BERLIN — The arts and culture media were abuzz this week with the announcement on Tuesday that the Berlin leg of the BMW Guggenheim Lab had been cancelled due to threats by leftist groups. The project, a roving think tank about urban issues sponsored by the car company and the famous museum, recently appeared on the Lower East Side in New York without incident, but in Berlin had stirred controversy for its proposal to set up shop in Kreuzberg, a traditionally left-wing sector of the city. Though initial reports implied that the threats issued from radicals angry over gentrification, the real story appears to be significantly more complicated, motivated more by historical grievances targeting the family behind BMW over allegations that stretch back to the Second World War. ARTINFO Germany rounded up the latest information on the story.
The Threats
Originally, reports from the German Press Agency and Bloomberg stated that direct threats had been made to the Lab in response to its gentrifying effect on the Kreuzberg neighborhood. However, according to sources, the reason for withdrawing from Kreuzberg (and the initial cancellation of the event) were spurred not by direct threats, but by reports from the Landeskriminalamt Staatsschutz (LKA), Berlin’s highest police office for interior security matters.
The LKA told the Guggenheim and the Lab’s Berlin organizers that verifiable threats of vandalism had been made on various radical militant groups’ websites. To be clear, the threats were not violent in and of themselves. They consisted mostly of plans to disrupt construction of the Lab on Kreuzberg’s Cuvrystrasse — a still less-than-gentrified strip of the neighborhood’s eastern portion. However, the LKA surmised that such vandalizing activities would likely turn violent because of the construction’s coincidence with May 1, Germany’s Labor Day. May 1 is known for heavy rioting and clashes between leftist groups, Neo-Nazi factions, and the police, and sees a huge percentage of German law enforcement brought to the capital. Violent protest — rocks and small bludgeoning instruments are the weapons of choice — is most heavily focused in Kreuzberg, with marches passing not far from Cuvrystrasse, where the lab was to be located.
The Rationale
Contrary to the original reports, claiming that the threats were due to a gentrifying impulse perceived by the Lab’s move to the neighborhood — perhaps because of the news’ timing just as the legendary Tacheles art center squat was being evicted in Mitte — their basis was much more deeply rooted. The LKA surmised that actions were most heavily attributable to the Guggenheim’s partnership with BMW, and the Munich-based car manufacturer’s continued majority ownership by Germany’s Quandt family. The groups strongly objected to Kreuzberg’s use as a place to continue to whitewash the family’s association with forced labor during World War II. The Quandts admitted last September to using more than 50,000 slave laborers culled from concentration camps during the war, in reparation for which they’ve pledged $7 million to memorialize the workers.
Is it Actually Canceled?
For now, the answer to this question is unclear. All that is clear is that the Lab will absolutely not be taking place in Kreuzberg. On Thursday, Berlin’s mayor, Klaus Wowereit, pledged the Berlin police force’s full support of the Lab, in what has been seen as a politically motivated move to calm tensions between the left and right that have erupted in response to the cancellation. However, people connected with the Lab that ARTINFO Germany spoke to suggested that the strategy of amping up policing around the event might prove unhelpful to the organizer's aims, for three interconnected reasons: (1) they don't want to turn the Lab into a political battle ground between the right and left, (2) they don't wish any escalation of conflict or harm to any demonstrators by the police, and (3) these kinds of social debates about urban space are supposedly what the mobile think tank is designed to provoke, so to squash them by force would completely undermine its credibility.
Still, organizers remain hopeful. Upon the Kreuzberg cancellation they were flooded with offers from around Berlin as well as in other German cities to host the lab. They remain committed to holding the event in the German capital, but because of the subsequent stop in Mumbai, scheduling will be tricky. Rumors abound of where the museum will turn. The Station warehouse complex, where Art Berlin Contemporary has been held out as being one possibility, as well as the disused part of Templehof airport. Prenzlauerberg, where the Lab was initially set to take place, is also still on the table. Updates are expected in the middle of next week, when it’s likely that a new location will be announced.