Herbert List à la Rathausgalerie, Munich
Stadt in Trümmern
Herbert List und die Ruinenfotografie in München
Du 21 novembre au 17 décembre 2025
Rathausgalerie
Munich, Allemagne
FROM THE PRESS RELEASE
(English Version)
In 2025, the end of the Second World War marks its 80th anniversary. To mark this occasion, the Photography Collection of the Münchner Stadtmuseum is presenting a selection of post-war ruin photographs from the immediate aftermath of 1945, featuring works by Herbert List as well as Clemens Bergmann, Johann Danböck, Helmut Silchmüller and an anonymous photographer.
At the heart of the exhibition is a cycle of ruin images created by Herbert List (1903–1975), who returned to Munich in 1945 and captured the devastated city during his wanderings. Alongside striking depictions of the Altes and Neues Rathaus, the photographs show prominent buildings such as the former Braunes Haus, the Glyptothek, the Akademie, the Hofgarten, the Frauenkirche, the Marstall and the Wittelsbacher Palais. Destroyed sculptures and statues are staged within the public space. List’s remarkable series was created as part of a planned but never realized book project titled Die magischen Reste, which aimed to explore the ruin as an aesthetic phenomenon without regional limitation.
The exhibition Stadt in Trümmern. Herbert List und die Ruinenfotografie in München presents List’s series publicly for the first time since 1995. Back then, the former Fotomuseum organized a monographic exhibition of the series at the Münchner Stadtmuseum to mark the 50th anniversary of the end of the war. The current presentation contrasts List’s poignant portrait of the city with additional images by amateurs and professionals—photographs produced for postcards, commissioned reports, and private documentation. Among the most striking exhibits is a group of slides by tower observer Clemens Bergmann, who captured the burning city in situ from the towers of the Frauenkirche during the bombing raids. Helmut Silchmüller distributed views of ruins—monuments and street scenes alike—commercially as postcards, while another set of slides documents reconstruction and everyday life in Munich in 1947. Finally, amateur photo albums by merchant Johann Danböck highlight the editorial interplay between purchased and self-taken photographs from before and after the city’s destruction.
In contrast to these varied photographic positions, List’s distinctive approach becomes particularly evident: returning from exile in Greece, he was less interested in an objective documentation of destruction and far more drawn to timeless artistic compositions that echo his earlier dramatic and often surreal stagings of ancient Greek ruins.
As early as 1966, the Münchner Stadtmuseum acquired a group of 125 prints directly from the photographer for its city-history collection—works that today, together with drawings and paintings, document the destruction of Munich in the Second World War in the museum’s Sammlung Grafik/Gemälde. Only after the establishment of the former Fotomuseum—which began its work in 1963 with the ambition to become the first “Deutsches Fotomuseum”, documenting the development of the medium in both image and technology—did Herbert List enter the museum as an artist of supra-regional importance. With 1,200 prints and the complete archive of 80,000 negatives and corresponding contact sheets, today’s Sammlung Fotografie now serves as the institutional representative of the artist. This historical tension between urban-historical documentation and photographic art forms a conceptual foundation of the exhibition, inviting visitors to encounter List’s series on both levels. In addition to the exhibited photo albums, slides and framed artworks presented as high-quality facsimiles, further displays offer an alternative, topographical reading of the images—one resembling a walk through Munich after 1945.
The exhibition Stadt in Trümmern. Herbert List und die Ruinenfotografie in München is being realized in cooperation with the Herbert List Estate in Hamburg and curated by Dr. Kathrin Schönegg, Head of the Sammlung Fotografie at the Münchner Stadtmuseum. In spring 2025, an expanded new edition of the museum’s collection catalogue Herbert List. Memento 1945. Münchner Ruinen was published by Schirmer/Mosel.
