Visual Arts Archives

• Members of the Akademie der Künste
• Dada Berlin
• Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity)
• Visual artists in exile
• Abstraction and realism
• Art historians and journalists
• Art associations and their members

"Here's a bundle of papers – You certainly won't expect this to be everything!" wrote Margot Fürst in her note accompanying the papers arriving at the Akademie der Künste in 1997. As trustee of the artistic estate of graphic artist and wood engraver HAP Grieshaber, she was indicating her readiness to present the Visual Arts Archives, founded in 1994, with an important artistic estate in the history of art and the Academy in both East and West Germany.

The HAP Grieshaber Archive is emblematic of the kinds of acquisitions that were made early on, which determined the department’s collection policy immediately after the merger of the two Berlin academies. These acquisitions included the archives of art theorist and magazine editor Wolfgang Max Faust and sculptor and Akademie member Werner Stötzer and the archive of written materials relating to George Grosz, the most important exponent of the Weimar Republic’s Dadaist art scene. The George Grosz Archive is augmented by the holdings of his circle of friends and acquaintances in Berlin, revolving around the visual artist and photographer Erwin Blumenfeld and graphic artist and painter Otto Schmalhausen.

In the 1990s, the department was built upon the written estates of the artist couple Hans and Lea Grundig and photomontage artist John Heartfield, which were preserved in the archives of the Akademie der Künste (East Berlin). The archives of sculptor Käthe Kollwitz and painter and graphic artist Lovis Corinth were added from the Akademie der Künste (West Berlin).

The estates of visual artists who had been persecuted and forced to emigrate, which were already in the archives prior to their merger, were supplemented with a number of specific acquisitions. For example, the estates of artists who fled Germany after 1933 and made their way to the UK, France, Palestine, Czechoslovakia or the USSR – Ellen Auerbach, Theo Balden, Ellen Bernkopf, Benno Elkan, Eugen Spiro, Heinrich Vogeler and Heinz Worner – found a new home in the Akademie Archives in Berlin.

In 1994, it became necessary to secure the archives of the  East German Association of Visual Artists (VBK). This marked the start of an ongoing series of acquisitions involving the archives of the most important art institutions nationwide and in Berlin, including the Association of German Artists (DKB), the German Association of Visual Artists (BBK) and the Professional Association of Visual Artists Berlin (bbk berlin), the Association of Berlin Artists (VBK) and the Verein der Berliner Künstlerinnen 1867 e.V. and the Arbeitsgemeinschaft Deutscher Kunstvereine. This constitutes a unique body of sources on which to base comparative research into art history for the period in Germany from 1841 to the present.

The historical and contemporary personal collections of Akademie members and Käthe Kollwitz Prize recipients form the centrepiece of the acquisitions made by the Visual Arts Archive. These include the archives of Lutz Dammbeck, Otto Dix, Heinrich Drake, Wieland Förster, Philipp Franck, Dieter Goltzsche, Birgit Hein, Wulf Herzogenrath, Alfonso Hüppi, Joachim John, Ludwig Knaus, Gabriele Mucchi, Otto Nagel, Ansgar Nierhoff, Marcel Odenbach, Ulrike Rosenbach, Michael Ruetz, Michael Schoenholtz, Gustav Seitz, Carl Steffeck, Rolf Szymanski, Herbert Tucholski and Hans Vent. Most of these collections, which focus on the 20th and 21st centuries, are gifts.

Dr. Anke Matelowski
Interim Head of Department
Robert-Koch-Platz 10
10115 Berlin
T +49(0)30-200 57-40 42
matelowski@adk.de

Volker Landschof
Office
Robert-Koch-Platz 10
10115 Berlin
T +49(0)30-200 57-40 53 
F +49(0)30-200 57-40 54 
archivbildendekunst@adk.de
landschof@adk.de

Antje Hanack
Archivist
T +49(0)30-200 57-40 50
hanack@adk.de

Romy Kleiber
Archivist
T +49(0)30-200 57-40 52
kleiber@adk.de

Dr. Anke Matelowski
Research Associate
T +49(0)30-200 57-40 42
matelowski@adk.de

Reading Room
Robert-Koch-Platz 10
10115 Berlin
T + 49 (0)30-200 57-32 47
benutzung@adk.de
Further information on use can be found here.