THE EAST IN THE WEST. New Perspectives on Art Production in the GDR

* Christoph Tannert (born 1955 in Leipzig). Artistic Director of the KQnstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin, he has curated widely discussed exhibitions on East German art.

Thirty years after the fall of the GDR, East and West Germany are still not on equal footing in terms of either economic standards of living or art production. Although “GDR art” has long been reduced to State-sanctioned artists here and courageous dissidents there, recent exhibitions and museum presentations are taking a new and different look at East German art. And it’s about time, says Christoph Tannert, who calls for mutual recognition and re-evaluation of the canon.

A look at the arts can be helpful in trying to understand East Germany - at images without references to its peaceful revolution, removed from the series of demonstrations that started the downfall of the GDR and Stasi secret police strategies and distant from the GDR politics of 1989/90. German reunification is a process that is still taking place. None of the humiliation[1] has been forgotten. Nothing has been forgiven. When the media and politicians write about art in East Germany, art is usually held responsible for explaining dogmas that have nothing to do with it. The West still forces its discourse on the East, as can clearly be seen in the written history and programme planning of museums, with only a few exceptions.

“Germany is still a divided land 30 years after Reunification,” Alfred Weinzierl recently observed in the news weekly “Der Spiegel”. He added that a current study by the Bertelsmann Stiftung indicates that, even today, many East Germans still feel like second-class citizens.[2] How is that possible? Is it a result of the ambivalence of the period following the fall of the Berlin Wall? When the Wall came down, some people withdrew into their own four walls and continued their resentfulness, while others embraced the openness. Most of them, however, raised no doubt about the fact that the GDR was an oppressive regime. Nevertheless, those in eastern Germany don't think everything today is good. It took a good 25 years for many of them to find a fairly stable economic footing with their families.

As in the past, opinions differ as to what importance today's museums should attribute to art from the GDR era. The debate, especially in German art journalism, is dominated by a pitiful superficiality and a tremendous lack of information. Particularly audacious academics even see the genesis of an “honest interest in Socialism”.[3] Incomprehensibly, the negative spirit of the Cold War still clouds the view. The issue here is the perception of diversity. Pluralism is to be promoted, dominance of the art market, with the major gallery earners in the vanguard, is to be pushed back, at least in the museum sector. If this were not to succeed, the centralism of the GDR would have won in moral and ideological terms.

Being branded as unworthy of a place in the museum, and thus practical disqualification, is the greatest insult for artists from the East. The older generation in particular feels the bite of this ignorance. This marginalisation has caused a part of East German art history[4] to be forgotten. Museums lack diversification. In the context of “idolization of the juvenile” (Carl Einstein), one could almost speak of age hostility. When it comes to selection criteria, the art system is extremely susceptible to discrimination, as the underrepresentation of certain social groups in exhibitions often stifles interest in their life models, topics, origins, styles and medial approaches. At the same time, one thing can hardly be overlooked: the loss of credibility on the part of those museums that subordinate themselves to the mainstream discourse will continue increasing, unless we all bid farewell to the already obsolete idea that East Germans are the only ones who will intercede for East Germans and who can or must fight for equality.

A short retrospective. Dresden's Albertinum opened up for debate in slow-motion with the presentation of the collection “Ostdeutsche Malerei und Skulptur 1949-1990” (2018/2019). This may seem unusual in an age in which the pulse of time is quickening. Moving at a tortoise's pace is, admittedly, not a disadvantage to the persistence of the canonised. The MdbK (Museum der bildenden KQnste) in Leipzig, headed by Alfred Weidinger (2017-2020) ignited an eruption of ideas. New exhibitions popped up one after the other. The first was Sighard Gille (born 1941) and his figure installation from the period when the Wall was coming down, which one hardly could have expected from the master of the colour-suffused brigade images and the Gewandhaus concert house ceilings.[5] This was followed in 2018 by a major retrospective on Arno Rink (1940-2017), with 65 paintings, numerous large-scale-format drawings and previously unseen biographical photographs and documents in a fundamental step towards understanding the lines of tradition of what is referred to as the “New Leipzig School”. In parallel, the artist portraits by photographer Karin Wieckhorst (born in 1942), previously only known to the initiated, were exhibited. The portraits were made during visits to studios in Dresden, Leipzig, East Berlin and outside the cities in the 1980s, with some of the subjects painted over to create a punkish touch.

Alfred Weidinger had also undertaken to promote the works of outsider Klaus Hähner-Springmühl (1950-2006) with an exhibition (2018/2019) and by cataloguing his bequest. The museum exhibition took a new approach honouring an artist from the spectrum of those who rejected the state, a rare occurrence today. The inspirational role of the exhibition “Geniale Dilletanten. Subkultur der 1980er Jahre in West- und Ostdeutschland” (Genius Dilletants. The Subculture of the 1980s in West and East Germany, with “Dilletanten” intentionally misspelled) in the Dresden Albertinum, in which Hähner-Springmühl was involved, can hardly be overlooked.[6] In 2018, Leipzig also beamed with a look at the abstract sensualist Gil Schlesinger (born 1931 in Leipzig). Museum director Weidinger had reacted with alacrity to the gaps in the approach to the programme of his predecessor and initiated a change of course, including the acceptance of sensational bequests, which was already stoking the controversy over East German painting.

It becomes evident that the authority to interpret the past of the GDR is being called into question from several sides. Corrections move simultaneously in diametrically opposed directions. GDR positions in the state-oriented and non-state-oriented sectors are being researched and re-evaluated. All museums currently offering presentations of the “Eye Fodder Made in GDR” class are taking two approaches at once. This serves to dissolve the two sides, which isn't the worst of all outcomes. In 2017/2018, Potsdam's Museum Barberini's “Behind the Mask. Artists in the GDR” (“Hinter der Maske. Künstler in der DDR”) was a reconsecration of the contract works from the East Berlin Palace of the Republic, the seat of the GDR parliament and also a concert venue. However, this sent the wrong signal. In 1989, the Socialist design program had been correctly identified as a State beautification measure and was consigned to the category “historical record”. And now the harmless-kitschy Palace depictions are once again considered art. How is this to be understood? Is this now moderisation or historicism?

It is inspiring to inventory the positive achievements by larger and smaller museums in eastern Germany in specific topics with a GDR background in spite of adverse circumstances. The art hall Kunsthalle Rostock surprised the public in 2015 with a unexpected Arno Rink exhibition, in 2016 dkw Cottbus celebrated the “Clara Mosch” group, the Museum Junge Kunst in Frankfurt/Oder showcased “Malstrom[2]” in 2017, featuring GDR emigre Dresden artists Reinhard Stangl, Ralf Kerbach, Cornelia Schleime, Helge Leiberg and Hans Scheib. In the Packhof in Frankfurt/Oder, Doris Ziegler had a successful new exhibition in 2018 that had an incredibly emancipating impact as its reflection on where humans are today was quite simply true. Under the leadership of Ulrike Kremeier, a clarion call comes as Cottbus and Frankfurt continue their line against the authority of simple minds in the country into the present day. The clear traditional lines in the new representation of the Moritzburg Halle/Saale art museum's collection of art after 1945 are comforting in an unscrupulous age. In 2018, curators T.O. Immisch, Gabriele Muschter and Uwe Warnke once again underlined the awakening of East German culture with the mind-expanding concept “into the open. photographic art in the east of Germany since 1990” (“ins offene. fotokunst im osten deutschlands seit 1990”). “Freedom will not come by itself; it will have to be taken,” says East Berlin anarchistic poet Bert Papenfuß.[7] Slowly but surely, the East is succeeding in protesting and kicking its legs to be free.

The great interest in the task of remembering the GDR, including among younger international artists, was starkly demonstrated in 2018 in Leipzig's Halle 14 “Requiem for a failed state”. The experience comprised an investigation of an advanced kind, with an increased focus on history as a means to better understand the present.[8] The infinite nature of potential was demonstrated by the Staatliches Museum Schwerin in 2018 with “Beyond the Horizon” (“Hinter dem Horizont”) (curated by Kornelia Röder and Deborah Bürgel). In “Medea's Protest” (“Medea muckt auf”) in the Lipsiusbau Dresden art hall from 2018/2019, Susanne Altmann offered 35 works of “radical female artists behind the Iron Curtain” from the GDR, Poland, the Czech Socialist Republic, Hungary and Romania. The pieces exhibited were from the period between the 1960s and 1980s by a parade of “incendiary, provocative, protesting and experimental”[9] Eastern women of that era. That corresponded to current zeitgeist perspectives according to which the Avant Garde is feminine or, at best, feminist and is a counterweight to the lumbering, national-conservative oriented rollback. "Medea" conveyed a progressive-moralist spirit that, nevertheless, has room for humour. The robust research behind the exhibit ensured that it was not, for example, simply in line with the results of Western historical Women's Studies, but, rather, that it documented the under-representation of female perspectives in art historiography with reference to the art of East German and Eastern European woman rebels. The objective was nothing less than a new evaluation and the formation of a new canon, an objective that was achieved. Here, it became evident that the Eastern European women developed simultaneously on an equal footing with the Western Avant Garde, but the artists of the GDR, on the other hand, appear confined by their own national lines of tradition. In an expressive and chromatically potent way, Angela Hampel and Christine Schlegel, for example, felt connected to Penthesilea and Cornelia Schleime to alchemy and projections of the afterworld.

People seek attention, recognition, affection, understanding. Theatre, literature, art and music can fill this void with experiences. More than in the West and more than today, the artworks of the GDR gave many the feeling that they were not alone. As a result, there is today increased demand in the East for a renewed encounter with images that kept people company in a dark period. It is hardly surprising that the circle of art consumers between East and West is deteriorating into in-groups and out-groups. There is a lack of mutual understanding and mutual recognition and this deficit is an obstacle to jointly pursuing common goals in a society. Those in leadership at museums often fail to understand the fact that we are mutually dependent on one another in our fortunes. What makes art possible - an understanding and interpretation of the world - cannot, in principle, be given boundaries as its scope depends on this inter-relationship of the audiences. Our horizon of experience and interpretation, which is conveyed by art, depends on the experiences of the others.

A society that intends to offer people a home needs events that embody shared life experiences. A cosmopolitan ethic is unthinkable in East Germany without the recognition of the specific experiences of the GDR. If the interaction and dialogue between museums ceases, the role of museums in forming memory will cease and they will decay into merely warehouses of spectacle lacking any identity. Using the budgets for events relating to the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, in 2019/2020, a relatively large number of projects were created in Eastern Germany that used art to convey information on topics relating to life and the everyday, as well as ideas relating to home and values. But who came from the West to visit these exhibitions? The answer to this sensitive question may be that exhibitions are only made when those creating them are in a position to give the canon a new direction. Otherwise, there is no point. But the gaps in the art history of the GDR between 1949 and 1989 are only slowly disappearing. There is a finite number of names and events, and the fan community is giant and watches very closely. This was also evident at two exhibitions in 2019 that stood out on the German event calendar. First of all, “From Afar. Images of the GDR” (“Von Ferne. Bilder zur DDR”) (Museum Villa Stuck, Munich, curated by Sabine Schmid), then, “Utopia and Downfall. Art in the GDR” (“Utopie und Untergang. Kunst in der DDR”, Dusseldorf Kunstpalast, 2019/2020, curated by Steffen Krautzig). Today, Sabine Schmid still sets the gold standard when it comes to reinterpretation and reviving accessibility. She has demonstrated how it is possible to maintain intellectual equilibrium, even under the circumstances of political displacement.

Of course, it would be easy to just obediently gloss over the difficult chapters of GDR art history, opening the door to a panoply of historical misrepresentation, scripted and rehearsed down to the last little cliche. Steffen Krautzig created a spectacular appearance for all those who didn't deserve it[10], adding on several loners11. He showed the audience how an entirely upside-down world can look. Thirty years after the end of the GDR, the mainstays of the GDR system apparently enjoy great popularity. This may be because those artists who were promoted in the West as early as the 1970s with the blessing of the GDR potentates still have fan communities in the West today. Familiarity with the unassimilated and emerging scene in the GDR is, on the other hand, negligible.

Elke Pretzel shows one example of a successful conceptual design in a small but attractive art collection, Kunstsammlung Neubrandenburg. Open since 2007, its redesign, bearing the promising title “The Fortunate Touch” (“Der glückliche Griff”), presents new acquisitions gradually and has had an impact on the overall space situation. It has drawn visitors to the museum in droves. Some 90% of the works are by regional artists and are mixed with the 10% of works that were purchased from the West German art market. The collection currently features outstanding works by Strawalde, Matthias Jaeger, Hans Jüchser and Theodor Rosenhauer that emphasise that it was still possible, even under the direction of the cultural functionaries of the time, to do contemporary work in step with tradition which is, nevertheless, idiosyncratic and maintains constant eye contact with the international art scene.

For years, Jutta and Manfred Heinrich have shown in their collector's museum in south-west Germany's Maulbronn how art from the East and West Berlins of the 1980s can be put into a fascinating dialogue. Changes in the display at regular intervals accentuate the rich collection of painting and sculpture. Thus pieces come together that create new coherencies: Reinhard Stangl and Hans Scheib; Lutz Friedel, Reinhard Stangl and Barbara Quandt; Hans Hendrik Grimmling and Peter Chevalier; Walter Stöhrer and Wolfgang Petrick. Even though the works were created in different worlds or after the transition of these worlds, they do not challenge one another, so that the visitor perceives their strongly meaningful interaction. Thirty-five years ago, as a regular guest at the artists' round table “Café Mora” in Berlin-Kreuzberg, Manfred Heinrich began to eagerly follow the entanglement of the life paths of East and West Germans and, in the meantime, has intermeshed more than 300 works of Critical Realism, the School of the New Magnificents (“Schule der neuen Prächtigkeit”) and Neo-Expressionism in the widest possible variety of idioms, like a kaleidoscope.

This list of events may seem impressive in terms of number, but, projected onto the number of museums and exhibitors and their programmes in Germany, it becomes clear that the urgently needed new perspective on artistic developments in East Germany is evidently not yet an issue of personal importance to many curators.

What could be done? Would the better approach be aesthetic quality rather than quotas? Opinions are divided. The activists call for a quota system based on place of origin, the traditionalists propose the application of obscure quality standards: their guidelines are usually tied to the reassertion of the outdated and not to the breaking of rules. However, achieving institutional justice has to hurt by its very nature. Although many regional specifics emerge in art and East and West have not yet found a common denominator in spite of billions of euros in investment, nevertheless, a commonality is visible: the extensive agreement on the principle of performance. The 40 years of the GDR were hardly able to change the conviction of the East Germans that individual prosperity should be the product of individual performance.

Let hope reign supreme...

1. Cf. the exhibition “Official and Unofficial - The Art of the GDR” (“Offiziell und Inoffiziell - Die Kunst der DDR”), presented in 1999 by curator Achim PreiB in parallel to an exhibition featuring Nazi art in a multi-purpose structure at the former Gauforum Weimar. Cf. also the exhibition “Sixty Years. Sixty Works. Art from The Federal Republic Of Germany” (“Sechzig Jahre. Sechzig Werke. Kunst aus der Bundesrepublik Deutschland”), put on in 2009 in Berlin's Martin- Grropius-Bau, whose works were selected by an exclusively West German team (Gotz Adriani, Robert Fleck, Siegfried Gohr, Peter Iden, Susanne Kleine, Ingrid Mossinger, Dieter Ronte, Frank Schmidt and Walter Smerling). Not only did the discussions exclude East German curators, East German artists were not featured either (with the exception of Neo Rauch and Eberhard Havekost). And this 20 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
2. “Der Spiegel”, 07.09.2020 Cf. also: 'A summary in graphics' (“Eine Bilanz in Grafiken”) by Hanz Omar Sayami, Guido Grigat, Frank Kalinowski and Benjamin Bidder, in: “Der Spiegel”, 13.09.2020
3. April Eisman / Gisela Schirmer (Ed.): 'Kunst in der DDR - 30 Jahre danach,' Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht Verlage, “Kunst und Politik”, Volume 022, Göttingen, 2020
4. This refers to artists such as Horst Bartnig, Jürgen Böttcher (Strawalde), Hans Brosch, Achim Freyer, Eberhard Göschel, Wasja Götze, Dieter Goltzsche, Peter Graf, Willy Günther, Peter Herrmann, Veit Hofmann, Christa-Maria Jeitner, Wolfgang Leber, Gerda Lepke, Harald Metzkes, Stefan Plenkers, Gil Schlesinger, Hans-Otto Schmidt, Dagmar Ranft-Schinke, Erika Stürmer-Alex and Max Uhlig. This is a simple survey in all directions of painting and sculpture. The list could easily be continued, without implying exclusivity.
5. Sighard Gille was honoured with a major retrospective as early as 2016/2017, at the time under director Hans-Werner Schmidt, in Leipzig's MdbK Museum der bildenden Künste.
6. The 2017 exhibit, curated by Mathilde Weh, was expanded specifically for Dresden to include the following East German individual artists and groups from the sub-scene: Gruppe LQcke member R. Penck, Helge Leiberg, Michael Freudenberg, Klaus Hähner-Springmühl, Cornelia Schleime, Ralf Kerbach, Christine Schlegel, die Dresdner Autoperfor- ationsartisten, Matthias BAADER Holst, Moritz Götze, Tohm di Roes, AG Geige, Ornament und Verbrechen, Zwitschermaschine, 37,2, Pfff..., Rennbahnband, Kartoffelschälmaschine, Die letzten Recken, Die Gehirne and Die Strafe.
7. https://www.lyrikline.org/de/gedi-chte/es-gibt-keine-freiheit-7066 (translation adapted).
8. According to the information sheet, the exhibition addressed in particular the question: "What is the perspective of those born in and after 1980 regarding the end of the GDR, the events surrounding the fall of the Berlin Wall and the decade of disorientation in the 1990s, a time of which they have no memories, or only a few individual memories?"
9. Press text from the exhibition
10. Bernhard Heisig, Wolfgang Mattheuer, Werner Tübke, Willi Sitte
11. Gerhard Altenbourg, Carlfriedrich Claus, Michael Morgner, A. R. Penck, Cornelia Schleime, Angela Hampel, Elisabeth Voigt