The Berggruen Museum
On the top floor there is a flat where the old man himself lived.
Heinz Berggruen (1914-2007) suffered both excitement and pain before his lofty retirement. He was born to an acculturated Jewish-German family from Wilmersdorf in Berlin, spent time in France as a youth, then escaped the Nazis in 1936 to study at the University of California–Berkeley. He blossomed in the art world of San Francisco, met Diego Rivera, and had a month-long affair with Frida Kahlo. During the Second World War, his language skills were put to the service of the US Army Signal Corps, and he returned to Germany as an enemy soldier. With Berlin, and his family’s home, in ruins, he chose Paris as his next port of call in 1947, opened a bookshop on the Ile St-Louis, and became friends with Paul Eluard, and, most importantly, Picasso (he later collected 130 of his works). As an art dealer, Berggruen made his name famous. A large part of his remarkable collection was given to the city of Berlin in 1996.
Walking through the collections I notice two things. The first is how beautifully put together this collection is, especially the Picasso galleries.
In one room Picasso’s women recline, in the next they are all sitting in conversation. African sculptures are displayed to elucidate his studies for Les Demoiselles D’Avignon. The museum is small but one can see all the most important phases of Picasso’s changing style: from blue to rose to surreal and so forth. A story is told, and a formal unity also conserved ––no small feat for such a small gallery.
One also notices how completely Berggruen turned his back on the Americas and American art. Berggruen once said: ‘I am neither French nor German, I am European’. I think it’s odd he does not mention America in this self-identification, the country where he had his education, where he started his career, had his first marriage and children ––the country of which he was an army veteran. Isn’t it odd, considering just how important American modern art was in the 1950s, precisely the time when he began collecting?
Berggruen’s concerns, not just in terms of art, but also personal, were very much focused on the ravaged European continent. Berggruen eventually found his way back to the country of his birth as an old man. He strongly rejected the idea that Jews should not return to live in Germany. “Understanding and tolerance are traditional Jewish virtues… One can no longer turn one’s back on the country of Dürer and Goethe, Beethoven and Brahms, Gottfried Benn and Max Beckmann”.
Meanwhile, the Berggruen name is still familiar around the German capital. Heinz Berggruen’s son, Nicolas, is one of the world’s most eccentric men of wealth, famous for his rejection of worldly things. He is known as the ‘homeless billionaire’, because he lives in hotel rooms.
I wonder if he has thought about taking over his father’s rooftop flat above the museum, above so many beautiful things that provide a still and seemingly eternal company ––a place his father eventually settled after so many years banished from home.
