Walter Stengel

Walter Stengel (born August 24, 1882 in Marburg an der Lahn , † August 11, 1960 in Berlin ) was a German art and cultural historian . From 1925 to 1952 he was director of the Märkisches Museum in Berlin.

Life

Walter Stengel came from a family of scholars. His grandfather Hermann and his father Edmund were university professors at the University of Marburg . The father, later a professor in Greifswald , represented the Liberal People's Party in the German Reichstag from 1907 to 1911 as a member of the Rügen constituency and was editor of the journal of the Association for Defense against Anti-Semitism . His older brother was the historian Edmund Ernst Stengel .

After graduating from high school in Greifswald, Walter Stengel studied art history in Munich and Berlin, where a lifelong friendship with Max Sauerlandt began. He completed his studies in 1903 with a doctorate under Heinrich Wölfflin in Berlin. Until 1906, he did a traineeship at the National Gallery under Hugo von Tschudi , who brought him in to prepare for the exhibition of the century of German art . In the circle around the brothers Bruno and Paul Cassirer and Max Liebermann , Stengel took part in the discussion about modern art in late Wilhelmine Berlin in his first publications in the magazine Kunst und Künstler . In the meantime, a traineeship that lasted only a few months in 1905 at the Hamburg Museum of Art and Industry had introduced Stengel to the field of cultural history , to which he was to devote the rest of his life. The museum director Justus Brinckmann was the founder of this branch of science, who asked questions about the origin and the historical significance of handicraft production against the background of the change in cultural ideals and lifestyles .

Curator at the Germanic National Museum

Initially employed at the Historical Museum in Dresden , in the summer of 1907 Stengel first became an assistant and then a curator at the Germanic National Museum in Nuremberg. In 1910 he took over the management of the Kupferstichkabinett . Years of conflict followed with the museum management and the city of Nuremberg about the acquisition and presentation of exhibits of contemporary art and the romanticism rediscovered by the exhibition of the century. Supported by Alfred Lichtwark , Karl Scheffler and the Art History Society founded with the Erlangen philosopher Helmuth Plessner , Stengel carried the controversy into the German public. A dispute over the reorganization of the collections as a result of the new building of the museum by German Bestelmeyer led to Stengels being released from the National Museum in October 1919.

In addition to his publication activities for the German Museum Association and the museological journal Museumskunde, Stengel ran a farm near Deggendorf for reasons of existence in the following years . It was not until the end of 1925 that he was able to return to the job: on the recommendation of Max Liebermann, the city of Berlin appointed Stengel to succeed the outgoing director of the Märkisches Museum , Otto Pniower .

Director of the Märkisches Museum in Berlin

In the Berlin of the Weimar Republic

The “Märkische Provinzial-Museum”, founded in 1874, was designed by the city councilor Ernst Friedel as a local museum for the province of Brandenburg . In addition to the history of Berlin, his collections also covered prehistory and early history and natural history of the entire province. In addition to antiques, they also contained geological and zoological exhibits with specimens and fossils . After ten years of construction, the museum only got its own house in 1908. The house, which was built by Ludwig Hoffmann and is only exposed to daylight , hardly allowed any changes to the existing exhibition program and thus no modernization due to the style-related room concept. Under the direction of Pniower, who was a Germanist and Goethe researcher, the museum had taken on a somewhat familiar character and was considered a junk room .

Within a few years, Stengel made the museum a respected part of Berlin's lively cultural scene. The start was the special exhibition Berlin from Above . By opening the tower for the first time, which he equipped with telescopes , Stengel announced his new concept of the museum as an exploration point for the present day in the city . The toy exhibition of 1927/28 caused a sensation beyond Berlin. An exhibition in honor of Heinrich Zille's 70th birthday led to the closure of a museum several times due to overcrowding in January 1928, probably for the first time in Germany . Stengel had aroused the interest of proletarian Berlin in visiting museums.

Stengel's long-cherished wish to take over the Ermelerhaus in Berlin as a branch and exhibition building was fulfilled when the new Lord Mayor Heinrich Sahm took office in April 1931. The Ermelerhaus opened in October 1932 with a painting exhibition featuring the works of Käthe Kollwitz and Ernst Barlach and from March 1933 the art collection of Alfred Cassirer (1875–1932) was shown. In specially designed rooms, testimonies, mostly from the immediate vicinity of the house on Breite Straße, show the cultural history of Berlin in the 18th century, the Biedermeier period , historicism , Art Nouveau and the New Objectivity as a contemporary style in fine art and living . The rooms The extensive factory buildings in the rear part of the property showed the world of children and the world of housewives from 1935 onwards .

By reviving the Association of Friends of the Märkisches Museum , Stengel succeeded in networking members of the Berlin society who acted as patrons and prominent scholars with the public self-portrayal of Berlin. The supporters of Stengel and his collecting activities also included members of noble families in the Mark Brandenburg. In 1932, his personal acquaintance with Wilhelm Graf zu Lynar led to the establishment of a family museum for the Lynars in Lübbenau Castle . In Berlin, the respective mayor was in personal union also chairman of the museum association and thus not only stem the official superior, but also his ally within the Berlin administration in the planning, implementation and financing of the museum and exhibition business.

In National Socialist Berlin

According to Max Sauerlandt's testimony, the presentation of the Cassirer collection in the days of Hitler's seizure of power in March 1933 with “old bourgeois Berliners, Jews and counts nobility” appeared to be “completely lost in time”, but shortly afterwards, Stengel was able to integrate the museum into National Socialist cultural policy , especially with regard to the self-portrayal of Berlin, no longer withdraw. Stengel remained even after the DC circuit of Berlin's cultural life and disempowerment Sahms by the appointment of the NSDAP -Funktionärs Julius Lippert , first to the State Commissioner for Berlin and from 1937 to the mayor, a public figure. His biographer Winkler describes Stengel as a functionary who was ready to adapt if he could serve the museum. The acquisitions made by Stengel for the museum in the art trade after 1933 also include restitution charges .

In the exhibition organized on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of Wilhelm von Humboldt's death in 1935 in the Märkisches Museum, Stengel conveyed a picture of Humboldt that did not correspond to Nazi propaganda, and the expanded exhibition in the Ermelerhaus remained “free of National Socialist ideas”. The fact that Stengel had not forfeited his reputation in the circles he valued is shown by the fact that Rathenau's descendants left the portrait of Walther Rathenau by Edvard Munch to the Märkisches Museum in trust .

In 1937, with the newly created office of “State Museum Manager for Berlin”, Stengel also took over the supervision of the local museums of the Berlin districts .

By installing salvaged parts of demolished buildings, Stengel had turned the Ermelerhaus into a showplace of architecture and interior design in old Berlin. In the summer of 1938, in front of its owner, the city of Berlin, a dispute took place between Walter Stengel as museum director and Max Feist, the Jewish tenant of the cigar shop in the Ermelerhaus. The shop, which can be entered from the entrance area of ​​the museum, has repeatedly been the target of anti-Semitic acts of vandalism , which caused Stengel to fear for the integrity of the entire building. Whether the dispute was about the termination of the lease or the right of ownership to the culturally and historically valuable shop fitting when the business was closed cannot be determined from the incomplete tradition. The result was Feist's end of business at the end of August 1938, combined with the takeover of the shop fittings by the museum.

The constantly growing stock of the museum and the insurmountable limitations of its presentation in the main building imposed by Hoffmann prompted Stengel to urge the city administration to enlarge his house. During the celebrations for the 700th anniversary of Berlin in the summer of 1937, Stengel von Lippert obtained approval for a large, additional building. It was to be built along Wallstrasse and connected to the old building by arcades around the Köllnischer Park . The planning was completed when the outbreak of World War II prevented it from being realized.

Already in the crisis of the summer of 1939 , by order of Stengels, who did not trust the official myth that no enemy aircraft would reach Berlin, the relocation of museum items began. When war broke out, he closed the museum on September 2, 1939, referring to the massive building on the banks of the Spree, which served as a landmark for Berlin air traffic.

Stengel intensified his research on Berlin's cultural history and continued to publish the annual volumes New Acquisitions of the Märkisches Museum . In the last edition of the spring of 1941 he reported on a “one-time rescue operation” through which the museum had received a “wealth” of silver objects as “study material”. In February 1939, in application of the ordinance on the registration of property of Jews , the German Jews were forced to sell their gold, silver and platinum items, as well as their jewels and pearls, to the city pawn shops for far below their value. As a plunder action, the ordinance supplemented a bundle of persecution measures intended to force German Jews to emigrate after the November pogrom of 1938. With a few exceptions, the silver was to be melted down for the benefit of the German treasury. In Berlin, Stengel succeeded in obtaining a special permit and by 1941 acquired around 5,000 pieces of Jewish silver from pawn shops and a central collection point in Berlin for the museum and thus saved them from being melted down . The museum inventoried the acquisitions in a separate directory. The study collection, which was outsourced during the war, could not serve the scientific representation of Berlin goldsmithing, because apart from a few remains it disappeared in 1945. At the end of the war, it was very likely that she was in the custody of the Red Army .

When, in April 1940, as a result of a voluntary "metal donation by the German people", large quantities of privately owned precious and non-ferrous metal piled up in collection points in Berlin, a representative of the museum was allowed to mark individual pieces, but this time the museum was unable to save them from being melted down.

During the final phase of the war, Stengel increasingly claimed the need to relocate the museum assets and limit the damage to the partially destroyed building of the Märkisches Museum.

In the four-sector city of Berlin

The museum had been in the Soviet sector of Berlin since the summer of 1945 . In the Soviet occupation zone and, as a result of the division of the city in 1948/49, also in the eastern sector of Berlin, the historical-political urge to destroy, combined with a hunger for reusable building materials and non-ferrous metal , shaped the handling of the cultural and historical remains of past eras. Stengel was involved in the recovery of art objects, sculptures and interior fittings from the castles and mansions affected by war damage, demolitions and renovations "on the great battlefield of vandalism" that the Margraviate of Brandenburg had now become.

In Berlin, the security and repair of the museum building on the Märkischer Ufer was initially completely occupied with him. The lack of space and the already older competition with the museums for natural history and for prehistory allowed Stengel, in accordance with a resolution of the city council, to hand over the scientific collection and, on his own initiative, the prehistoric collection of his house to the relevant museums. The permanent exhibition, opened in 1946 under Stengel's direction, was all about the history of art and culture in Berlin. In 1949 he continued the experiments he had begun in 1931 with sound carriers that played explanatory texts in the exhibition rooms.

In only slightly damaged Ermelerhaus departments had the magistrate into the empty Rococo and showrooms when the war ended spontaneously taken root . The outsourced exhibition of the Ermelerhaus, which had partly survived the war, was not allowed to return to its rooms despite Stengel's efforts and the house was no longer available to him.

In the years after the war, Stengel published the results of his research on cultural history in the Märkisches Museum's publication series on sources studies on Berlin's cultural history . Winkler describes the reading of Stengel's texts as a "captivating journey through cultural history on the basis of a Cicerone that hardly anyone could match in terms of knowledge of this special area".

After initial successes in post-war Berlin, Stengel was unable to build on his achievements, which made the museum “both a center of research and a popular educational establishment” in the 1920s. As museum director, he came into conflict with the SED cultural politicians , who had finally set the tone in East Berlin since 1948 , because his museum concept lacked the emphasis on socio-historical references in the sense of Marxism-Leninism . In addition, Stengel had publicly and in a government hearing of experts in sharp words against the planned demolition of the Berlin Palace , the Ermelerhaus and the Nicolaihaus . In his contribution, he explained that the plan was a straightforward murder with calm deliberation , and concluded it with the words: If you want to do what is in front of us in the model, then you should go further as a consequence and also change the name of the new city. It is no longer Berlin. The SED also kept silent about this protest and destroyed the castle between September and December 1950. Stengel managed to rescue the objects stored in the basement of the castle in the hours and nights between the blasting.

Because of his advocacy for the preservation of the palace, the museum director Stengel was finally considered out of place in East Berlin. In December 1952, the discovery of three hand drawings by Matthias Grünewald in the holdings of the Märkisches Museum was his undoing. The art-historical world event brought Stengel an unbearable praise from the western press in the eyes of those responsible in the GDR , crowned by a telephone interview with US-American Time . Shortly before Christmas 1952, the People's Police (VP) occupied the Märkisches Museum and confiscated the drawings including the Luther Bible in which Stengel had found them. Fearing they would be arrested, the Stengel couple fled to their son in West Berlin on December 23, 1952 . Subsequent interrogations of several of his employees by the VP led to their resignations.

Escape to West Berlin and the last few years

Stengel's escape coincided with a wave of GDR functionaries who had fled as a result of the Slansky trial . On January 7, 1953, the West Berlin Evening announced succinctly that Stengel had resigned in order to enjoy his retirement with his family . His pension entitlement was not recognized by the West Berlin Senate because there was no reason for his flight, endangering life, limb and personal freedom . The East Berlin magistrate had stalk personal ownership in Schöneiche seize and his private art collection move . Only when an amendment to the Emergency Admission Act came into force in May 1953 did Stengel make a regular pension possible. Until his death on August 11, 1960, Stengel continued to work on the series of publications, Quelle Studies on Berlin's Cultural History , which had been published by the Märkisches Museum until then and which was continued posthumously by the West Berlin publisher Bruno Hessling up to volume 18.

In a publication by the Märkisches Museum from 1958, Herbert Hampe , later director of the museum, belittled Stengel's work. He was certified to have a pro-fascist attitude , and he appeared to be a supporter of the fascist racial incitement through denouncing Feist, as a result of which the museum as a whole has lost much of its scientific reputation . The Märkisches Museum was merged into the Stadtmuseum Berlin Foundation in 1995 as part of the reorganization of the museum system associated with the reunification of Berlin . Between August 1997 and April 1998 she paid tribute to Stengel with the special exhibition Hommage à Walter Stengel / Rescued in the event of demolition and renovation - recovered from the rubble in the Märkisches Museum and through publications in the 1997 yearbook.

When in 1999, in connection with the unification of East and West Berlin museums, the Jewish silver of the Märkisches Museum became an object of coming to terms with the past , the press also remembered Stengel. Der Spiegel wrote that Walter Stengel also got hold of it, as museum directors were allowed to sort out the most beautiful pieces and grabbed fine bowls, cutlery and classicist candlesticks . With regard to the loss after 1945, it was stated that the robbery was not too worthwhile . The residual silver would stem GDR times as a trophy of his "rescue mission" to which he glorified in the house chronicle the bulk purchase 1,953 used, with him did not come in the socialist sense, the orphaned pieces about to Jewish organizations handed over .

Stengel did not receive a special honor from the city of Berlin.

Fonts

• The dove symbol of the Holy Spirit. Motion display. Stylization. Image temperament (= on the history of art abroad . Issue 18). JH Ed. Heitz (Heitz & Mündel), Strasbourg 1904 (dissertation)
• Studies on the history of the German Renaissance faience , Sebald, Nuremberg 1912
• Woodcuts in the Kupferstichkabinett of the Germanic National Museum in Nuremberg , Cassirer, Berlin 1913
• Chodowiecki exhibition in the Märkisches Museum October 17 to November 25 , Märkisches Museum, Berlin 1926
• Wilhelm von Humboldt Memorial Exhibition in the Märkisches Museum , [Märkisches Museum], Berlin [1935]
• Guide through the Ermeler-Haus, Breite Str. 11: Branch d. Märk. Museums , ed. By d. Museum administration, Märkisches Museum, Berlin 1936
• Old living culture in Berlin and in the Mark as reflected in the sources of the 16th-19th centuries. Century , Hessling, Berlin, 1958
• Peep box. Old Berlin Curiosa. With a text by Edwin Redslob: In memoriam Walter Stengel (= The small de Gruyter volumes, Volume 1). Walter de Gruyter & Co, Berlin 1962
• Pastime. Ten chapters of Berlin's cultural history . Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 1969
• Chronicle of the Märkisches Museum of the City of Berlin . In: Eckart Hennig and Werner Vogel (eds.): Yearbook for Brandenburg State History . Volume 30, Landesgeschichtliche Vereinigung für die Mark Brandenburg, Berlin 1979 pp. 7–51 (here quoted as "Chronicle")
• “On the history of the Berlin goldsmith's art” (text editing Albrecht Pyritz and Kurt Winkler) . In: Reiner Güntzer (Ed.): Jahrbuch Stiftung Stadtmuseum Berlin , Volume 3, 1997, Henschel Verlag, Berlin 1999, pp. 211–260 (cited here as "Goldsmith's Art")

The series on the acquisitions of the Märkisches Museum with the volumes:

• New acquisitions from the Märkisches Museum . 1925 - June 1926.
• Second report on the new acquisitions. Summer 1926 - Autumn 1927.
• Report on the 1928 acquisitions.
• Acquisitions of cultural history in 1929.
• Cultural-historical acquisitions from 1930.
• Acquisitions of cultural history from January 1931 to Easter 1932.
• Acquisitions of cultural history from Easter 1932 to autumn 1933.
• Acquisitions of cultural history from autumn 1933 to Christmas 1934.
• Acquisitions of cultural history from January 1935 to Easter 1936.
• Acquisitions of cultural history from Pentecost 1936 to summer 1937.
• Acquisitions of cultural and urban history from autumn 1937 to Christmas 1938.
• Acquisitions 1939–1940.

appeared with the subtitle texts by (Walter) Stengel from 1926 to 1941 in Berlin, self-published by the Märkisches Museum (1933: "Märkisches Provinzial-Museum")

The series of source studies on Berlin's cultural history :

• Plaster, wax and shadow pictures , Märkisches Museum, Berlin 1949
• Pastime. Games, masks, animal lovers , Berlin: Märkisches Museum, 1950
• Tobacco making,: Märk. Museum, Berlin 1950
• Furniture , Märkisches Museum, Berlin 1950
• Brandenburg glasses,: Märkisches Museum, Berlin 1950
• A chapter on personal care and clothing , Märkisches Museum, Berlin 1950
• Furniture , Märkisches Museum, Berlin 1950
• Ovens , Märkisches Museum, Berlin 1950
• Berlin faience , Märkisches Museum, Berlin 1950
• Technology miscelles. Clocks and Locks , Märkisches Museum, Berlin 1950
• Sugar and sugar utensils , Märkisches Museum, Berlin 1952
• Wallpaper , Märkisches Museum, Berlin 1952
• Flowers , Märkisches Museum, Berlin 1952
• Garden figures, grottoes , Märkisches Museum, Berlin 1952
• Sugar and sugar utensils , Märkisches Museum, Berlin 1952
• A chapter on food , Märkisches Museum, Berlin 1952
• Friendship with dogs , Hessing Verlag, Berlin 1960
• Berliner Tafelfreuden , Bruno Hessling, Berlin 1961

literature

• Kurt Winkler: Walter Stengel (1882–1960) - A biographical sketch. In: Reiner Güntzer (Ed.): Jahrbuch Stiftung Stadtmuseum Berlin , Volume 3, 1997, Henschel Verlag, Berlin 1999, pp. 186–210.
• Marlies Coburger: The silver treasure in the Märkisches Museum. In: Reiner Güntzer (Ed.): Jahrbuch Stiftung Stadtmuseum Berlin , Volume 4, 1998, Henschel Verlag, Berlin 2000, pp. 223–272.
• Peter P. Rohrlach: On the 40th anniversary of Walter Stengel's death. In: Landesgeschichtlichen Vereinigung für die Mark Brandenburg e. V. (Hrsg.): Bulletin of the State Historical Association for the Mark Brandenburg e. V. Volume 101, No. 2, May 2000, pp. 57-60.

Individual evidence

1. ^ According to the Vossische Zeitung on August 19, 1932, quoted in Winkler, p. 192.
2. ↑ See Martin Engel: Kulturhistorisches Museum versus Rumpelkammer. The Märkisches Provinzialmuseum in Berlin , in Alexis Joachimides (Ed.): Museum productions. On the history of the institution of the art museum. The Berlin Museum Landscape 1830–1990 , Verlag der Kunst, Dresden, Basel 1995, ISBN 3-364-00325-4 , pp. 122–141, here p. 129, cited by Winkler p. 193.
3. ↑ On Stengel's activities see Kurt Winkler: Walter Stengel (1882–1960) - A biographical sketch , in: Reiner Güntzer (Ed.): Jahrbuch Stiftung Stadtmuseum Berlin , Volume 3, 1997, Henschel, Berlin 1999 (cited below as "Winkler" ), Pp. 186–210, on the general concept p. 192f., On the Ermelerhaus p. 195.
4. ↑ Report by Walter Benjamin : Old toys. On the toy exhibition of the Märkisches Museum , in: Frankfurter Zeitung of May 21, 1928, printed in Gesammelte Schriften. Edited by Rolf Tiedemann and Hermann Schweppenhäuser , IV. I / 2 (= Werkausgabe Volume 11), Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1980, pp. 511-515, with the participation of Theodor W. Adorno and Gershom Scholem .
5. ↑ For the Cassirer Collection see: Sabine Beneke: Ausklang einer Epoche. The Alfred Cassirer Collection in: Andrea Pophanken, Felix Billeter (Ed.): The modern age and their collectors. French art in German private ownership from the Empire to the Weimar Republic , Akademie Verlag, Berlin 2001 (cited below as “Beneke”), pp. 327–345.
6. ↑ Beneke, with evidence, p. 343.
7. ↑ See Beneke on “Integration” on p. 149.
8. ↑ Winkler, p. 199. Stengel had acquired “aryanized” cultural assets at auctions . According to Winkler, it was unclear which acquisitions were involved. An evaluation of the new acquisitions under the aspect of restitution was still pending in 1998.
9. ↑ Stengel refers to an exhibition organized at the same time, in which Propaganda Minister Goebbels branded Humboldt as “enemy of Germanness”, Chronik (see “Schriften”, 1979), p. 31f.
10. ↑ Andreas Bernhard this appears after evaluating the exhibition catalogs. See also in: The Ermelerhaus - A lost cultural and historical museum , in: General Director of the Stadtmuseum Berlin Reiner Güntzer (Ed.): Yearbook Stiftung Stadtmuseum Berlin Vol. 8, 2002, Henschel Verlag, Berlin 2003, ISBN 3-89487-467-8 , Pp. 143-182, here p. 180.
11. ↑ Stengel, Chronik, p. 48. The portrait, exhibited in the Märkisches Museum since 1945, was sold to the museum by the heirs in 1991. See also: Patrimonia. 76 (1993).
12. ↑ See Stengel's detailed description of the outsourcing and precautionary measures, Chronik, pp. 35–41.
13. ↑ Marlies Coburger: The Silver Treasure in the Märkisches Museum , in: Reiner Güntzer (Ed.): Yearbook Stiftung Stadtmuseum Berlin , Volume 4, 1998, Henschel Verlag, Berlin 2000, pp. 223-272 (cited below as Coburger 2000), Stengel- Quote with reference p. 246.
14. ↑ How Stengel managed this is unclear. What is certain is that it was actually a rare exception. On this Coburger 2000 p. 258f. and p. 263.
15. ↑ The assertion of fiduciary custody made by Stengel in 1953 doubts, based on sources, Coburger 2000, p. 269.
16. ↑ The text left by Stengel on the history of Berlin goldsmithing appeared in 1999 in a form edited by Albrecht Pyritz and Kurt Winkler, see writings 1999, "Goldschmiedekunst". The findings from the processing of the Jewish silver by an assistant Stengels were not included in the text, see there, p. 260 (follow-up).
17. ↑ Marlies Coburger: News on the “Silver Treasure in the Märkisches Museum” , in: Reiner Güntzer (Ed.): Yearbook Stiftung Stadtmuseum Berlin , Volume 10, 2004/2005, Henschel Verlag, Berlin 2005 (cited below as Coburger 2005), p. 59 –72, here pp. 65–67.
18. ↑ Coburger 2000, p. 263.
19. ↑ Stengel uses this term in his description of the rescue operations after 1945, Chronik, p. 49.
20. ↑ This expression is used by Stengel when describing the painful process, Chronik, p. 39.
21. ↑ Winkler, p. 196.
22. ↑ This is how Edwin Redslob summarizes Stengel's work in an article on his 75th birthday on August 24, 1957 in the Berliner Tagesspiegel , cited above. in Winkler, p. 188.
23. ↑ On this Bernhard p. 150.
24. ^ Opposite the demolition proponent of Prime Minister Otto Grotewohl in a public meeting, according to Peter P. Rohrlach: On the 40th anniversary of the death of Walter Stengel . In: Landesgeschichtlichen Vereinigung für die Mark Brandenburg e. V. (Hrsg.): Bulletin of the State Historical Association for the Mark Brandenburg e. V. 101. Volume, No. 2, May 2000, pp. 57–60, here p. 59.
25. ↑ On the hearing in the Ministry for Development on August 30, 1950 see Karl Rodemann (Ed.): Das Berliner Schloss und seine Untergang. A picture report on the destruction of Berlin's cultural monuments , Tauber Verlag, on behalf of the Federal Ministry for All-German Issues, Berlin, 1951, p. 14, on Stengel's comment by Winkler, p. 202, with a slightly different wording from Renate Petras: Das Schloss in Berlin. From the revolution in 1918 to the destruction in 1950. Verlag für Bauwesen, Berlin 1992, ISBN 3-345-00690-1 , p. 114.
26. ↑ Gerd Heinemann: 50 years of castle demolition - a search for traces , in: Reiner Güntzer (Ed.): Yearbook Stiftung Stadtmuseum Berlin Volume 7, 2001, Henschel Verlag, Berlin 2002, pp. 320–334, here p. 328.
27. ↑ Published under the title The Hand of the Master in the January 5, 1953 issue.
28. ↑ Description of details in Winkler, pp. 202 f., Also for the following.
29. ^ Herbert Hampe: The Märkisches Museum. Märkisches Museum, Berlin 1958, p. 20.
30. ↑ Ulrike Knöfel: Treasure hunt in the depot . In: Der Spiegel . No. 16 , 1999 ( online ). The author ignored the fact that Stengel wrote publicly about “rescue operation” as early as 1941, that it was extremely dangerous to discuss such a transfer to Jewish organizations in the GDR around 1950 , and that the “house chronicle” was not in the GDR, from Stengel 1952 had fled, but was published nineteen years after his death in West Berlin.