Hugo von Tschudi – both sets of correspondence have long since been edited – as well as with numerous other art administrators, writers, and critics. Liebermann sought an exchange of views, debate, confirmation, and criticism. And in the lightness of the word that replies and elicits a reply in return, this enormously productive letter writer was certainly one with a special calling. The correspondence between Karl Scheffler and Hans Purrmann also ties in with this conception of the exchange of ideas.

Liebermann’s letters reflect an entire epoch and a wealth of themes, life from the Gründerzeit (period of German industrialisation) to National Socialism and from Impressionism to the postulate of “degenerate art”, but also the history of ideas from the German patriotism of the Wilhelminian era to the Jewish fate of persecution bitterly experienced by this artist in particular.1 While Purrmann’s correspondence appears in manageable editions and allows readers to peruse his dialogues, the complete nine-volume edition of Liebermann’s letters is more of a reference work: each of these forms has its merits, but it is always true that the people, the correspondents, reveal the light and the dark sides of their character; and it is precisely this that encourages a compassionate interpretation.

Top: Monday reception at Curt Glaser’s, March 1929, from left: Bruno Cassirer, Else Cassirer, Dody Scheffler, Karl Scheffler, Hans Purrmann, and Rudolf Grossmann

Title page of the journal Kunst und Künstler, vol. 21, no. 1 (1922/23), illustration by Max Slevogt

opposite.”5 Many other contemporaries lacked this unconditional openness and this awareness of the value of continuous organic development. But one must also bear in mind that the period of the Weimar Republic was an epoch of radically accentuated conflicts and struggles, which in the political sphere went hand in hand with murders and in the aesthetic sphere more with assassinations. This should be mentioned as an indication of the intellectual climate of the time, and one must bear this in mind in order to understand how valuable and revealing the correspondence between Purrmann and Scheffler is.

ART STRUGGLES

Making concessions was not the order of the day. Scheffler fraternised with the painter Liebermann and served the publisher Cassirer, both of Jewish origin; but where rivalry flared up, hatred and cliché also flourished. About Emil Heilbut, with whom Scheffler vied for the running of Kunst und Künstler, Scheffler wrote in 1933/34 in his memoir: He “became my enemy, although I had behaved with almost anxious propriety; he never forgave me and constantly sought to harm me. Which he succeeded in doing in petty matters, since he was a master of deceit and cunning. With his distinct profile and jet-black hair on his head and chin, he looked like an ancient Assyrian.”6 Scheffler’s failure to delete this passage in 1946, when the manuscript written a decade and a-half earlier was printed, gives a true indication of the polarised thinking typical of the time, with ideological tendencies and personal animosities. The historian must accept and mention this too and not ignore it. Rather than diminishing the abundance of the individual’s accomplishments, such a spiteful remark enriches the spectrum: letters are valuable for this very purpose. But that was not all, Scheffler supported Max Tau, the former editor of the Bruno CONTRADICTIONS

Scheffler, like Purrmann, lived according to a bourgeois aesthetic concept that shielded itself and, from 1933 onwards, also had to urgently distance itself from the dictates of banality. Scheffler’s ability to exclude the works of Paul Klee from his perceptual horizon as “little more than froth”8 may be puzzling from today’s point of view. However, schooled in Impressionism, Scheffler’s position denied him access to the younger generation. He was all the more eager to seek contact with Hans Purrmann and others; he attentively observed Purrmann’s progress and maturation as an artist and followed his period abroad in quasi-exile with benevolence and patience. Purrmann had not only developed great creative powers, but also a wisdom in adapting to the adversities of the times in such a way that he was able to intelligently and safely practise and sell his art.

Even after the Second World War, the critical, literary, and polemical Scheffler sought confrontation, now with abstract painting, as he professed on all occasions, be it towards Purrmann (Letter No. 38)9 or Max Schwimmer:10 the campaigner and writer of secessionist modernism had become retrograde and backward-looking; this he shared with many other writers on art. Cassirer had cultivated reservations about Henri Matisse. And the Berlin general director Wilhelm von Bode, who was at times close to Max Liebermann, also drew a clear line when it came to modernism, so that his younger colleague at the Nationalgalerie, Hugo von Tschudi, not only went unprotected into a futile battle with the French Impressionists against the judgement of

Hans Purrmann: Monte Pincio in Rom, 1926, oil on canvas, 66 × 82 cm Kaiser Wilhelm II, but also made no attempt to acquire the paintings of Vincent van Gogh for Berlin. They were all art historians, museum people, critics, dealers – and as such were chained to judgement and the market. Bode even called Cubism an eternal disgrace.11 Art, on the other hand, has always had the last word, no matter how important an accompanying edition of letters and – in general – an understanding of the personalities and circumstances of their thoughts and actions may be.

1 Ernst Braun, ed., Max Liebermann. Briefe, vols 1–9 (Baden-

Baden: DWV, 2011–21). 2 Karl Scheffler, Das Phänomen der Kunst. Grundsätzliche

Betrachtungen zum 19. Jahrhundert (Munich: Paul List

Verlag, 1952), p. 258. 3 Ernst Braun, “Max Liebermanns Briefe an Karl Scheffler”, in Jahrbuch der Berliner Museen, vol. 44 (2002), pp. 223–49, here p. 231. 4 Ibid., p. 239. 5 Eva Caspers, Paul Cassirer und die PanPresse. Ein Beitrag zur deutschen Buchillustration und Graphik im 20. Jahrhundert (Frankfurt am Main: Buchhändler-Vereinigung, 1989), p. 21. 6 Karl Scheffler, Die fetten und die mageren Jahre (Leipzig: Paul List Verlag, 1946), p. 181. 7 “Ernst Braun, Max Tau und Karl Scheffler in ihren Briefen und Erinnerungen”, in Detlev Haberland, ed., “Ein symbolisches Leben”. Beiträge anlässlich des 100. Geburtstages von Max Tau (1897–1976) (Heidelberg: Darmstadt, 2000), pp. 137–64, here p. 139 f. 8 Ursula Feist and Günter Feist, eds, Kunst und Künstler. Aus 32 Jahrgängen einer deutschen Kunstzeitschrift (Berlin:

Henschelverlag Kunst und Gesellschaft, 1971), p. 301. 9 Printed in the forthcoming volume commissioned by the

Akademie der Künste, Berlin, and the joint heirs of

Dr Robert Purrmann, Munich. Felix Billeter, Julie Kennedy, and Anke Matelowski, eds, Künstler und Kritiker.

Hans Purrmann und Karl Scheffler in Briefen 1920–1951 (Berlin: Deutscher Kunstbuchverlag, 2021).

10 Karl Scheffler to Max Schwimmer, 31 Dec. 1947. Printed in Ernst Braun, Briefe zwischen Karl Scheffler und

Max Schwimmer. 1942–1949, Marginalien 122 (1991), pp. 36–60, here p. 57. 11 Bernhard Maaz, “Das konservative Ideal – Bodes Verhältnis zur Skulptur seiner Zeit”, in Angelika Wesenberg et al., eds, Wilhelm von Bode als Zeitgenosse der Kunst. Zum 150. Geburtstag (exh. cat. Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, 1995), pp. 135–46, here p. 140.

BERNHARD MAAZ has been director general of the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen since 2015. Previously, he was director of the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister and the Kupferstichkabinett of the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden.

This is an abridged version of the essay in the forthcoming volume commissioned by the Akademie der Künste, Berlin, and the joint heirs of Dr Robert Purrmann, Munich. Edited by Felix Billeter, Julie Kennedy, and Anke Matelowski, Künstler und Kritiker. Hans Purrmann und Karl Scheffler in Briefen 1920–1951 will be published by Deutscher Kunstbuchverlag, Berlin, in October 2021.

The launch will take place on 14 October 2021 at the Akademie der Künste, Pariser Platz.

325 YEARS OF THE AKADEMIE DER KÜNSTE FOUNDED NOT ONLY FOR THE PRACTICE

View of the Marstall, c. 1696, unknown artist (Foto-AdK-O 13)

THE FOUNDING OF THE BERLINER KUNSTAKADEMIE (BERLIN ART ACADEMY) IN 1696

Ulrike Möhlenbeck

The Akademie der Mahl-, Bild- und Baukunst (Academy of the Art of Painting, Pictorial Art and Architecture) was opened on 11 July 1696 by Elector Frederick III, later King Frederick I. After the academies in Paris and Rome, the Berlin institution was the third of its kind ever in Europe and the first state academy of art in the German-speaking world. During Berlin’s transformation into a residential city, Frederick III entrusted his minister of state, Eberhard von Danckelmann, with the establishment of the Academy based on the French model. The aspiration was to create an academy of art that was “founded not only for the practice, but also for the appreciation of art”; “One should study here not a craft, but the secrets of the arts.” The Academy was to devote itself to three tasks: As a society of members, it united the best artists on a single site, who exchanged their ideas on the art of painting and sculpture in regular academic meetings and worked collegially on the perfection of their art. As an educational institution, it taught the next generation of artists. The members gave lessons in preparatory classes and in advanced subjects such as drawing from models, architecture, perspective, geometry, and anatomy. As a committee of artists, the Academy advised the king on matters of art, such as on the design of Berlin’s City Palace, for example.

In 1696, the Academy comprised five members, including its first director, the painter Joseph Werner (1637–1710) from Bern, the Dutch Baroque painter Augustin Terwesten (1649–1711), and the sculptor and architect Andreas Schlüter (c. 1660–1714), Berlin’s most important artist of his time. The act of foundation on 11 July, the Elector’s 39th birthday, was preceded by a two-year trial period. Thus, the founding statute was drafted as early as 1696; it still exists today in the Historical Archives of the Akademie der Künste and is also the oldest document on the history of the Academy.

The Academy was assigned the new Marstall in Dorotheenstadt as its seat. To create space there, the south wing – overlooking the avenue Unter den Linden – was given an upper floor to the plans of the architect and master builder Johann Arnold von Nehring. Six halls were designated as teaching rooms, meeting venues, and exhibition space for the Academy. Since the basic financial resources were provided by an Academy fund, the institution was able to establish itself in the long term and participate in the upsurge of artistic and intellectual life in Berlin around 1700.

Today’s Akademie der Künste can look back on an eventful 325-year history. Then as now, the focus has always been on the shared task of promoting the arts.

ULRIKE MÖHLENBECK is head of the Historical Archives of the Akademie der Künste.

On the occasion of its 325th anniversary, the Akademie der Künste presents snapshots from its history in video clips – the calendar sheets – published on the Academy’s website and on its social media channels. See more at www.adk.de/ kalenderblaetter

According to which His Electoral Majesty wishes to have the Academy established.

I. All those who are appointed to this Academy or who declare themselves shall be recorded with their names and noted on a written tablet, each with his rank, and such tablet shall also be hung up in the Academy.

II. Anyone who registers with the Academy shall submit an example of his work and leave it with the Academy, according to which it can be judged in which Class such a person belongs and for what kind of Office he is fit.

III. Whichever Scholar wishes to join the Academy must apply to the Director of the Academy, accompanied by a Patron who has recommended him to the Academy and who gives assurance of the Scholar’s good conduct, and for this receive the Letter of Acceptance, which is signed by the Director, Rector in Office, and Secretary and confirmed with the small Academy seal; moreover, every person who is accepted shall be bound by the Academic Statutes and Regulations and shall take a vow thereon, but in the event of transgression he shall expect the fitting punishment.

IV. Every well-ordered Academy shall have a Director, Superior, or Overseer, of the Academic Arts Teachings, Statutes, and Rules, who shall at the same time be the Censor who metes out punishment on transgressors and shall judge their work and name the reward or prize for it. At all monthly meetings, when one Rector abdicates his office and another assumes his, he shall attend and take leave of the abdicating Rector, but shall be invited by the Academy and appointed by the Chamberlain; he may arrange extra lessons as he sees fit and as occasion may require, and the Academicians and other art lovers may be called to attend, whereupon the [Page 2] Academy members shall be bound to appear.

Draft of the Academy statute, p. 1, 1696 (PrAdK 1434)