Artists’ Archives

The Artists’ Archives at the Berlinische Galerie are a storehouse of knowledge and a versatile memory in written form: from copious correspondence and rare printed matter via diaries and manuscripts to scattered jottings. Here documents are collected, preserved and trawled for content. They originate from individual artists, groups of artists, gallery managers and art scholars who set their stamp on the history of art and culture in Berlin. There are fonds from – among others – the Jugendstil artist Fidus, Herwarth Walden’s avant-garde gallery and journal “Der Sturm”, the Novembergruppe, Ferdinand Möller’s gallery and the sculptors Naum Gabo, Hans Uhlmann and George Rickey, and they reach down to the recent past.

Our prolific holdings from the DADA movement in Berlin are unmatched anywhere in the world. They consist of the posthumous papers of Hannah Höch, the collage artist and the only woman among the Berlin Dadaists, and of Raoul Hausmann, documenting his activities as a “Dadasopher”, dancer, photo-mechanic, sound poet, photographer and experimental engineer. Especially important is the material from artists who were threatened and persecuted by the Nazis and forced into exile, like Lotte Laserstein and Issai Kulvianski.

Also in the inventory: Hilde Altmann Reich, Marta Astfalck-Vietz, Raoul Hausmann, Issai Kulvianski, Christine Perthen, Fritz Rahmann, George Rickey, Eberhard Steneberg, Fred Thieler, Elisabeth Tilse