2016 - News - Detail Page - Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz

Excellencies,
dear Mr Osten,
dear Mr Veit,
ladies and gentlemen,

Today we are celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Museum of East Asian Art. I would like to extend a very warm welcome to you all. As a great prelude to this important day, we have already been able to admire the beauty, artistry and vitality of East Asian art in three anniversary exhibitions in mid-October: in the Klaus F. Naumann Collection, with its rich selection of unique lacquers, in the John C. Weber Collection with outstanding exhibits of calligraphy, painting, ceramics and textiles, and finally with the museum's own treasures.

It is no coincidence that two of the most important private collections are presented on the occasion of the anniversary. It was collectors who entrusted their treasures to this museum and made it so important. It is true that the Great Elector was already familiar with East Asian art in the 17th century, and individual objects from this period are still in the collection today. However, the decisive step was taken in 1906 by Wilhelm von Bode, the great visionary and General Director of the National Museums, who had high quality standards, cultural-political foresight and passionate commitment. He formulated the claim for the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin as a "universal museum for the art and cultures of the world". In 1904, with the opening of the Bode Museum, he emphasised this claim for the European stylistic epochs from late antiquity to the period around 1800, a claim that we were able to fulfil again a few weeks ago with the splendid reopening of the Bode Museum to the unanimous enthusiasm of the public. The Islamic Art Collection was already part of the former Kaiser Friedrich Museum. And in 1906 he founded the Museum of East Asian Art. He wanted to place the great cultures of the world on an equal footing with European art, in the spirit of the Humboldt brothers.

He helped generously with his own private funds and his co-operation with patrons: Professor Ernst Grosse from Freiburg and his adoptive mother Marie Meyer were among the most important patrons from the very beginning: Grosse advised Bode on founding the museum, mentored Otto Kümmel, the director of the East Asian Art Collection, assisted with acquisitions for the museum and ultimately donated the Meyer/Grosse Collection, around 500 objects, to Bode. The donation from the collector Gustav Jacoby, the former Imperial Japanese Consul in Berlin, also had a formative influence on the museum. These two donations accounted for around two thirds of the collection when the museum's first dedicated rooms were opened in 1924 in what is now the Martin-Gropius-Bau.

Gustav von Bohlen und Halbach and James Simon also supported the museum.

Thanks to its generous supporters - especially Jewish collectors - and a clever acquisition policy, the museum achieved international significance well into the 1930s. Berlin developed into one of the leading international centres for East Asian art.

The war and the immediate post-war period toppled the museum from its high pedestal of international importance.

Only 300 objects from the old collection returned to Berlin. All other parts of the collection were initially lost.

Once again, it was the collectors and private sponsors who enabled the Museum of East Asian Art to make a new start. The couple Franz Carl and Grete Weiskopf helped the East Berlin institution and Gerd and Lotti Wallenstein helped the West Berlin institution.

The three hundred remaining works formed the basis of the museum, which was re-established in West Berlin in 1957.

An East Asian collection was also re-established on Museum Island in East Berlin - in this case with the East Asian holdings of the Museum of Decorative Arts and those of Monbijou Palace. On the tenth anniversary of the founding of the GDR, this collection was enriched by a generous donation from the government of the People's Republic of China: Over 250 objects from the Palace Museum Beijing found their way to the Museum Island.

The circle of collectors founded by Leopold Reidemeister, then Director General of the museums, together with Beatrix von Ragué, who died earlier this year and who ran the museum from 1966 to 1985, also supported the Dahlem museum. From the large circle of donors, I would like to mention Georg Weishaupt and Dr Ulrich Lindemann, whom I warmly welcome. The museum owes them both a large number of valuable Chinese ceramics. Today, the circle of collectors is called the "German Society for East Asian Art" and does a great deal to disseminate knowledge about East Asian art by publishing the "Ostasiatische Zeitschrift" in German-speaking countries. The society also acquires art, which it makes available to the museum on loan. I would particularly like to thank the members of the Board, Dr Rainer Goedl and Ms Mayen Beckmann, whom I would also like to warmly welcome.

Among the purchases made by the museum to further expand its collection, one in particular deserves special mention: in 1988, with the generous support of the Stiftung Deutsche Klassenlotterie, we were able to acquire an extensive collection of Chinese paintings, more than 400 paintings from the Ming and Quing periods to the present day. The purchase put the museum back among the world's leading collections in the field of Chinese painting.

With reunification, the East Asian collections, which had been separated into East and West, were finally reunited. After a two-year closure, the museum in Dahlem was reopened in 2000. With its splendid new presentation, it once again joined the ranks of the major collections of East Asian art in the West.

Once again, patrons played a decisive role in the presentation of the new permanent exhibition: First and foremost, Klaus F. Naumann should be mentioned here. His commitment and his permanent loan of around 170 outstanding objects, which are exhibited in the Naumann Gallery, have considerably enhanced the museum's reputation.

I would also like to thank you, dear Iertha and Heinz Kuckei: thanks to your permanent loan of Chinese ceramics, the Museum of East Asian Art is once again able to present unimagined wealth in this field.
I would also like to thank the Director of the Museums of the City of Nuremberg, Dr Franz Sonnenberger, who generously donated the Fuchs Collection, mainly Japanese paintings, which was assembled at the beginning of the 20th century, to the museum in trust in 2001.

The museum was richly endowed for its centenary: I would first like to thank Dr Rose Hempel, Otto Kümmel's last pupil. To mark the 100th anniversary, she donated a wonderful collection of Japanese scholarly paintings to the museum, 56 pictures in total. Another gift is 19 Chinese and Japanese scholars' stones, for which I would like to thank Gudrun and Willi Benz for donating them to the museum. Finally, in 2008 we will receive an outstanding collection of contemporary Japanese ceramics. I would like to thank you, Dr Anneliese and Dr Wulf Crueger, for the transfer of ownership of these 400 or so objects.

Among the most recent loans to the museum are the Chinese furniture and Japanese screens generously donated to the museum by the Chairman of the M. C. Hammond Foundation, Dallas, Texas, Dr Hermann Graf zu Münster.

Dieter and Si Rosenkranz - as collectors and lenders of modern art - also stand for the future of the museum, which since its reopening has offered a wide-ranging exhibition programme in which contemporary East Asian art also plays an important role. Your generous support has made this possible.

It is a great stroke of luck for a museum to have such a committed circle of friends, but it is also the special quality of the directors to this day to have and live such a pronounced appreciation of patronage. This makes possible the kind of great moments that the Museum of East Asian Art has experienced.

When we talk about this great good fortune, however, we must not remain silent about the deep pain.

The signs of friendship, which have contributed to one of the best collections of East Asian art since it was founded in 1906, around 6000 objects, and most of which were protected from air raids in the Berlin Zoo anti-aircraft bunker at the end of the war, were taken to the Soviet Union by the Red Army and were considered lost for more than 50 years. I first managed to enter the secret depots in the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg in 2000 during looted art negotiations. I found the lacquer work, the scroll paintings, the sword cases, the embroideries, all still bearing the Berlin inventory numbers, put on display and unnoticed since 1945, a splendour and beauty in decay, 90% of the Berlin collection in Russia. We leave the place deeply shaken and depressed. Art is not suitable as a hostage of war. This state of affairs corresponds neither to the legal situation under international law - according to which art may not be claimed as reparations - nor to the state of relations between Russia and Germany; there was also no legalisation through a four-power agreement between the Allies, it was a unilateral act by the Soviet Union, which was further consolidated domestically by the Russian Duma Law.

All interventions have so far achieved nothing. Since the autumn of 2005, we have been trying to intensify discussions at a specialist level through the "German-Russian Museum Dialogue", to gain access to the secret depots, to compile inventories and to facilitate scientific work by German academics. It is unacceptable for art to remain a prisoner of war, art collections that we largely owe to Jewish collectors.

Even if the Museum of East Asian Art has regained an outstanding position after the war, the obligation to reintegrate this part of the collection into the museum remains. It is an irreplaceable part of our intellectual diary.

For the future of the non-European art museums, a concept has now matured in the form of the Humboldt Forum on the Schlossplatz, which allows the Museum Island and Schlossplatz to become a conceptual unity of cultural heritage, cultural knowledge, cultural encounters and cultural experience. While the work of Wilhelm von Humboldt can be linked to the Museum Island, a humanistic educational landscape that documents the development of Europe through its artistic epochs with its more than six thousand years of human history, the name Alexander von Humboldt stands for the intellectual constitution of the Humboldt Forum as a place of non-European art and cultures in all their forms of expression and disciplines.

What could only be a model two hundred years ago, we can now realise in concrete terms. What Wilhelm von Bode wanted a hundred years ago, but was unable to realise due to urban planning constraints, to show the equality of the arts in direct architectural juxtaposition, we can achieve today. Opposite the Museum Island is the empty Schlossplatz, the most prestigious square in Germany. Giving it a new meaning through non-European textual and visual cultures is a unique opportunity for the capital. It is of international significance and has a conclusive legitimisation. No other metropolis is in a position to provide such a central location! No other metropolis has the intellectual tradition, comparable collections and the associated expertise that Berlin has in the Dahlem museums.

The art of non-Europe would offer its own segment in this cultural panorama. The aesthetic concepts of East Asia and India could serve as a model for the presentation of art.

At present, however, the Berlin coalition negotiations between the SPD and PDS include the position that the state of Berlin wants to withdraw from the funding and leave the federal government to finance it alone. This would jeopardise the participation of the Central and State Library.

However, it would by no means jeopardise the utilisation concept for the Humboldt Forum.

With the large non-European collections of the State Library and the Ibero-American Institute as well as the museum libraries, the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation has enormous literary potential to ensure the unity of museum collections, library collections and science in the Humboldt Forum even if the framework conditions change.

However, the federal government would have to rethink its funding concept. It should do so, because there is no better idea for the development of the Schlossplatz, the real and symbolic place of the future as the intellectual centre of the European metropolis of Berlin, founded on the vitality of the cultures of the world.

The Dahlem museums can use the time now to focus on this development and optimise their structure. The Museum of East Asian Art and the Museum of Indian Art, with their small operating sizes, are very quickly reaching the limits of their capacity in terms of available infrastructure. It would therefore make sense to consider creating a Museum of Asian Art together with the museums, with independent departments "East Asian Art Department" and "Indian Art Department", in order to develop a stronger profile in terms of content. After a hundred years, such an approach should be permissible, for the benefit and sustainability of the museums.

Particularly in our time, there is a great danger that cultural contexts will be lost due to the short-lived and fleeting nature of cultural and intellectual tradition, the disappearance of a common canon of cultural and intellectual tradition and the clear preference for economic perspectives, and that tradition will be reduced to spectacular individual events and entertainment values. This is why we need libraries at the centre of society.

Museums are particularly called upon to use their independence and credibility to ensure a consistent interpretation and overarching expression of cultural heritage. The seriousness of the work, the expertise of the scientists and respect for art are the guiding principles. The hundred years of the Museum of East Asian Art are impressive proof of this. It should then be our task to provide the appropriate framework conditions! Congratulations to the Director, Professor Veit, and all his staff - ad multos annos!