Georg Kolbe’s dancer fountain, which has stood in the garden of the Georg Kolbe Museum in Berlin since 1979, now belongs to a private collection in the USA.
This was won at the auction with a total of six bidders, a spokeswoman for the Berlin auction house Grisebach told the German Press Agency. The hammer fell at four million euros. “We don’t know what will happen to the well,” said the spokeswoman.
The bronze and travertine fountain from 1922 was looted by the Nazis. The museum in Berlin’s Westend recently returned the work to the heirs of the original owner’s family after complicated disputes.
On Thursday evening, the fountain was auctioned off as the highlight of the summer auction at Grisebach – well above the estimated price of 1 million to 1.5 million euros.
The former owner did not survive the concentration camp
Georg Kolbe made the fountain in 1922 for the Berlin villa of the Jewish collector and director of Victoria Insurance Heinrich Stahl, in whose garden it was installed. During National Socialism, Stahl had to sell the house and well below its value. Stahl was murdered in a concentration camp; his wife was able to escape to the USA. The fountain was considered lost for many decades.
In the 1970s, the Kolbe Museum reunited the lower parts of the fountain that remained in Berlin with the crowning dancer figure, which had come to Spain with the villa’s later buyer.
In 2001, the grandson Werner Stahl declared that he would give up the fountain with the dancer – although this was not done in the name of the entire family, as it later turned out. The Georg Kolbe Museum therefore offered to return the work in full to the community of heirs. The museum was unable to raise the necessary funds for a purchase. The work thus went onto the market.