Happy ending after 74 years: Menzel's "Dame im Coupé" and "Schutzmann im Winter" back in the Kupferstichkabinett
Press release from 03/22/2019
The two works "Dame im Coupé" and "Schutzmann im Winter" had been considered lost since their removal from storage during the Second World War. Now the Kupferstichkabinett of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin has succeeded in the sensational recovery of the two prints by Adolph Menzel (1815-1905).
Around 74 years after their disappearance, the two works will be presented to the public again for the first time in 2019: from April in an exhibition of newly acquired works from the Kupferstichkabinett and from September in the major special exhibition "Menzel. Painter on Paper". With the "Lady", the "Gentleman in Coupé", which is also part of the Kupferstichkabinett's collection, has regained its partner.
Hermann Parzinger, President of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, said: "To know that such works, whose fate has been in the dark for decades, are back in the collections and can be made accessible to the public creates a feeling of great happiness. We are extremely grateful to both the previous owner and the mediator for this step and for being so accommodating."
The recovery was made possible by art mediator Sascha Tyrra. He emphasised: "It is particularly pleasing that, despite initially conflicting views on the part of the owners and the SPK, an attractive solution was ultimately found for both sides. The transfer of these important works by Adolph Menzel was a real pleasure for me, not least because of the great enthusiasm of all the Kupferstichkabinett staff involved. This case shows once again that the art market and the museum landscape do not have to be mutually exclusive, but can benefit from each other to the maximum!"
Centrepieces of the Kupferstichkabinett's Menzel collection
"Dame im Coupé" and "Schutzmann im Winter" are absolute highlights in terms of both their art historical significance and the history of the collection.
Menzel drew the pair of pictures "Lady in a Coupé" and "Gentleman in a Coupé" in 1859 using the pastel technique. Works in pastel played a central role in Menzel's oeuvre from the mid-1840s to the end of the 1850s. During this time, he increasingly turned to painting. With the pastel technique, the draughtsman and graphic artist opened himself up to colour.
From 1907, the two travellers in the coupé enriched the "Collection of Drawings", which was still located at the National Gallery at the time. The collection already comprised around 6,000 works by Adolph Menzel, including the estate of the artist, who died in 1905. National Gallery director Hugo von Tschudi (1851-1911) bought the two drawings from the Munich lithographer and photographer Edgar Hanfstaengl. The decision to purchase the individual sheets at a comparatively high price at the time can be explained above all by the fact that they were considered to be highly museum-worthy and indispensable for the collection.
The "Schutzmann im Winter" entered the collection as early as 1891. The work was part of the legacy of Theodor Wagener, the son of consul Joachim Heinrich Wilhelm Wagener, the founder of the Nationalgalerie. Theodor Wagener bequeathed a collection of around 1,300 works of art to the still young museum - including the "Schutzmann im Winter". The work shows a typical Menzel subject, a section of contemporary urban life. The gouache was probably created around 1860, at a time when Menzel was increasingly working in gouache or mixed media on paper.
Due to the bombing of Berlin, the works were moved to the Reichsbank's underground cellar in 1941. From 1945 onwards, "Schutzmann" and "Dame", like many other works, were considered war losses. The "Herr im Coupé", on the other hand, had returned to the care of the museum, making the loss of its counterpart all the more painful.
In 2014, the first signs emerged that "Schutzmann" and "Dame" had not been destroyed. The Westphalian art mediator Sascha Tyrra was commissioned by his clients to sell both works and contacted the Kupferstichkabinett. In 2018, as part of the preparations for the exhibition "Menzel. Painter on Paper" exhibition in 2018, the path to recovery was paved. Since January 2019, Menzel's two masterpieces have been back in the Kupferstichkabinett of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, to which the "Collection of Drawings" now belongs.
Anna Pfäfflin, the curator responsible, says of the successful recovery: "Collecting, preserving, researching and communicating are the central tasks of the museum. The fact that we have now succeeded in adding two such important pieces of the mosaic back to the collection, as it was once laid out by our predecessors Max Jordan and Hugo von Tschudi and torn apart during the Second World War, is a source of great gratitude and humility for everyone involved - and is an occasion for celebration in the context of public presentations."
Dagmar Korbacher, Director of the Kupferstichkabinett, comments: "After 74 years of uncertainty, the 'Schutzmann' has returned to his post in wintry Berlin and the 'Dame' has resumed her seat next to her yawning travelling companion. For conservation reasons, we cannot show her permanently as we used to, but I am very much looking forward to presenting her in our two major exhibitions in 2019."