He was a passionate collector, painter, photographer, publisher, art book author and novelist (“The Boat”), filmmaker and the founder of the “Buchheim Museum of Imagination” in Bernreid on the banks of Lake Starnberg. In addition, he was an untiring, courageous and likely also an immensely annoying complainer who showed relentlessness, particularly toward politicians and authorities. Yet if Lothar-Günther Buchheim (1918–2007) had not been the “disputatious-quarrelsome broker of his possessions”, as the Süddeutsche Zeitung so splendidly described in his obituary, in the end he would have sometime had to bury his long held dream of having his own museum that he wanted to realise since the 1970s.

Munich was once the intended location for the museum, then Duisburg, and then Chemnitz and Weimar were brought into play. Until finally it was supposed to be Buchheim’s place of residence in Feldafing – and following a referendum in spring 1997 in which Edmund Stoiber was involved as an advocate for the project, it wasn’t after all.  In 1998 the ground-breaking ceremony took place north of Bernried in Höhenried Park, directly on the banks of Lake Starnberg. “I view the fact that opponents failed to stop it as a Bavarian miracle,” Buchheim commented shortly before the opening on 23rd May 2001.

Günther Behnisch’s design has given his collection cosmos a wonderful home in wonderfully beautiful surroundings. “There’s a special atmosphere…,” the Munich architect says enthusiastically, “light, spatial interrelationships, Lake Starnberg, meadow, trees, sky…” Behnisch had the multi-segmental structure partially built into the slope, ending at a deck suspended twelve-meters high over the lake on the entrance level. On a clear day you can see the Alps from here. Nature, architecture and art merge into an inseparable whole.

In his museum Buchheim consolidated what is normally put on display in separate museums. At the heart of the legendary Expressionist collection are paintings, watercolours, drawings, and lithographs by German artists which Buchheim specialised in during the first post-war years. He was thus able to acquire the main graphical works of all major painters in the “Brücke” and “Blauer Reiter” artistic communities, oftentimes at unbelievably low prices. When the collection – 500 paintings, drawings, woodcuts and watercolours – was put on permanent loan to the Bavarian State painting collection its value was estimated at 240 million marks.

The focus is, among others, on works by “Brücke” painters Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Erich Heckel, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff and Max Pechstein, who wanted to “directly and unadulteratedly” reproduce “what urged them to create”, opposing the official art of the Wilhelmine era. The forerunners of the Expressionists with Lovis Corinth and the so-called second generation with Max Kaus are also represented with unique works.

Bavarian folk art, cult objects from Africa and Oceania, Chinese ink drawings, Japanese woodcuts, posters and much more also have their place in the museum as well as works by Buchheim himself. According to the collector, the “country path of art” was sometimes more interesting to him than the main beaten path. With the joint display the overall concept wants to make clear that the development of the modern took considerable inspiration from folk art and ethnology. Thus, Brücke painters as well as Pablo Picasso took inspiration from African masks and sculptures, the Blauer Reiter artists grappled with reverse glass paintings and votive images.

This diverse kaleidoscope of exhibitions cannot be reduced to a common denominator. It is, however, a scenario that is friendly, surprising and always exciting. A “museum of imagination”.

Text: Regine Smith Thyme

Information
Buchheim Museum: Am Hirschgarten 1, 82347 Bernried, Germany, tel. +49 (0) 8158 - 99 70 20, open Apr.–Oct. Tue-Sun/holidays 10 am–6 pm, Nov-March Tue-Sun/holidays 10 am–5 pm, info@buchheimmuseum.de, http://www.buchheimmuseum.de/international/english.php