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The Kronprinzenpalais
The Kronprinzenpalais (Crown Prince Palace) close to the
Spree on the fine boulevard Unter den Linden has seen the
most varied history. In its present form it is a reconstruction
of 1968-69 after it had burned down in the war and been cleared
away later.
Originally built from 1663-69 as the private house of a court
secretary, it was converted by Philipp Gerlach in 1733 as
a town palace for Crown Prince Friedrich. It was then greatly
altered by Heinrich Strack in 1856-57 for the later Emperor
Friedrich III. Strack replaced the original mansard roof by
a third storey and decorated the facade, which still has the
original basic structure of colossal pilasters, a column portico
and thick entablature, with classical ornaments.
In the East German era, the building was used to receive
visiting foreign dignitaries as Indira Gandhi. The Kronenprinzen-Palais
has also played a pivotal role in recent history: The German
reunification agreement was signed here on 31st August 1990.
In 1919, the Kronenprinzen-Palais became the first museum
of contemporary art in the world, and housed, from 1919 to
1937, the modern department of the Nationalgalerie (National
Gallery).
Following the collapse of the German monarchy in 1918, Ludwig
Justi, director of the Nationalgalerie since 1909, seized
the chance to convert the Kronprinzenpalais into Germany’s
first museum of contemporary art. Private rooms were gradually
transformed into public rooms. Having become a branch of the
Nationalgalerie on the Museum Island, Wilhelm II's birthplace
provided now a home for the Nationalgaleries New Department
and the Collection of Drawings.
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LudwigJusti (right) on the balcony
of the Kronprinzenpalais
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Justi opened the Kronprinzenpalais on August 5, 1919 with
French and German Impressionists on display on the middle
floor; on the floor above the Expressionists could be seen
for the first time. The north facing, wallpapered rooms, with
their wooden floors and painted dados, were kept plain.
When the Kronprinzenpalais opened, paintings by Lyonel Feininger,
Franz Marc, Paul Signac, Oskar Kokoschka, and Ferdinand Hodler
hung side by side in the vestibule. Prompted by the galleries
with the works of Cezanne, Edvard Munch, and Vincent van Gogh
that he had seen at the 1912 Sonderbund exhibition in Cologne,
Justi did the same in Berlin, but not until the 1920s. Rooms
were given over to the work of a single artist whose pictures
were changed regularly.
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Franz Marc
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Complementing these artists' galleries, the Kronprinzenpalais
was also the first museum to follow the guiding principle
of bringing together the work of any one artist in temporary
exhibitions of the highest standard and as comprehensively
as possible. In each of these rooms, the artists' name was
in big letters above their paintings.
Now and again, Justi showed sculpture in the artists' galleries,
for instance Wilhelm Lehmbruck alongside Marc, Rudolf Belling
alongside Feininger, and Philipp Harth alongside Ernst Ludwig
Kirchner. In this "experimental gallery," rooms
less frequently showed the work of artists' groups and trends
from Expressionism to Neue Sachlichkeit.
Justi had a sound intuition for major works when buying new
acquisitions that were severely limited in number because
of his budget of only a few thousand Reichsmark each year.
This is why he kept in close touch with collectors such as
Bernhard Koehler in Berlin (Marc, Kandinsky) and Hermann Lange
in Krefeld (Georges Braque, Juan Gris, Kirchner) whose best
paintings he borrowed at regular intervals. With the help
of his curators Walter Kaesbach, Ludwig Thormaehlen, Alfred
Hentzen, Paul Ortwin Rave, Anni Paul-Pescatore, and Alois
J. Schardt, the circle of artists shown to new and unconventional
advantage in the Kronprinzenpalais grew steadily and in return
they generously loaned work from their studios.
Justi's program of artists' rooms that focused on the work
of one artist was accompanied by over fifty temporary exhibitions
that were largely devoted to the work of contemporary artists.
The series started in 1919 with a small exhibition of Otto
Mueller's work and culminated in 1931 with a major Lyonel
Feininger retrospective. The Association of the Friends of
the Nationalgalerie (Verein der Freunde der Nationalgalerie)
was formed in 1929 and above all had a positive influence
on the acquisition of international, contemporary art.
Besides the Armory, the Kronprinzenpalais was the most visited
museum in Berlin and became a model for other art galleries
including the Museum of Modern Art in New York that Alfred
H. Barr Jr. helped to found in 1929. The artists' galleries
displaying the work of Erich Heckel, Marc, Nolde, Kirchner
and Beckmann could still be seen in all their glory in the
Kronprinzenpalais in July 1933. The monumental Beckmann gallery
was the last one that Justi and his colleagues were able to
dedicate to one artist. Despite his German National sympathies
during the Weimar Republic, Justi's dedication to Modernism
often came under heavy fire both from the conservative circle
around Max Liebermann as well as left and right wing "parties."
After Adolf Hitler's rise to power, Justi was immediately
suspended from his duties as director in March 1933 and was
moved to the Kunstbibliothek (art library). The new director,
Eberhard Hanfstaengl, tried to save the avant-garde collection
by removing the offending Expressionist paintings from public
display and putting them in storage. The toned down exhibition
could still be seen up until the 1936 Olympics, but was closed
for the time being on October 30, 1936 by arts and education
minister Bernhard Rust. In 1937, Justi's new type of museum
was destroyed in the "degenerate" art campaign in
the course of which 148 paintings, 27 sculptures and 319 drawings
were confiscated. On July 5, 1937, Modernism ceded its position
in the Kronprinzenpalais to make way for the Academy of Arts.
This marked the dissolution of the Nationalgaleries contemporary
art collection. Having defied the Nazis' iconoclasm against
so-called "degenerate" art, Hanfstaengl was dismissed.
The expulsion of the avant-garde, the burning of artworks
and war-time destruction followed.
The works by the precursors of modernism in the early 20th
century then embarked on a fateful odyssey, with only a few
of them returning after 1945 to the collection of the Nationalgalerie
that itself was not reunited until 1990. Like hardly any other
museum, the Nationalgalerie in Berlin became a museum that
was looted by its own state authorities.
Justi's dream of being able to show the art of classical
modernism within an architectural setting in keeping with
the spirit of the age was not fulfilled until 1968 with the
construction of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's Neue Nationalgalerie
at the Kulturforum at Potsdamer Platz. The new museum offered
the Nationalgaleries collection a home for the creation of
a new Kronprinzenpalais.
Courtesy Peter-Klaus Schuster (Director General of the State
Museums of Berlin)
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