Hugo von Tschudi. Man with mask.

Illustrated reading on the tense relationship between art and politics around 1900

Hugo von Tschudi, Porträt, 1902 © C.J. van Dühren, Berlin; abgedruckt in Schwedeler-Meyer, Ernst Dr. (Hrsg.): Gesammelte Schriften zur neueren Kunst, 1912

Max Liebermann and Hugo von Tschudi had a lot in common - their international thinking, their central position in the art world around 1900 and their tireless advocacy of modern trends - often against the resistance of political and institutional power.

In 2026, we celebrate Hugo von Tschudi's 175th birthday. Born in Vienna in 1851 and died in Stuttgart in 1911, von Tschudi was director of the National Gallery in Berlin and later headed the Royal Bavarian State Galleries in Munich. As a great supporter of an internationally oriented modernism, he promoted artists such as Édouard Manet, Auguste Rodin, Vincent van Gogh and Käthe Kollwitz. This led to tensions with the Prussian court and with Kaiser Wilhelm II, whose ideas of "German art" he did not subscribe to.

The reading portrays Tschudi as a fascinating personality caught between his official responsibilities and his uncompromising advocacy of artistic freedom. It is based on letters to family members, excerpts from his exchanges with Cosima Wagner and his own art-political texts. They are supplemented by the voices of contemporaries such as Alfred Lichtwark, Wilhelm von Bode and Julius Meier-Graefe.

Image projections of works by Rembrandt, Francisco de Goya, Caspar David Friedrich, Édouard Manet, Paul Cézanne, Max Liebermann and Vincent van Gogh, among others, create a multi-layered picture of the art-political debates around 1900.

The event accompanies the exhibition "Everything for Art! Max Liebermann between Strategy and Cultural Politics" at the Liebermann Villa on Wannsee.

Letter transcriptions, selection of text, images and music by Christoph Steiner, Managing Director of the Gebert Foundation for Culture and the ALTEFABRIK Cultural Center

Speakers:

Helmut Vogel has lived in Zurich since 1983, the reason being an engagement at the Theater am Neumarkt under the direction of Peter Schweiger. Since the 1990s, he has worked as a freelance actor with forays into directing, including mostly musical productions, primarily in German-speaking Switzerland and Austria

Laura Lienhardstudied German philology and cultural anthropology at the University of Basel and theater at the École Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq in Paris. She works as an actress, performer and speaker in German, Italian and French.

Start: 19.00 hrsAdmission: 18.15 hrsTranslated with DeepL

Price: €10.00

Next date:

• Date Thursday, 21/May/2026 19:00
• Venue Liebermann-Villa am Wannsee
• Address Colomierstraße 3, 14109 Berlin-Zehlendorf