Weapons and Art

For Emil Bührle, collecting art is a personal passion. But it is also a way for him, as a native German, to gain admission to Zurich’s social and cultural upper class, where pro-German sentiment is strong at the start of the 1940s. He thus joins the Zürcher Kunstgesellschaft, the patron association of the Kunsthaus Zürich.

By 1927, Emil Bührle is already a member of the Zürcher Kunstgesellschaft. Between 1936 and 1940, he has already bought the first 50 works of paintings by famous artists for his own collection, for which he spent 1.4 million francs. In 1940 he is invited by Franz Meyer-Stünzi, banker, chairman of the Zürcher Kunstgesellschaft, and his neighbour on Zollikerstrasse, to join the collection committee, which is responsible for acquisitions of the Kunsthaus. The pair work to transform the Kunsthaus into a museum of national importance.

The two men have more in common than just their interest in art: Bank Leu, in which Meyer-Stünzi is a senior figure, has maintained a business relationship with Bührle’s Werkzeugmaschinenfabrik Oerlikon (Machine Tool Factory Oerlikon, WO) since the 1920s. Bührle, for his part, remains loyal to Meyer-Stünzi in 1946, when the latter comes under fire in the ‘Petition of the Two Hundred’ scandal. Submitted to the Federal Council in 1940 by right-wing academics, politicians and businessmen, it calls for a ban on press reporting that is critical of Germany. This would have been tantamount to censorship and an anti-democratic accommodation of the Nazi state. The Federal Council rejects the petition, and it is not made public until 1946, when the left-wing press puts them under pressure. Bührle himself did not sign it.

In 1944, Bührle is appointed to the board of the Zürcher Kunstgesellschaft, and in 1953 he becomes its vice-chairman and also chairman of the collection committee. The board is dominated by art lovers from Zurich’s business and financial elite, along with representatives of the authorities and a small number of artists. On several occasions, Bührle enables acquisitions by advancing the purchase price.

He also frequently lends works from his own collection to exhibitions. In the 1943 presentation at the Kunsthaus entitled Foreign Art in Zurich, for example, almost a sixth of the 480 works on display are owned by Bührle. When the new director of the Kunsthaus, René Wehrli, stages an exhibition of European art in 1950, Bührle supplies works from his now enlarged collection, including Paul Cézanne’s The Boy in the Red Waistcoat.

During the Second World War, Bührle is also actively involved with the theatre, classical music, literature and the promotion of science. He additionally funds the construction of the ‘Christuskirche’ church in Zurich Oerlikon. His general aim is to further the consolidation of the conservative culture in Switzerland, but in part he is also influenced by tax considerations. In 1942, for example, he wants to fund a new building for the Schauspielhaus and exerts pressure on the city administration to let him deduct his payment from the war profits tax as a donation. However, he does not succeed. Bührle’s support is not always met with the same enthusiasm as it is at the Kunsthaus. Some members of the Swiss Writers’ Association object to a proposal to set up a support fund in his name. In response, Bührle establishes the Emil Bührle Foundation for Swiss Literature in 1943 and the Goethe Foundation for Art and Science, which is dominated by right-wing intellectuals, in 1944.

The Kunsthaus was first established on Heimplatz in 1910 and has been expanded on a number of occasions since, the first being by Kunsthaus architect Karl Moser in 1925. In the 1930s, the Zürcher Kunstgesellschaft begins considering a new extension. In 1938, its director, Wilhelm Wartmann, draws up the construction programme for an ideas competition. But planning does not really get underway until 1941, when Bührle transfers 2 million francs to the construction fund. This compares with the 50 million francs that Bührle declares as personal income in the same year.

The architecture competition is extended because of the war. It is won in 1944 by the firm of the Pfister Brothers. In 1946, Bührle pays a further 2 million francs into the construction fund to speed up the project. However, shortage of materials and the priority given to building homes after the war delay the beginning of construction work until 1954. Additionally, an increase in the operating contribution from the City is rejected by voters, and the Kunstgesellschaft’s finances are in a precarious state. Bührle promises to pay the full cost of construction if the City transfers the plot of land to the Kunsthaus free of charge. Thereupon, all parties, including the communist Party of Labour (PdA) approve ‘the new Kunsthaus building and the acceptance of 6 million in blood money’. The amendment to the zoning plan is approved by the electorate in 1954.

Bührle dies in November 1956, and so does not live to see the opening of the extension in 1958. The inaugural exhibition in the 1,200-square-metre, column-free room lit by natural light is the first public presentation of the Emil Bührle Collection, and a major social event. For decades, the ‘Bührle gallery’ is by far the most important exhibition hall in Switzerland. Countless exhibitions of works by important artists are shown here, from Pablo Picasso and Edvard Munch to Pipilotti Rist and Ólafur Elíasson. Over the years, the Kunsthaus has sometimes struggled with the hall’s name, at one stage opting to call it the ‘large exhibition hall’ instead of the ‘Bührle gallery’. The Bührle name is revived under the directorship of Christoph Becker, but abandoned once again under his aegis when the Kunsthaus extension opens in 2021. With the opening of the Bührle Collection in the Chipperfield building in 2021, the designation ‘Bührle gallery’ in the Pfister building is finally dropped and since then the designation ‘large exhibition hall’ has been used.

As a patron of the Kunsthaus, Emil Bührle’s main investment is in extending the museum through the construction of the Pfister building. He is more restrained in donating works of art. Nevertheless, five pieces owned by him join the Kunsthaus Collection: Auguste Rodin’s Gates of Hell, La Montagne Sainte-Victoire by Paul Cézanne and the Portrait of a Gentleman with a Dog formerly attributed to Titian, as well as The Water Lily Pond with Irises and The Water Lily Pond in the Evening by Claude Monet.

In 1951, René Wehrli returns to Zurich from a trip to Claude Monet’s studio in Giverny and reports that ‘a number of late Monets could be purchased there for relatively cheap prices’, adding that this would be ‘a unique opportunity for the new Kunsthaus especially’. When Bührle hears of these works, he agrees to purchase them for the Kunsthaus even before he has seen them, using money from the construction fund for the extension. He views the paintings, like the Gates of Hell, as part of the new section of the Kunsthaus that he has endowed, and espouses the concept of ‘percent for art’, which provides that a set percentage of a building’s construction budget should be spent on its artistic outfitting.

When he dies in 1956, Emil Bührle leaves no instructions concerning what is to be done with the works in his collection. In 1960, four years after his death, his widow Charlotte Bührle-Schalk and their children establish the Foundation E. G. Bührle Collection in Zurich. They transfer around a third of the collection’s holdings – 221 works out of a total of 633 – to the foundation. The remainder stays in private ownership. Their selection ensures that the structure and completeness of the collection that Emil Bührle had sought to achieve is preserved in the Foundation, which is housed in the family villa at Zollikerstrasse 172 in Zurich. It is open to the public from April 1960 to the end of May 2015. Between 1961 and 2019, parts of the collection are shown in various museums in the US, Canada, the UK, France, Germany and Japan.

Following the events of May 1968 and the ‘Bührle affair’ of 1970, as a result of which Bührle’s son Dieter is found guilty of illegal arms trading with South Africa and Nigeria, the Zürcher Kunstgesellschaft distances itself from the Foundation E. G. Bührle Collection, a state of affairs that persists until the mid-1990s.

In 2005, the start of planning for a new extension to the Kunsthaus on the other side of Heimplatz leads to a rapprochement. Following initial discussions in the late 1990s, a preliminary agreement in principle between the Foundation E. G. Bührle Collection, the Kunstgesellschaft and the founding family is signed in 2006. It provides for the foundation’s collection to be transferred to the planned extension. This agreement is backed by Zurich’s City Parliament and the electorate in a vote held in 2012, with 53.9% voting in favour on a turnout of 36.5%. The extension designed by Sir David Chipperfield opens in 2021 with the Emil Bührle Collection on display inside it.

The transfer of the foundation’s collection to the Kunsthaus Zürich is heavily criticised, both during preparations and when it takes place. In their Schwarzbuch Bührle (Bührle Black Book), published in 2015, Guido Magnaguagno and Thomas Buomberger critically assess Bührle’s role in politics and society along with the associated topic of looted art. In 2016, the City and Canton of Zurich commission a team of researchers headed by the historian Matthieu Leimgruber to investigate the context of the Emil Bührle Collection. Its report is published in 2020, and highlights how well connected Bührle was in Switzerland and internationally, both as an arms manufacturer and as an art collector. In 2021, historian Erich Keller publishes a book entitled Das kontaminierte Museum (The Contaminated Museum). It examines local politicians’ activities to promote the city of Zurich, contemporary developments in dealing with looted art, and Switzerland’s culture of remembrance with regard to the Second World War, and combines them in an important contribution.

The move to the Kunsthaus has brought the foundation’s collection into the public spotlight. A heated debate rages in the media and among the public. Should the collection be displayed in a museum that receives public as well as private funding? Does it contain looted art or works whose provenance is unresolved? How could a neutral country such as Switzerland allow Bührle to sell weapons to the Nazis? Should all the works acquired by Bührle be removed from the public gaze because much of his wealth was accumulated through weapon sales to the Nazi state? 

In response to the intense social, media and political controversy surrounding the public presentation of the Emil Bührle Collection in the extension, the City and Canton of Zurich and the Zürcher Kunstgesellschaft convene a round table headed by Felix Uhlmann. It appoints the historian Raphael Gross to review the research into the provenance of the works in the E.G. Bührle Collection. Its report is expected to be published in summer 2024.

In 1941, a group of prominent patrons and friends of the Kunsthaus travel to occupied Paris accompanied by Emil Bührle. Their aim, writes the Chairman of the Zürcher Kunstgesellschaft Franz Meyer-Stünzi, is to acquire Impressionist works cheaply and, where possible, bypass the restrictive clearing rules. All payments made abroad must be approved at the state clearing office. Paris has been occupied by the German army since 1940. Many Impressionist works are on the market, owing to the persecution and expropriation of Jewish collectors and gallerists. 

Bührle takes the opportunity to purchase a portrait of a man that is attributed to Titian from the Wildenstein gallery. He does not declare it when he imports it, and this violation of the law gets him into serious trouble with the authorities. Two Federal Councillors get involved and the dispute is settled, with Bührle being required to contribute 40,000 francs to the Kunstgesellschaft for the purchase of Paul Cézanne’s painting La Montagne Sainte-Victoire. The Paris portrait’s attribution to Titian cannot be substantiated, and in 1956 Bührle therefore hands it over to the Kunsthaus. It is now attributed to Callisto Piazza.

The Gates of Hell by Auguste Rodin, which has stood next to the main entrance of the Moser building since 1947, is one of Emil Bührle’s gifts to the Kunsthaus.

In 1880, the sculptor Auguste Rodin is commissioned by the French state to create a grand portal for the planned new Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris. Rodin proposes a monumental bronze door with motifs from Dante’s Divine Comedy. The museum is never built, but Rodin has long since decided that the portal should become a work of art. He works on it until his death in 1917. When finished, it includes 186 figures, many of which have since become famous as sculptures in their own right, such as the Thinker located above the door panels. The work is not cast in bronze until after Rodin’s death. There are currently nine casts of it worldwide. 

The example in Zurich is originally commissioned by the German sculptor Arno Breker for Adolf Hitlers planned ‘Führermuseum’, a picture gallery in Linz.. This prestige project never comes to fruition. Although payments for the Gates of Hell are made, it is not delivered before the German occupation of France comes to an end. The work remains the property of the Rudier foundry in Paris.

In 1947, the foundry sends it along with other casts to a sculpture exhibition at the Kunsthaus Zürich. Three works from the exhibition are purchased with funding from the City of Zurich. The Gates of Hell sculpture is purchased in 1949 from the construction fund for the extension, i.e. using money from Bührle.