Picture Cellar

In the midst of the political “Tauwetter-Periode” (aka the “Khrushchev thaw”), in 1957 and 1958, master students at the German Akademie der Künste celebrated carnival in the building’s coal cellar. The murals by Manfred Böttcher, Harald Metzkes, Ernst Schroeder and Horst Zickelbein are a unique testimony to non-official art in the German Democratic Republic and part of the eventful history of the institution and the structure. Apart from the exhibition halls, the murals are the only original remnants of the historic Akademie building on Pariser Platz.

During the turbulent period of the 1950s and 1960s, heated debates arose over the generation of master students, including Manfred Böttcher, Wieland Förster, Dieter Goltzsche, Harald Metzkes, Ernst Schroeder, Werner Stötzer and Horst Zickelbein. It was a cultural-political campaign against the members of the Akademie in the GDR.

Interview films with Jürgen Böttcher, Dieter Goltzsche, Harald Metzkes, Werner Stötzer, and others, as well as insights into the work of the restorers, are shown in the cellar space. The media station provides audio documentation of the debates of the time in the form of interviews with contemporary witnesses, including Fritz Cremer, Paul Dessau, Helene Weigel, and Arnold Zweig.

The Picture Cellar can be visited every Wednesday as part of a guided tour; advance booking is required.