Anja Bremer

Anja Bremer (born March 13, 1901 in Sköpen , East Prussia , † January 24, 1985 in Berlin ) was an important German gallery owner and art dealer . In addition to her gallery, she ran a bar in the same room, which was particularly well known among personalities from art and culture.

Life

Memorial plaque on the house, Fasanenstrasse 37, in Berlin-Wilmersdorf

Anja Bremer came from a middle-class background and came to Berlin shortly after the First World War . After training at a bank, she lived in the USA for several years , where she worked in a wide variety of jobs, including as a maid. In 1942 she returned to Berlin. A deeper contact with the fine arts probably only came about in the last years of the war through the rather chance acquaintance with members of the atelier community Klosterstrasse . Artists belonging to this group such as Werner Gilles , Werner Heldt and Herbert Tucholski were among the first artists that Anja Bremer exhibited in her gallery, which was founded in 1946. Anja Bremer had lived with Surinamese Rudolf van der Lak, who had worked as a bartender and musician before they met , from the mid-1950s .

Galerie Bremer - past and future

The Bremer Gallery, founded in 1946, was operated in a private apartment at Südwestkorso 48 in Berlin-Wilmersdorf until 1950. From 1950 to 1955 it was in Meinekestr. 4 in Berlin-Wilmersdorf. In 1955 it was moved to Fasanenplatz ( Fasanenstrasse 37) in Berlin-Charlottenburg and expanded to include an evening bar. The furnishings and furnishings of the rooms in an old building were designed by the architect from the Philharmonie and State Library, Hans Scharoun . In addition to the artists of the gallery, many guests have gathered here over the decades who have appreciated the special atmosphere from the start - including not a few celebrities, etc. a. Will Grohmann , Walter Scheel and Mary Wigman , who are among those whose visits were also documented photographically. After the death of Anja Bremer in 1985, the gallery and bar were continued to run by her partner Rudolf van der Laak. After his death in 2005, Rolf Rohlow took over the gallery and bar, but stopped both in autumn 2010. The historical equipment was removed and stored. The name Galerie Bremer was removed from the facade of the ancestral building. Since February 2010 the entrepreneur Udo Walz has been running his bar “Fasanen 37” with a completely new concept, in which exhibitions of photography are to take place regularly. The opening of a bar with the name and historical furnishings of the Galerie Bremer is allegedly planned.

Exhibitions at the Bremer Gallery

Anja Bremer opened her gallery in October 1946 with an exhibition dedicated to pre-war German modernism: alongside the deceased artists Barlach, Beckmann, Kirchner, Klee, Kollwitz, Lehmbruck, Marc, Modersohn-Becker, Mueller and Rohlfs, there were older contemporaries like Feininger, Heckel, Hofer, Kokoschka, Marcks, Nolde, Pechstein and Schmidt-Rottluff. Classical modernism was to remain an important factor well into the post-war period. In the following years there were highly regarded solo exhibitions on the work of Ernst-Ludwig Kirchner , Max Beckmann , Karl Hofer and artists like Max Kaus or Karl Schmidt-Rottluff were shown again and again in combination with others. At the same time, Galerie Bremer devoted its solo exhibitions to younger contemporaries - mostly from Berlin - such as Bernhard Heiliger , Werner Heldt , Carl-Heinz Kliemann , Hans Laabs , Katja Meirowsky , Heinz Trökes and Hans Uhlmann . Many others such as Gerhart Bergmann , Ulrich Härter , Willi Robert Huth , Ludwig Peter Kowalski , Rudolf Kügler , Dietmar Lemcke , Cornelia Ruthenberg , Eva Schwimmer , Peter Steinforth , Hans Thiemann , Alfred Winter were shown in comprehensive collective exhibitions.

In order to ensure the continuation of the gallery in spite of the most difficult economic circumstances, there was an increased sale of home accessories and handicrafts from the beginning of the 1950s. These were shown at the exhibitions - to the satisfaction of the public and art critics alike - at the same time as pictures and sculptures. Finnish glasses by Tapio Wirkkala or furniture by Egon Eiermann stood next to the works of the group, mostly Berlin artists, who had developed loosely around the Bremer Gallery over the years.

The expansion of the gallery to include an evening bar in 1955 provided the Bremer gallery with a solid foundation for continued existence. Even if the scope of the exhibition business temporarily decreased compared to the bar business, there were still much noticed exhibitions, such as the work of Max Ernst in the 1970s. Since the Galerie Bremer accompanied many of its artists for decades, the gallery and the artists it represented grew older together. While a major focus of the Bremer Gallery's program in the early years was on the artistic avant-garde, the exhibitions during Anja Bremer's lifetime showed increasingly established artists and art movements.

literature

• Markus Krause: Galerie Bremer. The early years 1946–1952 . Kupfergraben, Berlin 1996, ISBN 3-89181-351-1 .
• Eckhard Gillen, Diether Schmidt (ed.): "Zone 5". Art in the four-sector city 1945 to 1951 . Berlinische Galerie, Nishen, Berlin 1989.

Web links

Commons : Anja Bremer  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Galerie Bremer - At the hairdresser's at the bar. In: tagesspiegel.de. Der Tagesspiegel , February 23, 2010, accessed on October 17, 2019 .