SMU co-founder Dr. Andreas Sternweiler laid the foundations for our collection with his own money and that of his family. His, as he says, “small part” was assessed as a “national cultural asset” in 2008 and as “one of the world’s most important private collections on queer cultural history”. Collecting and preserving is Andreas’ passion, owning is secondary. He has recently discovered the works of Erich Paproth and, together with Birgit Bosold and Jörg Krüger, has put together a small exhibition cabinet of wonders. He enthusiastically told us what he finds so great about them, but rather modestly outlined his activism and the numerical value of his collection. And he couldn’t be persuaded that “Bares für Rares” is a queerphobic show…
SMU-Royality in the House, welcome, Andreas! Normally we always start these interviews with the question of what the interviewee associates with the Schwules Museum, but that’s nonsense in your case, you helped invent it.
Exactly.
Perhaps you could outline in a few sentences how you came to co-found a museum as a relatively young person…
We first put on an exhibition before we founded the Schwules Museum, which was “Eldorado: History, everyday life and culture of homosexual women and men in Berlin from 1850-1950”, in the Berlin Museum. That was in 1984, when I was 26 and one of the many gay attendants there, and we thought that something should happen there. The others were ten years older. We were interested in the gay movement, gay life stories, not at all in art at first. Manfred Baumgardt had written a master’s thesis on Magnus Hirschfeld during his political studies and suggested a small exhibition on Hirschfeld to the new director Rolf Bothe (68er, very open), who had also been a famous Berliner…
You played the local hero card…
He thought it was great! And then Manfred got a gay group together and asked: If we make this a bit bigger, what can you all contribute? I studied art history, so I was supposed to take over the art. I didn’t really want to do it, I didn’t know anything yet, I wanted to do something about the subculture and the 1920s, then they said: yes, you can do that too. (laughs)
And then you consolidated these activities with the Schwules Museum, and you stuck with queer art…
Well, already through my studies. I actually wanted to work in heritage conservation and save old houses. Preserving history, in other words. Through “Eldorado” I really got into the queer theme. I had to do some research first, there was nothing about it. I looked through all of Hirschfeld’s books and the “Bilderlexikon der Erotik” and wrote down everything that was about gay, lesbian and trans. And to force the museum director to actually do this exhibition, we put out a small ad saying that we were still looking for material. Only two or three people responded in 1982/83. One of them was the gallery owner Werner Kunze, a really great guy, he was the first to tell me which painters were gay, he mentioned names like Marcus Behmer and Helmut Kolle, and we then looked for things by them. But I also had a seminar on US art in art history, which included gay artists, for example Marsden Hartley, who was in Berlin in the 1920s and worked abstractly, and I would have loved to have exhibited him.
How was queerness in art generally discussed back then, for example in art history? Was that a topic?
No, I started studying in 1976, there was nothing. What I mentioned was a total exception. Of course there were known gay artists, the Neue Wilde in Berlin like Rainer Fetting and Salomé, in Great Britain Francis Bacon and Hockney, as well as Warhol… And there was also Michelangelo and Caravaggio, we weren’t ignorant. I was lucky enough to meet Derek Jarman in Florence in 1981, who told me about his Caravaggio film project. That really inspired me.
You then also worked specifically on the subject during your studies, which led to a dissertation on homosexuality in the Italian Renaissance. Were you supported in this at the time?
I actually wanted to use the Eldorado experience to do something about art in gay homes. About the Saint Sebastians and the Michelangelos that people hung on their walls for self-affirmation back then. That wasn’t high-caliber enough for my professor. So I thought: I have to do something really great now that features lots of famous artists….
So Donatello, Michelangelo and Caravaggio. Without the connection to everyday gay life. Do you think anything has changed in the way they are received? On “Bares für Rares”, through which millions of people in Germany learn about art every day, people are still demonstratively surprised about buyers of male nudes or important details of the biography of a painter like Paul Höcker are not told…
I like watching that too, but I haven’t noticed that yet. But a lot has changed since 1984. Also through our work. Gay art, even the old art, has risen in price a lot, and we should have profited from that. (laughs) Back then, we always looked in the catalogs of the Bassenge action house. The very first thing we wanted to buy for the museum was a print by Marcel Vertés from the 1920s with a scene of two men dancing together. Then we sat there, not at the back of course, as you do to get an overview, but right at the front (laughs). And behind us it went off, and two gay men outbid us in the end. They won, but we borrowed the sheet a few times for exhibitions. At some point, it became clear to Bassenge that men’s nudes sell better than women’s! But we never took part in auctions again, it was too exciting for us, we only bid in writing.
With what money, actually? The Schwules Museum didn’t have any…
When something turned up or was offered to us, we bought it ourselves first. The first time we bought something, 20 gay magazines from the 1920s from Erich Lifka from Vienna, we had to have them, you never get anything like that again, I went to my father and said: You have to lend me 2000 marks now! And that’s how it started.
Is that how you became a collector?
No, I was already a collector as a child.
What did you collect as a child?
Everything, orange paper, bulky garbage, old stove tiles with great reliefs that were thrown out back then because the heating systems were being installed.
There are at least two kinds of collectors: on the one hand, people who surround themselves with things in order to form a community at home (like Neo Seefried’s thesis on Eberhardt Brucks, about whom we are currently having an exhibition) – on the other hand, people like you, because when you bought things for the Schwules Museum back then, it was clear from the outset that it would be shared and shown publicly.
Yes, everything was always released immediately, otherwise we had nothing.
And did you ever regret giving everything away?
No, you can learn to do that. If you let go, you can collect something new again!
So you still collect?
Of course!
Is collecting also a form of activism for you?
Collecting for the Schwules Museum? Of course it was activism!
Because?
Well, to preserve and save the things. And it was only because the collection was here in the museum that we had the opportunity to get institutional funding. Which we hadn’t been able to do for 25 years. You always need a story: if you have a collection that is considered a ‘nationally important cultural asset’, then you also need money to preserve and exhibit it.
If we now talk about the art collection of the Schwules Museum, of which your acquisitions form the heart…
…I wouldn’t say that. My things form a small part of the collection. It doesn’t even consist of art, at most 20 percent. Of course, some things that have socio-historical significance can also be classified as art – I started out collecting private photos, intimate depictions of friendships, which is what today’s artists do too. Even as a child, I collected postcards of men in swimming trunks hugging each other.
How has the art collection of the Schwules Museum changed over time?
There is a bit from the 18th century, but the focus is on the 20th century. There have been major changes, but also continuities. The ways of representation have remained, the longing for intimacy, for friendship, that hasn’t changed. But history has of course changed dramatically, so there are breaks that mark what was possible and what was not. But there are also depictions of concentration camps from the Nazi era, of gays who survived…
…by Richard Grune…
Exactly, or Marcus Behmer, who was in prison and was lucky enough to be able to draw there, and made spectacular pictures of gay oppression.
When the Schwules Museum managed to acquire part of your collection with support in 2008, it was said to be “one of the world’s most important private collections of queer cultural history”. If you wanted to show off your art collection to people from outside the museum, what would you mention? How does the art market view it? And what is most valuable to you personally?
Are we coming to the price question now? (laughs). I don’t talk in categories like that. But you’ve already guessed that and followed it up with the other question. (laughs) The most expensive picture we have here is probably “My Heart Goes Bang Bang Bang” (1989) by Patrick Angus. I was the first person to present it in Germany, in 1997 and then really in 2004, it was only known a little bit in the USA before that. Then, ten or fifteen years ago, two gay gallery owners from Stuttgart exhibited him in a big way, made an effort to promote his legacy, and now he is very well recognized and prices have risen. For us, it was always an opportunity to have works donated to us when we couldn’t buy them – many people are also very open to supporting us. And so we received this painting as a gift through the 2004 exhibition. But we also made a book about the artist.
And your answer to the second question?
Quite a lot! I’m really excited about the new Erich Paproth exhibition now, there are so many great works of art in there. But Marcus Behmer remains one of the most important artists for me. For a long time, he was only of interest to book collectors because he worked as an illustrator. But the artistic work he did at the same time was hardly known. Yet he came up with such great illustrations in the 1920s… He was commissioned by Harry Graf Kessler to illustrate the “Satyricon”, but it was too overtly sexual for Kessler and the book was never published. We acquired a few prints of it from him, and there is a drawing from the prison in my collection. It’s so intense and has such a wide range of metaphors and ways of depicting queer art that hardly anyone else has achieved it.
Now there are also developments in the museum’s history that have repeatedly thrown new perspectives on the art collection. “Lesbisch Sehen” impressed me back then…
…I also took part in that, bringing the women artists before 1969 into play.
And then there was the exhibition project “Aufarbeiten”…
Yes, it’s very good that representations were questioned more than before. We’ve actually always wanted to expand the museum to include lesbian themes, and I’ve always been involved in collecting them. But since it’s been pushed more here, I’ve enjoyed looking at women’s history again and comparing it with that of men, and understanding a bit more that it’s ultimately a different story.
If we now come back to Erich Paproth, whose exhibition you have just co-curated – did you have anything by him in your collection? Did you know him?
No. We probably ran into each other once. We lived here in Berlin at the same time, went out in the jungle… And he was also at the Schwules Museum early on, as we discovered from the flyers he still had.
And you weren’t familiar with him as an artist either?
Nope. He’s actually a completely new discovery for me.
Since you once learned that: How would you categorize his works in terms of art history?
I find it exciting that we are once again presenting someone who worked abstractly and was queer. And who, like so many artists, had to deal with his sexuality in his early phase and for whom this was perhaps no longer so important later on.
Do you have a favorite work?
Many. But especially the little one with the guy and the balloons… We started by looking through all the material, trying to link the chronology of the works with the chronology of his life. There is a diary of his, from which he also published excerpts. He comes very close to you there, which also changed our perspective again. Then I suggested we put on an exhibition to thank him for his inheritance. So we stood in front of these two walls and formed a central line where the curators’ favorite works from the early 1980s were hanging, which convey a joy from this era and still have something unbiased and fresh about them. And the balloon picture is part of that.
What would you say is queer about his work? Can you pin it down somewhere?
A: I think anything can be queer. There is abstract art that is just as queer as figurative art. I grew up with Kandinsky as my patron saint, Paproth grew up with Beuys. There’s the idea that something has to be realistic, that you have to recognize something, and then maybe it’s queer, we always disagreed. Detlef aus dem Kahmen, for example, gave us a work, two cleavers on a bed, which of course refers to the history of oppression, but also to Gilles de Rais, but it’s basically a couple lying on the bed, made up of two identical figures… I was always looking for depictions of same-sex couples, not necessarily nudes. Sexuality also plays a role in Paproth’s early works, but you can’t always tell what exactly is on show. We are looking forward to the friends who will come and bring along a few more contexts. (laughs)
How does the Paproth exhibition communicate with LOVE AT FIRST FIGHT about queer social movements in the same room?
I would say they complement each other.
What is the complementary aspect of Paproth’s works?
The fact that he depicts a single life from the million different personal destinies. That is special because he came from a good and rich family, but he had at least as many problems as other people…
For example, parents who forbade him to study art…
Exactly. But it’s good to see that there was someone like that, it broadens the view and such beautiful things have come to light… I think it’s one of the most beautiful exhibitions I’ve ever done…
Oh, how great! It’s presented like a little cabinet of wonders.
Yes, I’ve always wanted to do something like that.
What do you miss most in the art collection?
Lots of great works by women. Together with Birgit Bosold, I drew up a list of the artists we would like to have, so that we could organize it when there is money. That’s also a question of capacity. You could probably just approach people specifically, approach famous people who we would like to have something from. We’ve actually had good experiences with this in the past…
Maybe some people will read this interview and get some ideas (laughs). Thank you very much, Andreas, for this lovely conversation.
Interview: Jan Künemund and Alex Reimann, Photo: Jörg Krüger