Gero von Boehm: Mr Schultz, allow me to put forward a hypothesis. If the institution of the auction house didn’t exist, I believe it would have to be invented for Bernd Schultz. On one hand, it offers the chance to engage intimately with art. On the other, it provides the perfect opportunity for a Bremen-born merchant to extract money from the pockets of the wealthy. It’s tailor-made for you, isn’t it? Could you ever imagine doing anything else?

Bernd Schultz: I actually had very different career intentions initially. I was hoping to become a private banker. I was lucky enough to experience the wonderful and very well-educated Jewish private banking community. They were interested in art, whether it was music, literature or paintings. Heinrich Grünewald from Poole near Bournemouth once told me a Jewish banker story. An art dealer came to him for advice: “I’d like to buy a painting, a significant Leistikow. But I only have half the money. Can you help me?” He asked, “What’s the price?” “Forty thousand.” “So you want me to lend you twenty thousand?” “Yes.” “Let me tell you something. First, forty thousand is too much. The maximum you should pay is thirty thousand, because the most you’ll get if you sell the painting is forty-five to fifty thousand. If you manage to do that, I’ll be happy to take a half share in the business.” That’s what the bankers of the time were like: well-informed risk takers. Heart-warming! Does that even exist anymore?

GvB: So their spirit and their all-round education are what appealed to you, not just the money associated with the job.

BS: Yes, money is something you have to use creatively. Money in itself is abstract. You can’t drink it, you can’t eat it. You have to do something with it, ideally something practical, of course. I would have enjoyed being a banker. When I left school, at my father’s insistence, I did a two-year apprenticeship at the Lampe Bank in Berlin at its owner Rudolf August Oetker’s recommendation. Rudolf August Oetker had many entrepreneurial talents. He was a passionate private banker with a particular fondness for Berlin, and also an important art collector. I learned a great deal from his wisdom, his ethics, his experience, his understanding of human nature and his remarkable attention to detail – which never failed to surprise us – during the meetings he occasionally allowed me to attend. I observed on those occasions how people were shaped by the many demands of their profession. And then, of course, everything turned out quite differently. Despite the Hanseatic saying that still applies in Bremen today, “he’s no good at business so let him study,” and my father’s attempts to dissuade me, I decided to read business administration and German studies at the Free University of Berlin. Soon after that I enrolled on an art history course, also in Berlin. The city was a stroke of luck for my personal development. Without Berlin, and without the remarkable individuals I met there – many of whom became my teachers and mentors – I would not be the person I am today.

GvB: When and how did you first come into contact with art?

BS: When I was at school. We had an exceptional history and German teacher at Solling boarding school called Helmut Goll. That’s where I learnt what art is and how to “read” it. He lit that first spark of interest in me. My mother also had two reproductions, a dancer by Degas and “Bal du Moulin de la Galette” by Renoir, as well as an illustrated book about the French Impressionists.

GvB: At what age could you tell the difference between a Manet and a Monet?

BS: Much later, but let me come back to your previous question. Because my father refused to fund my studies as a matter of principle, I had to figure out how to support myself. That’s how I ended up as a student trainee with the charismatic antiquarian bookseller and art dealer Hans Pels-Leusden. He pursued me persistently, saying, “I need someone like you.” After thinking it over for a long time, I finally said yes. “You can have that,” he said. “And how much do you expect to earn?” “I need enough to cover my studies and my living costs,” I replied, “So I’d like to earn the same working part-time for you as I did working full-time at the bank, where I was employed as a clerk.” At the time, in 1965, that amounted to 580 deutschmarks. He was taken aback. “You can’t be serious,” he said. But in the end, he agreed. After only a few months, I realised that I had significantly increased the company’s turnover. After a year, I said, “I’ve been with you for twelve months now, the business has almost doubled its turnover, so I think my salary should double as well.” And that became the pattern, year after year. That was my first real taste of success, and I liked working with art and with people.

GvB: Let’s backtrack a little. When you arrived in Berlin in 1963, what was the art scene like, assuming there even was one? What kind of works were being shown at the time?

BS: I was initially much more interested in the antiquarian bookshop scene. My direct involvement with fine art really only began in 1965. That was when Hans Pels-Leusden, who from then on became my employer and mentor, opened his gallery alongside his bookshop and antiquarian business. I had just completed my apprenticeship, and the gallery opened with a major Kollwitz exhibition, which I had helped him to organise. He was an exceptional connoisseur of art but entirely lacking in technical and organisational skills. I took care of all the framing, hanging and installation work – mostly at night. That’s how I found my way into art. Pels-Leusden practically infected me with his stormy enthusiasm. He was a master seducer.

GvB: What kind of art were you both dealing in?

BS: Works by Max Beckmann, Kirchner, Macke, Grosz and so on. In those days, they cost next to nothing, which certainly can’t be said today. The price for a Nolde watercolour was 2,000 deutschmarks.

GvB: Did you buy anything?

BS: A small graphic by Corinth showing cows at a trough. I thought it was portrayed with great sensitivity, because having grown up in a village near Bremen, it captured the world I knew every day, translated into art. I bought the lithograph for 80 deutschmarks, which was a lot of money for me at the time. I paid it off in instalments – ten deutschmarks at a time – and that was how it all began. That’s always how it begins — when you see something that touches your emotions and you just have to own it.

GvB: And then, nearly thirty years later, you took that impulse in a completely different direction by setting up an art fair.

BS: By 1982 people were wondering what role Berlin would play in light of the competition from Munich and the Rhineland – Cologne and Düsseldorf – after its heyday in the 1920s. That was also when Richard von Weizsäcker became mayor of Berlin.

GvB: Suddenly, a light went on. People felt that the city was once again being represented as it truly deserved. Up until then, Berlin had been a desolate place. There were still fascinating intellectuals around, but the city lacked a genuinely exciting art scene.

BS: That's exactly how it was. I was looking for a sounding board for Weizsäcker’s vision and ideas for the city. I got together with several colleagues and convinced them that what we’d done so far wasn’t enough to put Berlin back in the limelight. That’s when I came up with the idea of the ORANGERIE – an art trade exhibition in the eponymous wing of Charlottenburg Palace. The location’s appeal and the concept itself, which was – and still is – unique, played a big role in shaping it.

GvB: What was new about it?

BS: Every art dealer was welcome to exhibit, but not with their usual, often mediocre stock. Instead, each were requested to contribute one, two or three works of exceptional quality. We also wanted to avoid the dealers standing by their objects, trying to sell them. The idea was to create a large exhibition where each work spoke for itself through its presence – a kind of temporary museum show, featuring pieces spanning more than 2,000 years.

GvB: And the same was true when you decided to set up an auction house with others. You had realised that Berlin could definitely draw people in – if the right products were being offered. You wanted to take the idea of the ORANGERIE fair, which had been a hit from day one, and turn it into something permanent …

BS: Yes, that's what I wanted. The idea for the auction house began with an encounter I had at the Cologne art fair, where our Pels-Leusden Gallery exhibited annually, alternating with the city of Düsseldorf. Just before the fair Hans Pels-Leusden had managed to acquire one of Emil Nolde’s important “Unpainted Paintings” at the Hauswedell & Nolte auction in Hamburg, winning an open bidding war against a collector I’d never met before. A few weeks later, that same bidder visited our stand. He stared at the painting for a while, then asked me, “How much is it going to cost?” Since we had paid over 50,000 deutschmarks for it about six weeks earlier – fully aware that we were entering a new price bracket for rare works from this period – the 68,000 we were asking at the fair seemed reasonable. I was all the more surprised when the collector replied, “If I’d offered 50,000 for it in Hamburg, it would be mine now.” It was at that moment I realised our traditional business model could no longer work.

GvB: ... because the collectors themselves were already present at the auctions as competitors?

BS: Exactly – that was a dramatically new development. To sell works bought at auction, we had to outbid collectors who were counter-bidders and then attempt to sell the pieces to them with a mark-up. I realised at the time that there was a new transparency, and it has continued to increase ever since. That was the moment I decided to leave the traditional art trade and set up my own auction house – a decision that naturally brought considerable conflict from two sides. On one hand, there was the art trade, whose pricing was becoming increasingly transparent; on the other, the auctioneers, who were determined to protect their previously exclusive position. The greatest resistance came in the form of injunctions and the like from former colleagues. This led to my provocative statement, “Auctions are the modern form of the art trade.” We needed the right venue for our auction house, and in 1982 we came across Villa Grisebach, which was on the market. What followed was something of an odyssey, but in the end, thanks to the unexpected – and truly unique – support of Deutsche Bank, we were able to purchase it. (Alfred Herrhausen once said during a visit: “My dear Mr Schultz, you may not realise it, but the acquisition of Villa Grisebach – badly damaged by the war – along with the neighbouring house, is our bank’s largest patronage commitment since 1945. And it is also the most successful.”)
With that support, we launched the auction house together with four partners. Fortunately our first auctions were not only well received by the press but also profitable.

GvB: What went under the hammer? And what was the highest-priced lot?

BS: A floral still life by Lovis Corinth – estimated at 350,000, it sold for 437,000 including premium.

GvB: They say the auction business really thrives on the big three Ds: divorce, debt, and death. Is that why having a strong network is so important for an auction house owner? You’ve built yours up over decades. Do you follow the society pages and obituaries in the tabloids? Or perhaps you don’t need to, because you usually know everything before it even hits the papers?

BS: My iPhone contains the names of more than 9,000 people, all of whom I know personally. There are over 35,000 addresses in the Grisebach card index today. I communicate directly and personally. I only read magazines at the dentist. Our clients aren’t the people who appear in those pages; they don’t own the big collections. Our work is discreet and personal, unlike the Americans, who put everything on show with great fanfare. In Germany, everything is quieter, often even kept out of sight.

GvB: Is that perhaps part of the appeal for you – although you still want to know who owns what and what might come up for auction. How did you develop your network – or is that a secret?

BS: When you have 15,000 or 20,000 visitors at your exhibition stand, you meet a lot of collectors. One of them, Mr G., a man from Baden-Württemberg unknown to me until then, owned a small castle near Lausanne. He fell in love with a Wannsee garden painting by Max Liebermann at the Munich art and antiques fair. “I’ve run out of space, but I’d really like to own this painting,” he told me. I asked, “May I pay you a visit?” He invited me, and I spent two days hanging his entire collection in the castle with him. In the end, we also found the perfect place for the Liebermann painting. Later he wrote to me: “Mr Schultz, you’ve left a wonderful mark on my house.”

GvB: So it’s really about the personal touch, about building relationships. A good auction house doesn’t just sell; it offers advice and works to maintain long-term relationships with its clients.

BS: Yes, that's right. My son Daniel, being from a completely different generation, certainly approaches things differently. But then again, many things are just different today than they were back then.

GvB: What stands out as the biggest difference, so to speak? What has fundamentally changed at Grisebach over the past 40 years?

BS: Unfortunately, people today no longer have the education and knowledge that used to be taken for granted. When it came to Old Master prints, collectors would only buy a Rembrandt if they could judge for themselves the difference in quality between one print and another. Today, many of them barely know who Dürer was. All-round education has declined dramatically. That’s also why works by a few of these artists are so extraordinarily expensive. People may perhaps still know Picasso and Matisse, but they’re certainly familiar with Andy Warhol, Jeff Koons, Joseph Beuys, Gerhard Richter and Banksy. Those artists are the new Dürers. Beyond that, though, the market is relatively quiet. That’s why they have become price icons. People walk into an apartment and say, “He has Lichtenstein, he has Rauschenberg.” A very wealthy woman once said to me, reprovingly: “Bernd, we’re not interested in what you have there. We only buy Bolke now.” She’s the modern-day Frau Stöhr in Thomas Mann’s book, “The Magic Mountain”, and she was, of course, referring to Sigmar Polke. One thing that always seems to work these days is eroticism.

GvB: Speaking of eroticism: Isn't there something erotic, almost spiritual, about an auction like this? Isn't that why it attracts people?

BS: That's exactly how it is. Both the auction public and the auctioneer feel it. This is the modern form of the art trade. We are at the very source of the auction business. In the past, auctions were attended almost exclusively by expert dealers – specialists in their field who would later sell the works on. As I’ve mentioned, we had to be at the source ourselves, bypassing the art trade and dealing directly with private individuals, the end consumers.

GvB ...to be a significant auction house in your own right, having certain exclusive offers and circumventing the normal trade. Where does Grisebach stand today, after 40 years?

BS: Even very early on, we managed to be mentioned in the same breath – at a respectful distance – as the major international auction houses in London and New York. Perhaps we were a bit too cautious when it came to contemporary art later on. But even after 40 years, we are still on the road to success. Just look at our auction last November. Some outstanding prices were achieved: a small self-portrait by Paula Modersohn-Becker from the Bauer Collection, estimated at 250,000, sold for over a million — as did a large nail painting by Günther Uecker. A sculpture by Georg Kolbe, also valued at 250,000, found a new owner at 1.6 million. Our sellers were extremely satisfied!

GvB: Who are the buyers – the collectors still searching for works like this and willing to pay such high prices?

BS: Interestingly, we also sold over 50 percent to Berlin this time. People who own a property overlooking Lake Wannsee aren’t exactly short of money. You just have to know how to engage and motivate them.

GvB: You are a passionate collector yourself. How would you describe the spirit of your own collection?

BS: I have an immense longing for beauty and harmony – they are life necessities. That goes for art in particular. I would find it difficult to live without art. When I walk into Villa Grisebach, my spirits are lifted. Of course, there’s also the joy of ownership, if you like, a constant source of inspiration. Art has always inspired me – “Oil for the lamp of life,” as Goethe put it – and it’s a wonderful feeling to have that inspiration permanently close by, simply through owning the works. It’s hard to put into words.

GvB: I feel the same when I think of my paintings. But something interesting happens: even if you’ve owned a work for a long time, you are always able to discover something new in it. Your mood changes, your perception shifts, and the inspiration takes on a completely different form – even from the same painting you’ve known forever. For that reason alone, collecting is worthwhile.

BS: Collecting is a primal instinct. When I was a little kid, I collected those cigarette cards people used to play poker with. Then came the stamp collection, which I later swapped for a pair of football boots.

GvB: And then you disposed of most of your collection to help lay the foundations for your ambitious idea of an exile museum in Berlin – not for a pair of football boots, but for more than six million.

BS: The most important thing for me was that I wanted to open a new chapter in my life – dedicated to something that has occupied me for almost my entire life, especially since I became an art dealer, so for over 60 years. At the same time, I wanted to pass something on. One evening, my wife and I decided to put part of my collection up for auction as seed money. The start-up costs had to be raised. We couldn’t – and didn’t want to – ask well-meaning patrons for every little thing. Giving up part of your collection feels a bit like the children leaving home. But don’t worry: every work remains firmly anchored in my heart. On top of that, I now have three beautiful catalogues and I’ve even had high-quality reproductions made of the pieces that were particularly close to my heart.

GvB: As the “ruling citizen of Berlin,” as you were once called, you have long been a living legend. You’ve had a tremendous impact on this city. The Exile Museum is just the most recent example. Without you, the James Simon Gallery on Museum Island, designed by David Chipperfield, probably wouldn’t exist …

BS: It’s just one aspect of being a responsible citizen – working for the community and providing new ideas. I have a great sounding board for our story that is also deeply connected to my family’s fate and my encounters with many remarkable Jewish people. During my travels to Paris and London, and especially to New York, I met numerous German exiles, many of them from Berlin. Those encounters were profoundly moving. I wish we had managed to carry even a fraction of the outstanding wit and creativity of these exiled individuals into our own time. For me, exile is an essential part of Germany’s collective memory.