As the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall arrives, a British Museum exhibition is a reminder of the incredible richness of German arts and crafts – and shows us how history can have a happy ending
Flag of the German Confederation, 1850. Photo: Deutsches Historisches Museum, Berlin. Photograph: British Museum
This weekend is the 25th anniversary of the Berlin Wall’s end. It is therefore fitting that a chunk of the wall, one of the many real and fake souvenirs that have circulated since its joyous destruction, is the first thing you see as you enter the British Museum’s outstanding exhibiitonGermany: Memories of a Nation.
In Berlin itself, the course of the mostly vanished wall that once defaced a continent is to be marked by 8000 lights plotting its path across a city that has emerged as arguably Europe’s greatest since that magical democratic moment when crowds surged from east to west, as guards stood by helpless. They surge once more on screen in the British Museum show, in news footage of the wall’s last moments.
But this is not just a month to remember the wall. It is a good time to think about Germany itself. This exhibition, which is linked with Neil MacGregor’s Radio 4 series of the same name, tells a story that is not heard often enough in Britain: the heartening tale of how the German lands’ complex patchwork of princedoms became a great liberal republic. This is the Germany story that matters today because it shapes contemporary Europe’s present and future; with its defining moment of hope as the wall tumbled on 9th November 1989, it is that rare thing, a history with a happy ending.
This exhibition tells it in superb style with some of the most fascinating and resonant objects in German history. It includes such treasures as an original Gutenberg Bible – the first European printed book – and the great Romantic poet and polymath Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s collections of fossil fish and illustrations of his theory of colour alongside Tischbein’s famous portrait, Goethe in der Campagna.
Porcelain rhinoceros based on Dürer’s print. Made by Johann Gottlieb Kirchner, Meissen factory, 1730. Porzellansammlung, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden. Photo: Herbert Jäger. Photograph: Herbert Jäger/British Museum
But it is the rich revelation of Germany’s diverse crafts and commercially driven creativity that seduce and fascinate, and enrich your sense of what Germany is. A clock from 16th-century Strasbourg, with curious figures and elaborate metalwork, still keeps good time. Splendid cups and salt cellars from German or once-German cities as various as Prague and Königsberg – where Baltic amber was crafted into rare vessels – lead the mind into reverie. Renaissance prints take us to Nuremberg, home to Albrecht Dürer.
Perhaps the most delightful juxtaposition is to see Dürer’s Rhinocerousalongside a stupendous and massive Meissen porcelain reproduction of it. The reinvention of porcelain was the second time German ingenuity brought Europe up to date with China – the first being Gutenberg’s revolution of the book.
I defy you to see this exhibition and not want to get on a plane immediately to Berlin or Munich or Dresden. The vividness of German culture, so salty and real, is infectiously presented here, from Holbein’s portraits to great Romantic art including a gothic fantasy by Karl Friedrich Schinkel, the architect of Berlin.
The Strasbourg Clock, Carillon clock with automata, by Isaac Habrecht, Strasbourg, France, AD 1589. The Trustees of the British Museum Photograph: British Museum
Germany’s darkest hours too are told, in a restrained yet blood-freezing way. After Otto Dix’s devastating portrayal of the first world war comes a terrifying exhibit: the gate of Buchenwald. Anselm Kiefer’s art and its quotation of the Holocaust poet Paul Celan – of which you can see more in the Royal Academy’s potent Kiefer exhibition – makes it clear that contemporary Germany has never forgotten that evil time.
Yet Gerhard Richter’s portrait of his daughter Betty perfectly captures the modernity, reason, and democratic soul of Germany today. Richter watches his daughter turn away – and accepts that she’s growing up, going her own road. It is a liberal masterpiece.
This is a good time to put aside the blinkered attitude to Germany that has blinded British eyes for too long. The 20th century is over. It is a century since nationalism took a world to war; time to set aside the anti-German prejudice that epoch scarred us with. The British Museum is doing something truly important here.
fonte: @edisonmariotti #edisonmariotti http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2014/nov/07/british-museum-germany-exhibition-memories-of-a-nation
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