Masterpieces from the Berlin Museums

In February 1951, the Petit Palais in Paris opened an exhibition of masterpieces from the Berlin museums, bringing together paintings rescued from the catastrophic losses of the Second World War. The show was organised under the direction of André Chamson, conservator of the Petit Palais, with an introduction by Louis Joxe. It was part of a series of postwar cultural exchanges that Chamson arranged with major European institutions, including the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna and the Alte Pinakothek in Munich, to demonstrate the survival and recovery of Europe’s museum collections. The catalogue was published by Les Presses Artistiques, Paris.

The Berlin Gemäldegalerie had suffered grievously during the war. In 1941, its most important paintings were evacuated to the control tower of the Friedrichshain flak bunker for protection from air raids. The finest works were moved again in March 1945 to salt mines in Thuringia, where American forces secured them. Around 430 paintings that remained in the bunker were lost in two fires in May 1945. The surviving collection was subsequently divided between East and West Berlin: the works from the western zones returned to the Dahlem district, where they were housed in a converted building. It was from this Dahlem holding that the Paris loans were drawn.

Two Vermeer paintings from the Gemäldegalerie were included: Woman with a Pearl Necklace (c. 1662-65) and The Glass of Wine (c. 1658-60), both long-established highlights of the Berlin collection. Their presence in Paris, alongside masterworks by Raphael, Botticelli, Rubens, Rembrandt, and other Old Masters from the Kaiser-Friedrich-Museum holdings, made the exhibition one of the most significant postwar showings of the Berlin collection outside Germany.