Münchner Stadtmuseum’s Photography Department at Rathausgalerie

2025 marks the eightieth anniversary of the end of World War II. The Photography Collection at Münchner Stadtmuseum has taken this occasion to exhibit a selection of photographs depicting the wreckage left immediately following the war, featuring work by Herbert List, Clemens Bergmann, Dorothea Brockmann, Johann Danböck, and Helmut Silchmüller. At the heart of the exhibition is a cycle of photographs of ruins taken by photographer Herbert List (1903–1975) on his wanderings through the destroyed city after his return to Munich in 1945. These include striking portrayals of the old and new town hall as well as key landmarks including the former Braunes Haus, Glyptothek, Akademie der Bildenden Künste, the Hofgarten, the Frauenkirche, the Marstall, and Wittelsbacher Palais. His work stages destroyed sculptures in public space. List’s noteworthy series was created as part of a project intended to be published as a book titled “Magical Remains,” which sought to examine ruins as an aesthetic phenomenon without a specific regional focus.

„A Destroyed City. Herbert List and the Photography of Ruins in Munich“ is the first public exhibition of List’s series since 1995, when what was then known as the Photography Museum organized a solo exhibition of List’s work at Münchner Stadtmuseum. The current exhibition places List’s moving portrait of the city alongside amateur photographs as well as professional postcards and photo essays. Tower monitor Clemens Bergmann’s slides are especially noteworthy, capturing the heavy bombardment of a city in flames from the Frauenkirche church towers. Helmut Silchmüller sold postcard views of key monuments and streetscapes in rubble, while Dorothea Brockmann documented the reconstruction process and everyday Munich life in 1947 in a set of color slides. Finally, amateur photo albums by businessman Johann Danböck editorialize photographs taken before and after the city was heavily bombed, putting together those that he purchased with his own photographs. They stand in contrast to List’s unique approach. Initially exiled to Greece, the photographer eventually returned to Munich, where he was less interested in factual documentation of the ruins. Rather, his focus was on timeless artistic compositions that reference his earlier dramatic and often surreal stagings of ancient ruins in Greece.

Münchner Stadtmuseum had previously purchased a set of 125 images hand-printed by the photographer for its urban history collection in 1966. Together with further drawings and paintings in the graphic and painting collections, they speak to Munich’s devastation in World War II. When the now-defunct Photography Museum was founded in 1963 with the aim of acting as the first German museum for photography, it sought to document the development of the medium across images and equipment. Subsequently, several lots of List’s work began to be acquired not merely for its local interest but also for his role as a photographer and artist working nationally. Today, the Photography Department serves as the institutional home for the artist’s body of work, with 1,200 prints and his complete archive of 80,000 negatives and corresponding contact sheets. The exhibition itself looks more broadly at this long-standing tension between historical urban documentation and fine-art photography, inviting visitors to view List’s series through both lenses. For this reason, the photo albums, slides, and framed artworks presented as high-quality facsimiles are complemented by a display offering an alternative topographic reading of the images that evokes a walk through Munich after 1945. The exhibition „A Destroyed City. Herbert List and the Photography of Ruins in Munich“ is organized in cooperation with the Herbert List Estate, Hamburg, and is curated by Dr. Kathrin Schönegg, head of the Photography Department at Münchner Stadtmuseum. An expanded new edition of Münchner Stadtmuseum’s existing catalogue „Herbert List. Memento 1945. Münchner Ruinen“ was published by Schirmer/Mosel Verlag in spring 2025. No original photographs are on display in the exhibition. There are reproductions of slides and high-quality framed exhibition prints in the original dimensions. Münchner Stadtmuseum is undergoing extensive renovations until 2031. During this time, it is organizing events at external locations. This is the first time that Rathausgalerie and Münchner Stadtmuseum—both municipal cultural institutes—have had the opportunity to cooperate.