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A fascist Museum for Hamburg? |
Press release (English)
Peter Tamm loves the navy. Since the age of six, he
has collected anything and everything he associates
with seafaring: uniforms, weapons, warship models and
paintings etc. Today, his huge collection is crammed
into his private mansion and can be visited by
appointment. The unsuspecting visitor is struck by the
preponderant amount of militaristic items and nazi
memoribilia whose presentation lacks any critical
distance. The informed observer, though, is likely not
to be surprised because Tamm has always espoused a
rightist world-view: for years he was head of
Germany's conservative Springer Press, and after being
dismissed in 1991, he started buying up publishing
houses which focus on military topics and feature the
misanthropic works of known neo-nazis.
Now pushing old age, Peter Tamm wants to turn his
lifetime-collection into a museum, the so-called
International Maritime Museum (which was supposed to
be named after him, this idea being dropped for fear
of protest). To help Tamm realize his dream, Hamburg's
conservative-dominated parliament granted him 30
million Euros (in 2004) and an additional 99 years
rent-free use of the famous Kaispeicher B, a former
warehouse, prominently located in the "HafenCity"
harbor-development area.
Since Tamm could not expect his personal project to be
subsidized, he signed his collection over to the
expediently-created "Peter Tamm Sen. Stiftung"
foundation, making sure that there would be no other
decision-maker besides himself. The city of Hamburg,
although generously subsidizing his project, does not
have any say in the museum's contents, concept, or
development. Critics fear that the museum will neither
be capable of nor inclined to giving a comprehensive
and critical view of seafaring history; that it will
instead glorify war and hegemony, and will attract
rightists and neo-nazis.
Further, critics are struck by the unusual
authorization procedure which harks to the days of the
good-old-boys network: Tamm donates his collection to
his own foundation, i.e. to himself. In a significant
departure from usual procedure, he does not have to
turn in a concept and finance plan, he does not even
have a website or a catalogue which documents his
collection. Two weeks after his grant was approved,
the first 15 million Euros were transferred to his
account; meanwhile, other applicants have to wait for
months, sometimes years, before receiving payment of
their grants.
Alarmed by this, a group of artists has united under
the banner "Künstler informieren Politiker" (Artists
informing politicians). Daily updates are published
on the website www.tamm-tamm.info. They have set out
to inform politicians and the public on the irritating
proceedings and on the negative consequences of an
International Maritime Museum under the guidance of
Peter Tamm and/or his institute/foundation. The
artists allege that the members of parliament were not
informed about 1) the project (since no information
was/is available) and 2) Tamm's rightist engagement.
Therefore, each participant has become a "godparent"
to one member of parliament in order to provide
him/her with further information and to discuss 1) the
museum and its consequences, 2) feasible prevention
measures, and 3) the issue of increasing "sponsorship"
of elites while support for new and critical art gets
scaled back.
After having gained nationwide attention, the artists
are now turning to international media outlets. Their
goal is to stop Hamburg from investing public money in
a fascist-leaning museum, especially against the
backdrop of closings for libraries and women's
shelters, cutbacks for local artist funding, etc.
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