Prong (gallery)

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Entrance Oranienstrasse 27, Berlin-Kreuzberg, passage to the former backyard gallery zinke

Die zinke was a backyard gallery in Kreuzberg, which developed into Berlin's most important cultural meeting point between 1959 and 1962.

To the founding history

Founded as the prong 1959 by the poet and graphic artist Günter Bruno Fuchs , the writer, actor and painter Robert Wolfgang Schnell and the sculptor Günter start . After Günter Bruno Fuchs had signed the lease and the matter was 'wrapped up', the painter Sigurd Kuschnerus joined them.

Naming

The gallery name "zinke" is taken from the Rotwelsch and is derived from the Zinken (secret symbol) .

So-called crook tines

So inconspicuous markings are called that hikers, beggars or thieves draw with chalk or pen on doors and house walls or scratch directly into the respective underground so that subsequent companions can read what awaits them at this place and to what extent there is 'something to get' there . The parallel to the tags (English for 'to mark') of today's graffiti sprayers, which was drawn, is sociologically untenable: Tags deliberately create publicity, tines have always served their purpose just below the 'radar screen' of public awareness.

A symbol of the zinke gallery that has become legendary (detail from the plaque for Robert Wolfgang Schnell , Behaimstrasse 10), Berlin 2015

Given this name, it made sense to use something corresponding as a logo . The founders created one by assembling a new symbol from several traditional prongs. It is made up of three tramp tines from the 18th century. The upper spiral shape means: "Here you can settle down." The two vertical lines mean: "Here you can get something for work." The semi-oval, open at the top, means: "Here you can stay overnight." The horizontal lower line is as a base and Underlining the whole meant.

Location

The two merging exhibition rooms of the zinke gallery were located in the back yard of Oranienstrasse 27 in the old workers' and petty bourgeois quarter of Kreuzberg, the then "SO 36" district, on the first floor of a very dilapidated clinker building. The ground floor room next to the staircase with its spiral staircase was used as a workshop, storage room and occasional sleeping place. The monthly rent was 25 marks. These could only be raised because Günter Anlauf was the only one who earned money: as a trained stonemason during the restoration work in Charlottenburg Palace. Schnell described the situation on site in the catalog of the memorial exhibition for the zinke from 1979/1980 as follows: “You have to imagine two rooms, a little over two meters high. (...) In the corner of the front room a tiled stove, creaky floorboards painted brown, the passage to the second room a door frame without a door. Relatively weak ceiling light, two 100 watt bulbs in each room, daylight through two small windows each to the backyard, next door is the empty courtyard of the asylum for the blind. ”The basic mood on the courtyard during the day was not unlike that of the historical photo shown opposite the Federal Archives picture is captured.

Typical backyard atmosphere in Kreuzberg in the 50s-60s

As an old flea market photo showing one of its posters shows, the gallery advertised in the following way: “You should also visit // zinke // the gallery in the backyard // Berlin SO 36, Oranienstr. 27 // open from 5:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m. // closed on Mondays ". See the historical photo from Ullstein Bild / gettyimages.

Pictorial and narrative

The art scene at that time took place mainly in the districts of Charlottenburg and Wilmersdorf - all of the 'important' galleries were located there. The supposed retreat to the neighborhood was all the more astonishing. But it was “in reality not a retreat at all”, as Eberhard Roters , the art historian, curator and founding director of the Berlinische Galerie , correctly recognized, but a deliberately dissociating, idiosyncratic project “to establish an overall Berlin cultural exchange of ideas.” It tended to come about, because one had very close and friendly contacts to like-minded people in East Berlin, for example to Bobrowski from the New Friedrichshagener Dichterkreis , but also to Helene Weigel , Anna Seghers and Günter Kunert . The aesthetic formula of the zinc operator was simple. Against the prevailing abstract expressionism and Informel , the zinke artists wanted to be “modern in a human way”, and this in words and pictures: “We were looking for the pictorial and colorful narrative,” as Robert Wolfgang Schnell said, given the dual talent of all three zinke. Founder gets to the point. Grass, of course, fitted particularly well with the aesthetic conception of this 'fantastic realism' from Kreuzberg, who also performed in the crowded zinke from his novel The Tin Drum, which was just published at the time.

Readings soon became part of the zinke's regular program and were just as well attended as the exhibitions. Since the gallery rooms were immediately completely overcrowded, all windows were opened and read with a particularly loud voice so that those gathered in the backyard could also hear something of it. As Lothar Klünner , the shaker and translator, reports as a contemporary witness in 1961: “I stood in the courtyard amidst a surging mass, bowed my head and stared upwards. There I saw Günter Grass sitting astride a window on the first floor. Obviously trying to make himself heard to the people inside and outside. "As if this wasn't enough of a happening , the" whole thing took on the character of a festival when someone sat down in a neighboring window, pulled out a piccolo flute and the poet began to blow the accompaniment . And that in turn encouraged another resident to put his gramophone in the window and fill the courtyard scenery with the hit of the year without a break: the babysitter Boogie by Ralf Bendix.

Single from the 1961 hit

Anyone wishing to get an impression of the quality of the lectures at the readings there, of which unfortunately there are no records, should listen to Günter Bruno Fuchs' record . Her quirky title: One ear washes the other. The most beautiful texts by Günter Bruno Fuchs, read by himself: wholeheartedly, with crafty accentuations, smacking Berlin-style lisps ; auf Wagenbach's Quartplatte 19, Berlin 1980. With its exhibitions and readings by authors , the zinke became a popular meeting place for bohemians and those interested in culture and thus the decisive nucleus of the development without which Berlin would not have later become the European Capital of Culture . After the end of the zinke at the beginning of 1963, the premises remained empty for years until 1965, presumably to deliver the house to decay and thus to demolition, which then actually took place. In anticipation of the ensuing Berlin squatting , the younger artists Dimitrius Boyksen, Harun Farocki and Natias Neutert , who had moved from Hamburg, gained access and used the legendary place as a free place to sleep and a meeting place for poets.

Exhibition participants

Listed in alphabetical order, not in chronological order, the following artists participated in the exhibitions in der zinke:

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Cf. Günter Bruno Fuchs: zinc. Berlin . 1959-1962. Start-up. Fox . Fast . Edited by Künstlerhaus Bethanien in cooperation with the Senator for Cultural Affairs and the Kreuzberg Art Office. Berlin, October / November 1979; Goethe Institute Amsterdam, 1980.
  2. ↑ Bodo Rollka, Volker Spiess, Bernhard Thieme (ed.): Berliner biographisches Lexikon . Haude & Spenersche Verlagbuchhandlung, Berlin 1993, p. 131.
  3. ↑ See Bodo Rollka, Volker Spiess, Bernhard Thieme (eds.): Berliner Biographisches Lexikon . Haude & Spenersche Verlagbuchhandlung, Berlin 1993, pp. 354, 355.
  4. ↑ Robert Wolfgang Schnell: The «zinc». In: Cf. Günter Bruno Fuchs: zinc. Berlin . 1959-1962. Start-up. Fox . Fast . Edited by Künstlerhaus Bethanien in cooperation with the Senator for Cultural Affairs and the Kreuzberg Art Office. Berlin, October / November 1979; Goethe-Institut Amsterdam, 1980, p. 11.
  5. ↑ Cf. Lothar Klünner: Where the beams bent. In: Günter Bruno Fuchs: zinc. Berlin . 1959-1962. Start-up. Fox . Fast . Edited by Künstlerhaus Bethanien in cooperation with the Senator for Cultural Affairs and the Kreuzberg Art Office. Berlin, October / November 1979; Goethe-Institut Amsterdam, 1980, p. 20.
  6. ↑ See Eberhard Roters. In: Günter Bruno Fuchs: zinc. Berlin . 1959-1962. Start-up. Fox . Fast . Edited by Künstlerhaus Bethanien in cooperation with the Senator for Cultural Affairs and the Kreuzberg Art Office. Berlin, October / November 1979; Goethe-Institut Amsterdam, 1980, p. 8.
  7. ↑ See Martin Düspohl: Myth Kreuzberg - a historical foray. ( Memento from May 9, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
  8. ↑ Cf. Günter Bruno Fuchs: zinc. Berlin . 1959-1962. Start-up. Fox . Fast . Ed .: Künstlerhaus Bethanien in cooperation with the Senator for Cultural Affairs and the Kreuzberg Art Office. Berlin, October / November 1979; Goethe-Institut Amsterdam, 1980, p. 6.
  9. ↑ Gallery 'Zinke' in the backyard - 1961. Ullstein Bild / gettyimages
  10. ↑ Cf. Lothar Klünner: Where the beams bent. In: Günter Bruno Fuchs: zinc. Berlin . 1959-1962. Start-up. Fox . Fast . Ed .: Künstlerhaus Bethanien in cooperation with the Senator for Cultural Affairs and the Kreuzberg Art Office. Berlin, October / November 1979; Goethe-Institut Amsterdam, 1980, p. 20.
  11. ↑ Cf. Robert Wolfgang Schnell: Die "zinke". In: Günter Bruno Fuchs: zinc. Berlin . 1959-1962. Start-up. Fox . Fast . Ed .: Künstlerhaus Bethanien in cooperation with the Senator for Cultural Affairs and the Kreuzberg Art Office. Berlin, October / November 1979; Goethe-Institut Amsterdam, 1980, p. 11.
  12. ↑ Robert Wolfgang Schnell: The «zinc». In: Günter Bruno Fuchs: zinc. Berlin . 1959-1962. Start-up. Fox . Fast . Ed .: Künstlerhaus Bethanien in cooperation with the Senator for Cultural Affairs and the Kreuzberg Art Office. Berlin, October / November 1979; Goethe-Institut Amsterdam, 1980, pp. 12, 13.
  13. ↑ Mühlenhaupt's Berliners interested in pictures and flea markets and a poster pointing to the 'Zinke' gallery in the backyard at Oranienstrasse 27 in Berlin - Kreuzberg - 1961
  14. ↑ Eberhard Roters. In: Günter Bruno Fuchs: zinc. Berlin . 1959-1962. Start-up. Fox . Fast . Ed .: Künstlerhaus Bethanien in cooperation with the Senator for Cultural Affairs and the Kreuzberg Art Office. Berlin, October / November 1979; Goethe-Institut Amsterdam, 1980, p. 8.
  15. ↑ See Eberhard Roters. In: Günter Bruno Fuchs: zinc. Berlin . 1959-1962. Start-up. Fox . Fast . Ed .: Künstlerhaus Bethanien in cooperation with the Senator for Cultural Affairs and the Kreuzberg Art Office. Berlin, October / November 1979; Goethe-Institut Amsterdam, 1980, p. 8.
  16. ↑ See "Galerie" zinke "- 1959 - 1962, Kreuzberg:" Modern in a human way "
  17. ↑ Robert Wolfgang Schnell: The «zinc». In: Günter Bruno Fuchs: zinc. Berlin . 1959-1962. Start-up. Fox . Fast . Ed .: Künstlerhaus Bethanien in cooperation with the Senator for Cultural Affairs and the Kreuzberg Art Office. Berlin, October / November 1979; Goethe-Institut Amsterdam, 1980, p. 15.
  18. ↑ Robert Wolfgang Schnell: The zinc. In: Günter Bruno Fuchs: zinc. Berlin . 1959-1962. Start-up. Fox . Fast . Ed .: Künstlerhaus Bethanien in cooperation with the Senator for Cultural Affairs and the Kreuzberg Art Office. Berlin, October / November 1979; Goethe-Institut Amsterdam, 1980, p. 15.
  19. ↑ Cf. Lothar Klünner: Where the beams bent. In: Günter Bruno Fuchs: zinc. Berlin . 1959-1962. Start-up. Fox . Fast . Ed .: Künstlerhaus Bethanien in cooperation with the Senator for Cultural Affairs and the Kreuzberg Art Office. Berlin, October / November 1979; Goethe-Institut Amsterdam, 1980, p. 20.
  20. ↑ Lothar Klünner: Where the beams bent. In: Günter Bruno Fuchs: zinc. Berlin . 1959-1962. Start-up. Fox . Fast . Ed .: Künstlerhaus Bethanien in cooperation with the Senator for Cultural Affairs and the Kreuzberg Art Office. Berlin, October / November 1979; Goethe-Institut Amsterdam, 1980, p. 20.
  21. ↑ Cf. Lothar Klünner: Where the beams bent. In: Günter Bruno Fuchs: zinc. Berlin . 1959-1962. Start-up. Fox . Fast . Ed .: Künstlerhaus Bethanien in cooperation with the Senator for Cultural Affairs and the Kreuzberg Art Office. Berlin, October / November 1979; Goethe-Institut Amsterdam, 1980, p. 23.
  22. ↑ Cf. Lothar Klünner: Where the beams bent. In: Günter Bruno Fuchs: zinc. Berlin . 1959-1962. Start-up. Fox . Fast . Ed .: Künstlerhaus Bethanien in cooperation with the Senator for Cultural Affairs and the Kreuzberg Art Office. Berlin, October / November 1979; Goethe-Institut Amsterdam, 1980, p. 20.
  23. ↑ See interview with Natias Neutert by Anja Juhre-Wright in the Frankfurter Rundschau on July 7, 2006.