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See
this article with the first publication of the project and explanation
of the idea in 1996 in "Irrenoffensive nr 6: https://www.antipsychiatrie.de/io_06/prinzhornsammlung.htm
Why
the Prinzhorn collection at Tiergartenstraße 4 should be given
a museum.
Tiergartenstrasse
4 is a different place to Grafeneck, for example, the first functioning
murder factory of Aktion T4, but similar to the House of the Wannsee
Conference, it is a more "abstract" place: that is where the
perpetrators sat at their desks and where the civilisational abyss was
planned and organised. In my opinion, this place is about the "spirit"
behind it, about the cultural embedding of what was carried out in Grafeneck
and subsequently in Belzec, Treblinka, etc.
The
pictures in the Prinzhorn collection are in the basement of the psychiatric
ward in Heidelberg, the psychiatric ward of the university of the "famous"
Carl Schneider (the professor of racial hygiene, for whom no brain of
a murdered patient could get warm enough on the dissection table to
peep inside. Embarrassing enough for Prof. Dörner, as he praised
Carl Schneider's work therapy in his early years).
They were acquired in bad faith:
Psychiatrists incapacitated people, and then took away what they had
created -pictures that had become valuable in the meantime-, even though
they had placed the very legal power of disposal in the hands of guardians,
from whom they should have obtained consent.
According to the exhibition catalogue of the Prinzhorn Collection, at
least two of the artists, Franz Karl Bühler and Paul Goesch, were
definitely victims of Aktion T4. The paintings in the Prinzhorn Collection
are owned by the institution of the spiritual fathers of the murderers
of their painters, which in itself rules out any further right of disposal.
Who
wants a Holocaust Museum of Psychiatry? Hardly anyone would want to
visit something like that. Ultimately, nobody can identify with a pile
of corpses.
But the aim of this initiative is to understand who was exterminated
and what the mental connections are. It should be easy to go to the
Denk Mal, the museum: it will be impossible to avoid being touched by
the history of the people the painters represent, especially as a 500
m² public foyer is planned to tell the visitor this story of the
marginalisation of the "degenerates".
In
my opinion, there are other good reasons in favour of this concept:
Nothing reminds us of the old building at Tiergartenstr. 4, everything
authentic has been erased. Until 1989, the area around Tiergartenstr.
4 was even unmarred by a memorial plaque, but it has now developed into
a completely redesigned urban landscape, the "Kulturforum",
and is home to the Philharmonie, the Museum of Decorative Arts with
the Guelph Treasure and other institutions of the Prussian Cultural
Heritage Foundation.
And the Neue Nationalgalerie, a modernism that the Nazis tried to denounce
as "degenerate" with art from mental asylums, with pictures
from the Prinzhorn collection, that is the aesthetic dimension of this
murder society.
But the step towards accepting this closeness from the side of art is
still missing, the end of an understanding that one should be denounceable
through insane art, and a human, not a professionally therapeutic interest
in insane or psychiatrised people.
In
this context, in the cultural heart of the capital Berlin, just around
the corner from the central institutions of democracy in Germany (in
the antechamber of the Chancellor and the President, so to speak), Tiergartenstraße
4 is a place that should be memorised by everyone, because a Denk Mal
reminds them of it.
The
memorial mark is intended to concretise the fact that it was precisely
what the gang of murderers tried to eradicate, precisely what they denounced
as "degenerate", that encircled and marked their place. And
perhaps this even succeeds in banishing their approach to a certain
extent, in a certain way attempting a "cultic" evocative act,
because the events are only accessible to rationality to a limited extent
anyway.
One
of the initiators
René Talbot
Dr
Michael Naumann
Federal Government Commissioner for Cultural and
for Culture and the Media at the Federal Chancellery
Federal Chancellery
Adenauerallee 141
53106 Bonn
Copy to:
Federal Minister of Health
Andrea Fischer
Copy to:
Federal Minister of Education
Edelgard Bulmahn
Monday,
14 December 1998
Dear Dr Naumann,
As
you may already be aware from a letter from Prof Dr Raue, we
have requested that the University of Heidelberg publish the
works in the collection known as "Prinzhorn" for a
"Haus des Eigensinns" - Museum of Mad Beauty. This
project at Tiergartenstr. 4 in Berlin is also intended to be
a memorial to the victims of "euthanasia" and forced
sterilisation during the Nazi era.
We
would now like to turn to you to emphasise that the former lecture
theatre planned by Heidelberg University Psychiatry is the most
unsuitable place imaginable for the approx. 150m² exhibition
space of a so-called "Prinzhorn Museum".
We
would now like to turn to you to emphasise that the former lecture
theatre provided by Heidelberg University Psychiatry is the
most unsuitable place imaginable for the approx. 150 m²
exhibition space of a so-called "Prinzhorn Museum".
It
is easy to understand what was taught in this psychiatry lecture
theatre by Carl Schneider, who held the chair from 1933 to '45,
as he undertook extensive trips to institutions to select people
for his research - murder to order. In our opinion, turning
the site of this research and teaching into a museum honouring
the memory of the collector Prinzhorn, who made no secret of
his Nazi convictions and anti-Semitic racism, can only be called
a mockery of the artists and the victims of Nazi "euthanasia"
and forced sterilisation.
The
continuation of this plan by the University of Heidelberg has
already met with the resolute protest of people who have experienced
psychiatry, which is documented in the attached photo.
We share the protest voiced at this lecture theatre:
Loot
art for the lecture theatre of murderers (picture attached)
We
would also like to draw your attention to the stigmatising presentation
of the artworks in the collection, as documented in the attached
copies from the last exhibition catalogue of the university
psychiatric ward: paintings are labelled with terms of illness,
the artist as a person is no longer even referred to by name
- this is how Heidelberg still documents "sick art"
today, and the ideology of "degenerate art" is still
implicitly conveyed despite all assurances to the contrary.
Last
but not least: the collection is in a completely neglected state
in terms of conservation. To put it bluntly, it is moulding
away in the basement of Heidelberg Psychiatric Hospital. The
support material for the artworks is predominantly paper. To
date, there has been no conservation preparation and appropriate
protection against the decay of the irretrievable testimonies
of these psychiatrised artists.
By
completely boycotting the compromise proposal put forward by
Bishop Huber and Professor Raue, Heidelberg University has once
again clearly put itself in the wrong:
- it
acquired the collection in bad faith
- it made
the psychiatrised the object and victim of a science with
murder by order and was actively involved in legitimising
the National Socialist genocide
- it entrusted
Carl Schneider's assistant doctors with research and teaching
until the 1990s
- as an
institution of perpetrators, it intends to exhibit this art
of psychiatrised people in the place of their deepest humiliation
against the resistance of those who have experienced psychiatry
- it refuses
any compromise that would allow an appropriate presentation
of the collection in a much more generous setting and in a
social context.
Dear
Dr Naumann,
Please
check the Federal Government's subsidy for the building measures
of the University Psychiatric Centre, which according to our
information amounts to approximately DM 1.75 million.
We
hope that it will be possible to redirect this grant to Berlin
for the realisation of the "Haus des Eigensinns".
(From an economic point of view, 1080m² of museum space
in Berlin compared to 150m² in Heidelberg makes much more
sense for the same amount of money for the federal government).
Yours
sincerely,
signed.
Brigitte Siebrasse
(Member of the Executive Board of the BPE)
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