Elsewhere in the Federal Republic of Germany, heated debates about Germany’s colonial past took place this year. In Dachau, on the other hand, there was no evidence. There would have been a good reason for it: the sculptor Walter von Ruckteschell (1882-1941). An exhibition by the visual artist Anja Seelke from Stade fundamentally changed the view of this legend of Dachau art history. Von Ruckteschell lived in Dachau in the 1920s, created sculptures that stand in public spaces, and founded the Dachau Artists’ Association (KVD) in 1927. Ruckteschell is an icon with which the “city of the artists’ colony” distinguishes itself from its Nazi past. But Seelke showed that his work is shaped by the colonialist view and is closer to the nationalist-racist thinking of the Nazis than anyone wanted to see before.
It was a courageous decision by Mayor Florian Hartmann (SPD) and the city councilors in the Culture Committee to endorse Seelke’s project and elect her to be a Ruckteschell scholarship holder (December 2020 to May of this year). Your art project marks a turning point in dealing with the history of the artists’ city – even if representatives of the cultural scene only responded with silence. Head of the Cultural Office, Tobias Schneider, said: “You have to say goodbye to the wrong image that you have of Ruckteschell.” Obviously, however, artists and museums do not want to let the myth they have become destroyed. Perhaps that is why there were defensive reactions to Seelke’s research in advance. In 1993, the Zweckverband Dachau Galleries and Museums presented Ruckteschell with a special exhibition as an artist who was completely free from the colonialist gentlemanly gaze of his time. Lord Mayor Florian Hartmann calls for a “far more critical approach than before” with Ruckteschell. Dachau in particular, in its historical context, had to deal critically with the colonial era and question individual artists. “So far, little research has been done in this direction. But there are already assumptions about one or the other that we have to investigate.”
“Kwahari Askari – Reunion with the Askari” is the title of the exhibition in the Ruckteschell villa. The title refers to the so-called Lettow portfolio from 1921, ten portraits of four men, four women and two children on behalf of General Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck, who was involved in the genocide of the Herero and Nama. Ruckteschell had fought with him in the “German East Africa” colony.
The myth of Ruckteschell has been shaken, the yesterday will not stop a critical reappraisal – Seelke’s exhibition was the beginning.