What I could never escape was Germany and being German, Georg Baselitz
‘Germany has a complex history’, says the British Museum’s brochure, which is code for no matter what else Germans have achieved, their history includes an incomprehensible genocidal period. For this reason, for much of recent history a big UK museum show singing the praises of Germany would have been unimaginable. Germany and Britain have had a fraught relationship, although as the UK has over time been at war with 90% of the globe that could be said of most British relationships. In 2014 the British museum has decided that enough time has passed since WWII for the nation to accept a Greatest Hits of Germany exhibition.
It is 25 years since the Anti-Fascist Protection Rampart (aka Berlin Wall) came down and the BM is using that that as reason enough to shift all their German treasures into one gallery, add in some loans and open the doors to Germany: Memories of a nation. A 600 year history is told through a series of artworks and objects – music and philosophy not getting much of a look-in.
The first exhibit is a piece of the original Wall, the destruction of which marks the latest incarnation of the German nation. Unlike Britain, a country whose borders only change through sea-erosion or Home Rule votes, the borders of Germany have changed many times. The first section of the show makes this clear, showing objects from cities that are no longer in Germany. Back in 16-oh-something Basel and Strasbourg were in Germany. So was Prague. From the Holy Roman Empire onward Germany, however defined, has been religiously and politically complicated, which has had a profound effect on the rest of the world, for both good and bad.
The show includes works by Durer and Holbein, the Bauhaus and Kollwitz. A pottery model of Durer’s famous Rhinoceros etching has been loaned to the show. Outside the exhibition in the central Great Court is an original Beetle. A large portrait of Goethe by Tischbein illustrates that he is their Shakespeare. Gold ducats, hand coloured engravings – Germany was the first country to produce printed maps. There are also more contemporary pieces, including a film from 9th November 1989 of the Wall being joyously dismantled and East Germans pouring through the checkpoints.
With any such Up with Germany show there is obviously the difficult issue of World War Two. How do you integrate the horrors that Germany got up to with the craftsmanship, literature and art of their past? Germany: Memories of a Nation knows it can’t be ignored, but there is not a very big section devoted to the war. A replica of a concentration camp gate is the main reminder of WWII, whilst examples of banknotes issued during hyper-inflation seem to be wilfully avoiding the main point. The whole section feels too small and the show quickly moves into the Berlin wall era. The Hitler years are left with a similar amount of wall space to a selection of sanitised landscape paintings by Casper David Friedrich from earlier in the show, and are surely more important.
The museum has realised that football has to be mentioned in any history of German achievement, but seems to have been unable to force itself to place anything footie-related in the actual exhibition. So make sure you keep concentrating after you have been through the obligatory end-of-exhibition gift shop and are heading back to the stairs. There you will find a solitary cabinet of German football memorabilia. After all, Germany might have led the world in printing, religious dissent and repulsive slaughter, but they are currently world champions.
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