2009 - Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden

There were standing ovations at the official
ceremony held in the Semperoper on 15 th
February 2009 to mark the retirement of
Prof. Dr. Harald Marx. The keynote speech was
delivered by Prof. Dr. Pierre Rosenberg, Présidentdirecteur
honoraire du musée du Louvre.
tWO DI RECtORS SAY GOODBYE –
CHANGE OF LEADERSH I P I N tH E
GEMÄLDEGALERI E ALtE MEIStER AN D
tH E KU PFERStICH-KABINEtt
Canaletto’s faithful guardian – Harald Marx, Director
of the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, retires after 43 years
Article by Ingeborg Ruthe, published on 13 th February 2009
in the Berliner Zeitung (slightly abridged):
He was modest. None other than the Director of Dresden’s
Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, the custodian of Raphael’s
“Sistine Madonna”, Rubens’ “Drunken Bacchus”, Rembrandt’s
“Ganymede”, Giorgione’s “Sleeping Venus” and
the views of Dresden by Bernardo Bellotto, aka Canaletto
– in short, this man holding one of the most illustrious
museum posts in Europe – said, “My career is not an exemplary
one. I worked in one and the same institution for
43 years. Nowadays, art historians are global players. It is
extremely old-fashioned to work in the way I have done.”
Harald Marx, a native of Berlin, graduated from the Humboldt
University there before going to Dresden in 1966. He
had applied to the Kupferstich-Kabinett – and was given
a position in the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, among all
the paintings which, after having been taken to Russia as
trophies in 1945, had been returned as a peace offering in
1958. Marx became an assistant and later a curator; after
the peaceful revolution in the GDR he became the museum’s
Director. He was a person to whom domination was
completely alien, instead attaching utmost importance to
Harald Marx with the commemorative publication
produced in his honour entitled “Man könnt vom
Paradies nicht angenehmer träumen”, edited by
Andreas Henning, Uta Neidhardt and Martin Roth
Harald Marx (right) with Prime Minister
of Saxony Stanislaw Tillich (left) and
Director-General of the SKD Martin Roth
viewing the “Ideals” exhibition
personal responsibility and trust. Is he replaceable or not?
Marx – who is not related to the Trier-born author of ‘Das
Kapital’ and the Communist Manifesto – put down roots
in the Zwinger, and in this “divine place” he never felt he
had missed anything by not moving elsewhere. He was
obsessively loyal to the Old Masters in the famous Dresden
Gemäldegalerie, which ranks equally with the St. Petersburg
Hermitage among European art collections.
In mid-February 2009 a ceremonial event was held in
Dresden to mark the retirement of this museum figure
who had served the Old Masters for so long. He was esteemed
by specialists from St. Petersburg and Beijing, from
New York, Paris and London. Directors of major museums
respect him and his students revere him. His term of office
was extended by two years not because he clung to it but
because everyone wanted it that way: his colleagues and
politicians at both federal state and city level. Now he has
irrevocably gone into retirement. And in the Zwinger the
Marxian era came to an end “with very mixed feelings”, as
he himself admits. But when his colleagues said that they
could not imagine a time without him, he answered that
that was “very honourable, but completely unnecessary”.
“There are extremely gifted, inspired young art historians
who can succeed me. I am replaceable.” But even an excellent
collection such as the picture gallery of the Saxon Sun
King August the Strong and his Wettin successors cannot
look after itself. Such a treasure is like an organism. If it is
not guarded and cultivated, it suffers damage and its
beauty fades. Everyone in Dresden agrees that under Marx
the collection flourished.
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