Catherine Dossin
“Pop Begeistert: American Pop Art and the German People”
In: American Art, Fall 2011, Vol. 25 Issue 3, pp.100-111.
In the early 1970s the American press started to discuss what was seen as a
surprising new phenomenon, the German craze for American pop art. In
November 1970 the New York Times printed the headline "American Pop
Really Turns on German Art-Lovers," referring to recent purchases by
German dealers and collectors. The author, David Shirey, reported with awe
how Rudolf Zwirner, a dealer from Cologne, had recently bought Roy
Lichtenstein's Big Painting (mistakenly referred to as Brushstroke) for $75,000
"as much as has ever been paid at an auction for the work of a living
American artist."1 The same month, Artforum devoted a feature article to
West German collectors; to investigate German art collecting, Phyllis
Tuchman traveled to West Germany, where she visited exceptional art
collections, in particular those of Peter Ludwig and Karl Ströher. According to
her estimation, these collections presented the best of recent American art:
"the art is so well-chosen that the pleasure of experiencing art is even more
rewarding than in New York." As Tuchman described the German enthusiasm
for American art, she also lamented how many American masterpieces were
leaving their home country. These exports were occurring at such a rate, she
wrote, that "To see work by contemporary masters, it is not necessary to have
access to a private collector's home; to see the most recent paintings and
sculptures, it is not necessary to visit an art gallery or even an artist's studio.
American art – whether we recognize it or not – is now to be seen in
museums in Germany." Illustrations of an array of U.S. artists' works then in
West German collections accompanied the article, adding a sense of urgency
to Tuchman's comments.2
If the success of American pop art in Germany is an indisputable fact – a walk
through the rooms of any German modern art museum would convince most
skeptics – the reasons behind such partiality require further exploration.
Essays devoted to German collectors usually gloss over this question,
regarding German interest in pop art as the logical result of American art's
greatness. An exception is found in the critical writings of cultural historian
Andreas Huyssen, who offers an explanation. According to Huyssen, German
infatuation with pop art came about from a complete misunderstanding of the
new style. Appearing in Germany in the late 1960s, at the time of the student
movement and the revival of the Frankfurt School's neo-Marxist theory,
American pop art was often interpreted as a sardonic critique of consumer
society and the capitalist system. When Huyssen encountered works by Andy
Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein at documenta IV in 1968, for example, he, "like
many others, believed that Pop art could be the beginning of a far reaching
democratization of art and art appreciation. This reaction was as spontaneous
as it was false." In the 1970s West Germans finally understood that American
1 pop artists did not actually intend to subvert capitalist society but rather to
celebrate it. They realized that Warhol's famous remark "Everything is
beautiful" should have been understood literally, not as a metacritique. In
Huyssen's account, the Germans consequently withdrew their support for this
bourgeois style.3
If the new American style seduced German intellectuals like Huyssen because
they saw it as part of the struggle against capitalism – interpreting it in light of
the writings of Theodor Adorno and Herbert Marcuse – it is doubtful that the
greater public embraced the new art on such philosophical grounds alone.
The Marxist explanation may account for the critical reception of pop art in
Germany, but not for its popular success. It fails to explain why thousands of
Germans who had never heard of Walter Benjamin nonetheless decorated
their houses with posters of works by Roy Lichtenstein or Tom Wesselmann
and overlooks the collecting tastes of wealthy industrialists like Peter Ludwig
and Karl Stroher.4
Clearly, the success of the American style in West Germany deserves further
examination. This paper explores the question of why the German people –
not just German critics – eagerly embraced pop art. Cultural history and, most
distinctly, the study of cultural transfers provide the methodological model for
studying West German society's reception of the new American style without
either singling out the response of a particular group (art critics, advanced
collectors, or casual viewers) or ignoring the sociocultural diversity of West
Germany. Cultural transfers result from singular events (publications,
exhibitions, sales, etc.) prompted by individuals who act as mediators
between the foreign cultural object and the receiving country. Studying the
responses of those individual mediators, and noting their socioeconomic
status, allows for a comprehensive view of the collective response of the
receiving country. The analysis of cultural transfers requires following singular
biographic itineraries and interpreting them in light of their larger
sociohistorical context.5 Following a similar approach, this paper reconstructs
the arrival of U.S. pop art in West Germany through the study of individual
events and singular, sometimes exemplary, individual endeavors in an
attempt to grasp the collective response of West Germany to the work of
Warhol and Lichtenstein.
Traditionally, Germans had been active collectors of modern art – they had
been among the initial strong supporters of French impressionism and the first
School of Paris. Fascism, war, and reconstruction had stopped this tradition,
but by the late 1950s the German economy had recovered and a number of
Germans were able to resume their extensive collecting. At first they turned to
Paris in quest of new talent. Paris was still the designated center of the art
world, where an international array of artists, collectors, and dealers came to
see, buy, and talk about art. For West Germans, Paris – its cafes, restaurants,
and galleries – was easy to reach by car and train, and many German dealers
and collectors visited at least once a month.6 When it came to contemporary
art, West German museums and private collectors bought mainly works from
2 the second School of Paris; they knew little about American art. The first
discussions of abstract expressionism in West Germany started only in
September 1958, when The New American Painting exhibition and a Jackson
Pollock retrospective went to the Hochschule für Bildende Künste of Berlin.7
Only at documenta 2, in the spring of 1959, were West Germans first
presented with significant examples of American abstract expressionism. Not
particularly impressed by the gigantic canvases, West Germans described the
works as decorative and grandiloquent. Collectors of advanced art were not
interested, either, because, by 1959, those works did not bring anything new.
As German collector Heinz Beck put it, abstract expressionism looked too
much like Parisian abstraction: "Rothko, Kline, sure, but it was still an artistic
direction in the vein of the School of Paris and tachism, so that Europeans
could understand it to a certain extent. It did not, however, represent a radical
breakthrough such as the one pop art came to initiate."8 West Germans thus
remained faithful to the second School of Paris – at least until 1963.
In the first half of 1962, the American economy underwent a crisis for the first
time since World War II. The American stock market, which had risen steadily
since the end of the war, sank 22.5 percent on May 28. As a result of what
economists called the Kennedy Slide, U.S. collectors cut back on, or even
stopped, purchasing art. Art sales decreased by 30 to 40 percent in the last
months of 1962, and works offered at auctions fetched lower prices than
expected. For French art, la petite crise of 1962 put an end to years of frantic
speculation that had led to unjustifiable price inflation and to the questionable
consecration of second-class painters. Parisian artworks, which had been the
objects of the highest speculation, were the initial victims, as collectors first
sold the works for which they thought they would get the highest return. This
simple economic calculation, however, was interpreted as a rejection of recent
French art, and sales plummeted. Though prices did not fall dramatically, they
were lower than in 1961, which was enough to shake collectors' confidence in
the School of Paris and make them look for something else.10
It was in this context that a radically new artistic trend appeared: in 1962 pop
art emerged in New York. Unlike abstract expressionism, which arrived late in
Europe, U.S. pop art was seen almost simultaneously on both sides of the
Atlantic thanks to Ileana Sonnabend, who had opened a gallery in Paris in
November 1962 to promote Leo Castelli's artists in Western Europe. In early
1963 Sonnabend mounted an exhibition of pop art with works by Warhol,
Lichtenstein, James Rosenquist, Claes Oldenburg, and John Chamberlain
(fig. 2); she followed up with solo shows for these artists over the subsequent
months."
German artists and dealers, who at that time were still going to Paris to see
new art, discovered pop art at Sonnabend's. When Gerhard Richter and
Konrad Lueg went to Paris in 1963 with a few other artists, they introduced
their group to Sonnabend as the "German pop artists." Not surprisingly, she
told them she was not interested in German pop artists but showed them
works on paper by Lichtenstein, Warhol, and other Americans. Until then,
3 Richter and Lueg knew of American pop art only through the few black-andwhite reproductions they had seen in Art International.12 Alfred Schmela, the
avant-garde dealer from Düsseldorf, also discovered pop art at Sonnabend's,
and he fell in love with the bright colors, crisp lines, and casual imagery of
Lichtenstein's and Wesselmann's works. Schmela, who had never been to the
United States, left for New York in 1963, spending three weeks there, visiting
studios, galleries, and buying as many works as he could. At Castelli's, he
bought the first Lichtensteins to enter West Germany. Back in Düsseldorf,
Schmela organized the first exhibition of George Segal in Germany.13
Following Schmela's lead, younger dealers such as Zwirner and Rolf Ricke
from Kassel flew to New York and brought back more pop artworks.
Transatlantic travel was becoming more affordable thanks to the introduction
of commercial passenger jet airliners, and the importance of this economic
reality in the rapid success of American pop art in Germany should not be
underestimated. On his first trip to New York, in 1964, Ricke was astonished
by the novelty of the artworks he saw in studios and galleries. He marveled at
an exhibition entitled Supermarket, which had been organized by Paul
Bianchini: “Artschwager had built display cases that Oldenburg had filled with
sausages, ham and steak. Andy Warhol's contributions were the famous
shopping bag and lots of Campbell cans that he had merely signed and dated.
You cannot imagine how it looked when I entered the gallery. Here, we did not
know about supermarkets, and certainly not as works of art! Pies, cans, cakes
as art! I bought some of the bags and I still have a pyramid of Campbell cans
at home”.14
The "supermarket" style that Schmela and Ricke greeted with enthusiasm
became the subject of serious critical discussions. In April of that year, Das
Kunstwerk, Germany's most prominent art magazine, devoted an issue to the
new trend, inviting artists, dealers, critics, art historians, and even
philosophers to share their thoughts on pop art. The mainstream press also
offered commentary, and in November 1964 the news magazine Der Spiegel
published a lengthy article on the phenomenon, titled "Pop Art: Suppe fürs
Volk" (Soup for the People).15 The author seemed puzzled but was ultimately
seduced by the playfulness and striking originality of comic-strip paintings and
still lifes combining spaghetti, soda pop, and tires. The German public,
including the art critic of Der Spiegel, apparently enjoyed this new art
because, through its colorful, sometimes glamorous subject matter, it
embodied the American way of life as it was then being disseminated through
products, magazines, and films. Viewers/consumers looked at pop art in the
same way they watched Hollywood movies and listened to rock-and-roll
music: as something new and electrifying from America.16 The popularity of
the new style was such that in January 1965 the Hamburg newspaper Die Zeit
published a serious study comparing pop art to dada and concluded that,
unlike its predecessor, pop was not an oppositional movement. Pop artists, far
from being critical of their surroundings, accepted them: "They grew up in
affluence and they have nothing against the world as it is."17 By 1965
American pop was springing up everywhere in Germany. That year, Die Zeit
published several articles on the new movement, turning Warhol, Lichtenstein,
4 and Wesselmann into household names.18 German television also featured
pop art; on October 26, 1966, for instance, the Dritte Fernsehprogramm des
WDR (Third Television Program of the West German Radio) featured a long
documentary, "Pop Art in America."
German collectors, including Wolfang Hahn, Siegfried Cremer, and Heinz
Beck, responsed immediately to pop art and, starting in 1963, began seriously
to pursue it. Hahn, paintings restorer at the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum in
Cologne and ardent supporter of avant-garde art, was the first to embrace the
new style. Between 1963 and 1965 Cremer built an impressive pop art
collection, which took in many icons of the movement, such as Warhol's Liz
(1964). Beck was seduced by the pop artists' engagement with contemporary
life. These heretofore unseen representations of modern life, which
challenged his approach to art, transformed his collecting practice: "At that
time, what mattered most for me were the beautiful things, the aesthetic
moment. When pop art emerged, however, a second, very important factor
came to play a role, namely, the question of a preoccupation with the things of
our environment."19 Pop art appealed not only to collectors of advanced and
emerging art; it also won over more traditional collectors. In 1965 Dr. Peter
Ludwig, an avid collector of medieval and modern art, who had a doctorate in
art history, bought his first pop painting while in New York. Ludwig thought
pop art was a style as significant and timely as cubism had been in its time:
Cubism announced the demolition of the world, which became manifest in the
Russian October Revolution and in the spiritual upheavals of Europe. Pop art
equals Cubism in importance because for the first time in our century, it
represents and acknowledges industrial society as an important reality. … My
admiration for Pop art stems from the fact that it does stand up to the realities
of this life and does not retreat from them.20 In 1966 Karl Ströher, another
longtime collector of modern art and a great supporter of the arts, traveled to
New York with the sole purpose of visiting galleries and studios associated
with pop art.21
Following the example of these major collectors and established figures,
everyone in Germany wanted a piece of pop art: those who could not afford
original works bought posters in the small pop shops that opened throughout
the country. Profiting from this general art fervor, many galleries opened in the
Rhineland region in the mid-1960s. In the spring of 1967, some of these
young dealers organized an art fair in Cologne, which has since become the
major international fair known as Art Cologne. The first Kunstmarkt was a
success: in five days, fifteen thousand visitors – many of whom had never
been in an art gallery before – bought a total of DM 1.5 million worth of art.
Galleries featuring pop art sold out and had to start waiting lists.22 Ricke was
able to offer several paintings of American pop art over which the other
dealers fought. He sold a Great American Nude by Wesselmann to Rudolf
Springer, the dealer from Berlin, for DM 5,000. Springer then sold it to a
collector from Cologne for DM 19,000.23 On September 25, 1967, Der
Spiegel ran the headline "Pop mit Profit" (Pop with Profit). Speculation in West
Germany heightened again a few months later, when Ströher traveled to New
5 York to buy the entire pop collection of the late Leon Kraushar because, as he
explained, "Considering the treasures included in this extensive collection, the
likes of which were not yet found in Europe, I could not resist the opportunity
to bring it to Germany in its entirety." Since Sonnabend controlled the
European market for pop art, such works were usually difficult to obtain in
West Germany, so when Ströher put works from Kraushar's collection on the
market, collectors competed for them fiercely, with demand so high that those
who bought works from Ströher were able to resell them quickly at even
higher prices.24 This, in turn, created an even greater demand for pop art in
Germany.
Despite the rapid rise of pop art in West Germany, it would be a mistake to
reduce the movement's popularity there to economic speculation alone. There
were also aesthetic and cultural motivations. As a celebration of youth and
pleasure, pop art embodied all that many Germans had been deprived of in
wartime and during the conformist Adenauer era. After years of suffering and
austerity, they were seeking pleasure and entertainment for the first time
since the 1930s. They could afford to do so thanks to the German economic
miracle of the 1950s – the result of hard work and good German
engineering.25 Not insignificantly, the first American painting Peter Ludwig
bought was Wesselmann's Landscape No. 2 , which showcases a
Volkswagen Beetle. Ludwig explained that he became fascinated by this
bright representation of a modern (German) car; he liked it for its unexpected
beauty, which brought together technology and science.26 The Volkswagen
Beetle as painted by Wesselmann embodied the West German participation
in the ideals of the Western capitalist world. As Ludwig summarized, "Every
communist behind the Iron curtain wants a fridge, an auto and a TV. This is
his idea of heaven. Medieval art was about God and the Next World. This art
is about now, this world. It is about heaven on earth."27
In 1968 the American style received official consecration in Germany through
a series of museum exhibitions. In May 1968 the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum of
Cologne exhibited Wolfgang Hahn's collection, with its significant pop
artworks. In June 1968 the Suermondt-Museum of Aachen organized ZeitbildProvokation-Kunst, an exhibition of Ludwig's collection, which also included
many works of pop art. At the same time, documenta IV in Kassel gave a
grand showcase to pop artists, whose works received such public and critical
acclaim that they eclipsed all the other contemporary movements
represented. In the fall of 1968 Ludwig bought all the pop works available for
purchase at documenta and placed them on permanent loan with the rest of
his collection at the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum, starting in February 1969. This
large and impressive show, Kunst der sechziger Jahre (Art of the Sixties), was
a huge public success. By the end of August 1969 more than two hundred
thousand visitors had seen it. Within two years, twenty thousand copies of the
catalogue had sold, and it is presently in its fifth edition. Also in 1969 Ströher
sent his collection to Berlin, Düsseldorf, Basel, and Darmstadt. By 1970
Tuchman was right to say that one had to go to Germany to see the best of
American art.
6 The traditional explanation of the German infatuation with pop art rests on the
belief that it coincided with the student movement, emerging about 1968. But
according to the chronology outlined above, pop art actually arrived in
Germany between 1963 and 1967. Art history's traditional explanation also
considers pop art's reception through a neo-Marxist ideological framework.
But, after examining its historical reception in Germany, it is obvious that pop
was part and parcel of the German economic boom of the 1960s. As Ludwig
explained, "You may disapprove of the idea that material welfare can make
man happier; that he who owns a car, a refrigerator, a TV-set, a washing
machine lives more happy than he who does not own them. But the idea
prevails and Pop art gives it a convincing expression in art history."28 Pop art
did not become successful because it was embraced as an ally in the struggle
against capitalism. The readers of Die Zeit and Der Spiegel – representing a
large portion of the population – were aware as early as 1965 that it was not
an oppositional movement. Huyssen's interpretation of those works may have
been influenced by the student movement and the ideas of the Frankfurt
School, but pop art had succeeded earlier and for other reasons.
To understand the German taste for pop art, we thus need to place it in the
context of the early 1960s. West Germany was by then doing well from an
economic standpoint: the balance of payments was positive, the reserves of
the Bundesbank were growing, inflation was low, unemployment was almost
nonexistent, and the Deutsche Mark was growing increasingly stronger. From
a geopolitical point of view, however, the situation was troublesome. In August
1961 West Germany watched East Germany build a wall around West Berlin.
The Wall and the Iron Curtain were glaring reminders of the Soviet threat and
West Germany's vulnerability. The fear of a third world war reached a climax a
year later, during the Cuban missile crisis, which put West Germany at the
front line. When President John F. Kennedy gave his famous speech "Ich bin
ein Berliner," the entire country listened to him with relief and gratitude.29 It is
worth noting that this speech took place in June 1963, just before West
Germans started collecting pop art. The German craze for the American style
could thus be read, at least to some extent, as a reaction to the precarious
situation of West Germany within Cold War geopolitics. By embracing the new
American style, so closely associated with the Kennedy era, West Germans
were showing their allegiance to the only country that could protect them from
the Soviet Union. Coincidentally, as collectors started to lose interest in the
School of Paris in favor of American pop art, Ludwig Erhard, the new German
chancellor, began loosening his political relations with France and tightening
his connections to the United States.30
Besides the Cold War, when considering the success of pop art in West
Germany, we must also take into account the context of the twentieth
anniversary of the war's end and the questions of remembrance this raised in
West Germany. Repressed memory of the war and war crimes resurfaced on
Christmas Day 1959, when a synagogue in Cologne was defaced with
swastikas and anti-Jewish graffiti. In the following days, similar incidents took
7 place in other German towns, followed by intense international scrutiny.31
The existence of neo-Nazi groups in Germany suggested that the country
remained a volatile democracy. Discussion of Germany's past and future
intensified with the publication in 1960 of American historian William L.
Shirer's The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany. The
book became a best seller in the United States and was hotly discussed in
West Germany when it was published there in 1961. It served as a
background for the prosecution of Adolf Eichmann, the "architect of the
Holocaust," who was captured in Argentina in May 1960. His trial, which was
broadcast on international television, revived the dreadful memories everyone
had tried to forget. From April to December 1961, survivors of the
concentration camps and other witnesses described, in prime-time
broadcasts, crimes that were beyond comprehension.
The year 1961 also saw the publication of Fritz Fischer's Griff nach der
Weltmacht: Die Kriegszielpolitik des kaiserlichen Deutschland, 1914-1918
(Germany's Aims in the First World War). In this study, the German historian
argued that World War I was the result of the German elite's expansionist
ambitions. The book stirred up a violent debate in West Germany because it
suggested that Hitler was not an exception in German history but rather a
manifestation of Germany's pattern of aggression. Speculation on the
aggressive essence of German culture became the topic of much discussion
in the early 1960s.32
The issue of collective responsibility was also at the core of debates
surrounding the trial of the SS and Kapos (inmates who supervised other
prisoners) of Auschwitz, during the "zweiter Auschwitz Prozess" (second
Auschwitz trial). From December 1963 to August 1965, 22 individuals were
trialed, and 360 witnesses testified, among them 210 survivors. For many
young West Germans who were born after the war, these trials were an
agonizing realization. Kasper König, who came to play a major role in the
promotion of American minimalism and conceptual art, recalled his
bewilderment and distress: "When I went to the Auschwitz trial in Frankfurt, I
first did not understand at all what it was about. It was like a religious selfcastigation, since I came from a Catholic background."33 During those trials,
Dr. Werner Heyde, the mastermind behind the euthanasia and sterilization of
thousands of mentally ill individuals, was finally prosecuted. The fact that for
twenty years Heyde had lived a normal life, practicing medicine among people
who knew his real identity, was particularly disturbing to many.34 In 1965
Gerhard Richter painted the arrest of Dr. Heyde. Through blurred brushwork,
the artist captured the ambiguity of the situation and the abiding questions of
Germany's past and future.
Contextualizing their enthusiasm of American pop art within this particular
history suggests that one of the reasons West Germans were attracted to the
style was because its images of the United States offered release from their
own national identity. In the mid-1960s, being German remained synonymous
for many with fascism, militarism, and barbarism. The art dealer Hans-Jürgen
8 Müller remembered that when he first arrived in the United States in the early
1960s, his taxi driver greeted him with the snappy comment, "You killed five
million Jewish people." For Müller, his time in New York was a "journey into
the past" and a coming-to-awareness: “For hours, night after night, with a
Jewish couple, for instance, we debated the crimes of the Nazis. They wanted
to know, among other things, what our textbooks actually said about the
persecution of the Jews. We had no idea. Back home, I talked to the publisher
Gerd Hatje and asked him for material. He found that the atrocities were
treated in half a page at most. That touched me deeply, and I swore at that
time that I would do everything to ensure that something like this would never
happen again.” The guilt and shame prompted many, König and Müller
among them, to reject much that was German and to embrace the American
way of life unconditionally.
When American pop art arrived in Germany in the early 1960s, it was
received as a breath of fresh air and an escape from Germanness. But this
infatuation did not last. In the 1970s Germans' perception of America
changed. The involvement of the United States in Vietnam and that war's
attendant horrors challenged the German people's high opinion of America
and in turn helped to transform their image of themselves. They started to be
more critical of the American way of life and to recognize the values of their
own culture. At the same time, German society experienced a political
radicalization that denigrated pop art as the product of a capitalist and sexist
society. The same images that had appeared revolutionary in the 1960s
because they offered a radical departure from the patterns of social and
cultural identity traditionally defined as German were now seen as reactionary.
This later shift of perception is certainly at the origin of the traditional
explanation of pop art's success in Germany – an explanation that appears to
have been politically motivated by the intellectual agenda of German art
historians in a 1970s mind-set, and not grounded in the events of the 1960s.
Art history has embraced a revised story of pop art's reception in Germany
that ignores the written record, most especially the activities of collectors and
the chain of exhibitions in the 1960s in West Germany, all of which should be
factored into future accounts of the artistic exchange between Europe and the
United States after World War II.
Bibliography
This essay was developed from a paper presented at the symposium
"Transatlantic Dialogues in the History of Art" organized by the Terra
Foundation for American Art at the Institut National d'Histoire de l'Art of Paris
in May 2010. I wish to thank William G. Gray, Till Richter, and Deirdre
O'Dwyer for their suggestions and comments.
• 1 David L. Shirey, "American Pop Really Turns on German Art-Lovers,"
New York Times, November 27, 1970, 46.
• 2 Phyllis Tuchman, "American Art in Germany: The History of a
9 Phenomenon," Artforum, November 1970, 58-69.
• 3 Andreas Huyssen, "The Cultural Politics of Pop: Reception and Critique of
US Pop Art in the Federal Republic of Germany " New German
Critique, no. 4 (1975): 77-97. Huyssen's explanation has been
repeated by other German art historians, notably Stefan Germer, and
has de facto become the official story. See Germer, "Intersecting
Visions, Shifting Perspectives: An Overview of German-American
Artistic Relations," in The Froehlich Foundation: German and American
Art from Beuys and Warhol (London: Tate Gallery Publishing, 1996), 934. Stefan Germer and Julia Bernard, "Beyond Painting and Sculpture:
German-American Exchange in the Visual Arts," in The United States
and Germany in the Era of the Cold War, 1945-1990: A Handbook, vol.
2, 1968-1990, ed. Detlef Junker (New York: Cambridge Univ. Press,
2004), 379-86; and Evelyn Weiss, "Pop Art and Germany," in Pop Art:
An International Perspective, ed. Marco Livingstone (London: Royal
Academy, 1991), 219-23. "Saint Andrew," Newsweek, December 7,
1964, 101.
• 4 In this study, my goal is not to assess the degree to which American pop
artists intended to create works critical of capitalist society. I limit
myself to examining whether or not West Germans in the 1960s
understood the American style to be critical.
• 5 On these methodological questions and cultural transfer, see Michel
Espagne and Michael Werner, eds., Transferts: Les relations
interculturelles dans l'espace franco-allemand (XVIII et XIXème siècle)
(Paris: Éditions Recherche sur les Civilisations, 1988); Michel
Espagne, Les transferts culturels franco-allemands (Paris: Presses
Universitaires de France, 1999); and Michael Werner and Bénédicte
Zimmermann, eds., De la comparaison à l'histoire croisée (Paris: Le
Seuil, 2004).
• 6 On the importance of Paris for the West Germans in the postwar period,
see Gottfried Sello, "Das Primat der Kunst in Paris," Die Zeit, June 12,
1958, www.zeit.de/1958/24/Das-Primat-der -Kunst-in-Paris. On West
Germans' relations to Paris, see Monika Schmela, "Erinnerung," in
Alfred Schmela Galerist: Galerist-Wegbereiter der Avantgarde, ed. Karl
Ruhrberg (Cologne: Wienand Verlag, 1996), 168-213.
• 7 The New American Painting exhibition had also been seen at the
Kunsthalle of Hamburg during the summer of 1958.
• 8 "Documenta: Im Wolfspelz," Der Spiegel, July 29, 1959, 50-53. Beck
quoted in J. Cladders, ed., Pop-Sammlung Beck (Düsseldorf:
Rheinland Verlag, 1970), 25. All translations in this essay are the
author's.
• 9 This is clearly established in Dieter Honish and Jens Christian Jensen,
eds., Amerikanische Kunst von 1945 bis Heute: Kunst der USA in
europäischen Sammlungen (Cologne: DuMont Buchverlag, 1976).
• 10 Burton Crane, "Stock Prices Dive in Sharpest Loss since 1929 Break,"
New York Times, May 29, 1962, 1. On the petite crise, see Howard L.
Katzander, "The Art Market and the Stock Market," International Art
Market, July 1962, 383-84. Francis Spar, "Lettre d'information (Août
10 •
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
1962)," Connaissance des Arts, August 1962, 13-14; and Spar, "Lettre
d'information (Juin 1963)," Connaissance des Arts, June 1963, 53.
11 Michel Bourel, "Les galeries d'Ileana Sonnabend," in Collection
Sonnabend: 25 années de choix et d'activités d'Ileana et Michael
Sonnabend (Bordeaux: Cape, Musée d'Art Contemporain, 1988), 1180.
12 On these events, see Brigitte Kölle, ed., Okey dokey: Konrad Fischer
(Cologne: Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther Konig, 2007).
13 Monika Schmela, "Alfred Schmela," Kunstforum International 104 (1989):
228-33.
14 Rolf Ricke, "Rolf Ricke," Kunstforum International 104 (1989): 251.
15 "Pop Art Diskussion," Das Kunstwerk, April 1964, 2-32. "Pop Art: Suppe
fürs Volk," Der Spiegel, November 11, 1964, 136, 138-43. The article
was far less critical than the one published in the same magazine in
1959 concerning the abstract expressionist works in documenta 2; see
n8 above.
16 On the development of the mass media in postwar Germany, see Peter
J. Humphreys, Media and Media Policy in Germany: The Press and
Broadcasting since 1945, German Studies Series, 2nd ed. (Oxford:
Berg Publisher, 1994). On the success of U.S. popular culture, see
Kaspar Maase, "Establishing Cultural Democracy: Youth,
'Americanization,' and the Irresistible Rise of Popular Culture," in The
Miracle Years: A Cultural History of West Germany, 1949-1968, ed.
Hanna Schissler (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 2001), 428-50.
Although in the 1950s West Germans had strongly resisted Hollywood
movies, pulp fiction, rock-and-roll music, and blue jeans, in the 1960s
they started to embrace these manifestations of American popular
culture. Economic prosperity and development of mass media assisted
in this acceptance.
17 Quoted in "Pop und Dada," Die Zeit, January 8, 1965,
www.zeit.de/1965/02/Pop-und-Dada.
18 In addition to the articles mentioned above, see "Pop oder Nichtpop," Die
Zeit, February 19, 1965, www.zeit.de/1965/08/Pop-oder-Niditpop. See
also Willi Bongard, "Leben mit Pop, Op und Ob," Die Zeit, July 9, 1965,
www.zeit.de/1965/28/Leben-mit-Pop-Op-und-Ob. American abstract
expressionism was not so intensively covered in the press.
19 On Wolfgang Hahn's importance in the success of American pop art in
West Germany, see Rudolf Zwirner, "Rudolf Zwirner," Kunstforum
International 104 (1989): 238-41. Annelie Lűtgens, Fluxus und
Nouveaux Réalistes: Sammlung Cremer (Hamburg: Hamburger
Kunsthalle, 1995). Beck quoted in Kainer Wick, "Das Sammlerporträt:
Heinz Beck," Kunstforum International 20 (1977): 39.
20 Reiner Speck, Peter Ludwig Sammler (Frankfurt am Main: Insel Verlag,
1986). For the quote, see Phyllis Tuchman, "Peter Ludwig: An
Obligation to Inform," Art News, October 1976, 63.
21 See Christmut Präger, "Museum für Moderne Kunst and Ströher
Collection," in Museum für Moderne Kunst und Sammlung Ströher, ed.
Jean-Christophe Ammann and Präger (Frankfurt am Main: Museum für
11 Moderne Kunst, 1991), 92-126.
• 22 "Kunstmarkt: Pop mit Profit," Der Spiegel, September 25, 1967, 158.
• 23 Rolf-Gunter Dienst, "Kunstmarkt '67 in Köln," Das Kunstwerk, OctoberNovember 1967, 65-66. According to Ricke, the Wesselmann painting
would have sold in 1969, just two years later, for DM 75,000, so great
had the demand for pop art in West Germany become by that date.
Alfred Nemeczeck, "'Ich will zeigen, dass Kunst eigentlich sehr einfach
ist': Rolf Ricke in Gespräch mit Alfred Nemeczeck," in Rolf Ricke, ed.
Marianne Stockebrand (Cologne: Buchhandlung Walther König, 1990),
10-36.
• 24 Pop Art from the Collection of the late Karl Ströher, New York, Tuesday,
May 2, 1989 (New York: Sotheby's, 1989), n.p. On Ströher's purchase
of Kraushar's collection, see "Sammlung Kraushar: Wella Pop," Der
Spiegel, November 11, 1968, 138, 40.
• 25 For a discussion of the sociocultural transformation of West Germany in
the early 1960s, see Hanna Schissler, ed., The Miracle Years: A
Cultural History of West Germany, 1949-1968 (Princeton: Princeton
Univ. Press, 2001).
• 26 Ludwig quoted in Speck, Peter Ludwig Sammler, 95.
• 27 Francis Wyndham, "Art in the Ruhr," London Sunday Times, August 9,
1970, 29.
• 28 "Interview between Peter Ludwig and Wolfgang Becker," in Neue Galerie
der Stadt Aachen: Der Bestand '72; Kunst um 1970 (Aachen: Walther
König, 1972), n.p.
• 29 In the early 1960s West German leaders and people were afraid that the
United States would sacrifice German interests in order to pacify the
Soviet Union. Kennedy's speech reassured them of the U.S.
commitment.
• 30 When Erhard became the new chancellor of West Germany in 1963, he
shifted the foreign policy of the country, which, under Konrad
Adenauer, had aimed mostly at fostering the Franco-German alliance.
Erhard took his distance from France and General Charles de Gaulle
and instead worked at getting closer to the United States. The
barbecue organized by President Lyndon Baines Johnson in Erhard's
honor in December 1963 was the most visible symbol of West
Germany's getting closer to the United States. For West German
foreign policy during that period, see Ronald J. Granieri, The
Ambivalent Alliance: Konrad Adenauer, the CDU/CSU, and the West,
1949-1966 (New York: Berghahn Books, 2003).
• 31 See Sydney Gruson, "Bonn Plans Curb on Anti-Semitism," New York
Times, January 7, 1960, 1-2; and Arthur J. Olsen, "Anti-Jewish Acts in
Germany Grow: Incidents Are Widespread," New York Times,
December 31, 1959, 1.
• 32 "Kriegsschuld: Rätsel am 9.9.," Der Spiegel, August 21, 1963, 40-42, 47.
See "Auschwitz-Prozess: Auf der Rampe," Der Spiegel, December 18,
1963, 46-47, 50-51, 53-55. See also "Auschwitz Prozess: Feuerstelle
2," Der Spiegel, February 5, 1964, 28, 30.
• 33 König quoted in Marius Babias, "'Ich war dabei, als …': Ein Gespräch mit
12 Kasper König," Kunstforum International 144 (1999): 415.
• 34 See "Euthanasie: Handvoll Asche," Der Spiegel, February 19, 1964, 2834, 37-38.
• 35 Hans-Jürgen Müller, "Hans-Jürgen Müller," Kunstforum International 104
(1989): 236. On the construction of German collective guilt in the
1960s, and its political, social, and cultural ramifications, see Wulf
Kansteiner, In Pursuit of German Memory: History, Television, and
Politics after Auschwitz (Athens: Ohio Univ. Press, 2006). esp. 109-30.
13