New Light on Weimar - Weimar, Germany

Art in America, July, 1999 by David Galloway

Initially, Nuremberg had been expected to sport this year's cultural laurels. But that was before former chancellor Helmut Kohl threw his considerable weight behind the candidacy of Germany's decaying cradle of classicism. Chronology aided his cause: 1999 marks the 250th anniversary of Goethe's birth, the 240th anniversary of Schiller's birth and the 80th anniversary of both the Bauhaus and the nation's first democratic constitution, which was drafted in Weimar. The latter two events seemed to promise the beginning of a new enlightenment. In fact, the hostile local atmosphere (as suggested by routine parental threats to send unruly children "to the Bauhaus") forced Walter Gropius to move the progressive institution to Dessau in 1924. Two years later, Hitler chose Weimar as the site of the first party congress of the newly legalized NSDAP. For years to come, devoted followers would gather before the Hotel Elephant (still the city's premier address) when their leader was in residence, to chant until they were hoarse: "Fuhrer, Fuhrer, come out, come out/Out of the elephant house." And he rarely failed to reward the enthusiasm with at least a brief appearance on the ceremonial balcony above the entrance. More lasting gratitude was symbolized by the vast Gauforum that Hitler erected here--a pompous group of administrative buildings enclosing a parade ground. The monomaniacal complex was realized by raising an entire section of the city some 60 feet, with the aid of laborers recruited from Buchenwald.

The scale, style and topography of the Gauforum overwhelmed the New Museum, a Neo-Renaissance structure erected on the site in 1868 with the aim of making the ducal collections accessible to the public. Ironically, Allied bombs aimed at the intimidatingly "heroic" structures erected in the spirit of architect Albert Speer fell on the museum, from which the art works had foresightedly been removed. In the postwar period, when the city found itself part of the new East German state, authorities showed no interest in the museum's burnt-out shell. Indeed, they transferred what remained of the heating system to the National Theater and ignored the scavengers who treated the museum as a stone quarry. After the fall of the German Democratic Republic, the former Cologne art dealer Paul Maenz discovered his love for Weimar. As a result of his engagement, the phoenix has now lifted its wings above the ashes. Maenz was not only touched by the desolate building but by the thought that the museum had long since been plundered of its 20th-century holdings. The Nazis had banned the "decadent" experiments of the early modernists, while the Communist over-lords generally frowned on any hint of abstract or experimental spirit.

Maenz, whose Cologne gallery was long an important international trendsetter, had quietly assembled an "anthology" collection of those artists and movements he once promoted and continued to follow even after closing his gallery in 1990. In 1993 he offered to donate more than a third of his collection to the city of Weimar as an outright gift, on the condition that a foundation be created to ensure future purchases; another one-third of the collection was assigned to the museum in the form of long-term loans. Thanks to that commitment, the frequently stalled plan to restore the ruin received top priority.