Gallery owner and art acteur Ulrich Dörrie passed away on January 22, 2026. From 2005 to 2010, he was a member of the board of directors of the Schwules Museum, where he initiated and supported key developments that were essential to the museum’s continued professionalization.

Ulrich was born in Emsland in 1958. He studied art history in West Berlin and Hamburg. From 1981 to 1983, he worked at “Buch Handlung Welt”, and from 1984 to 1987, he was part of the team at “weltbekannt e.V”., at times also as managing director. Both were important venues for Hamburg’s off-scene. As a founding member of “westwerk e.V.” and with the Dörrie*Priess gallery, which he ran together with Holger Priess, Ulrich Dörrie contributed to the preservation and development of Fleetinsel as an art location in Hamburg. He was an important cultural-political voice in the city as a member of the board of the Kunstverein in Hamburg, the art commission, and as a gallery representative in the working group for visual arts.

In 2005, Ulrich moved to Berlin and established a dependance of Dörrie*Priess on Yorckstraße. In the same year, he began working with the Schwules Museum, which at that time rarely exhibited contemporary art. In 2009, he curated “First Service” and in 2011 “(Self-)Portrait – Images and Networks,” two exhibitions featuring contemporary art that connected the museum to the art scene of the time. Today established artists such as Harry Hachmeister, Sophie von Stillfried, and Jean-Ulrick Désert exhibited their works at Schwules Museum for the first time. Ulrich worked successfully to acquire a considerable amount of donations, including through an auction at Grisebach, a booth at the Art Forum Berlin, and the “Evenings for the Schwules Museum” organized with art dealer Wolfgang Wittrock, which made the purchase of the Sternweiler Collection (2008) and, in the process, made institutional funding by the Berlin Senate (2010) plausible. He also established contact with architect Carsten Wiewiorra, who redesigned the rooms at the museum’s current location for our purposes.

Ulrich Dörrie joined the Schwules Museum during a period of upheaval and change: he supported strategic considerations regarding professionalization, institutional funding, and the search for new premises. He created a new public platform for the museum’s collections, made his connections in the art world available to us, and opened up new networks. Many will also remember him fondly as the curator of the successful Rio Reiser exhibition “Allein unter Heteros” (Alone Among Heterosexuals).

We are very grateful to him for all of this. In 2011, he closed his Berlin gallery and returned to Hamburg. He died after a short, serious illness. We mourn his passing and our thoughts are with his loved ones.

Thanks to Holger Priess, Karl-Heinz Steinle, Andreas Sternweiler, Heiko Pollmeier, and Birgit Bosold for the individual contributions to this tribute.

Photo: Holger Priess