Sven Kuhrau achieves something remarkable in this wonderful book: a description and analysis not only of the cultural meanings of art collecting in Kaiserreich Berlin but also of the “social topography” within which those collections were created. Kuhrau’s argument is a compelling one. Suggesting that collecting provides a lens on the tumultuous society, culture, and political life of the Kaiserreich, Kuhrau investigates the ways that collecting was both produced by and productive of new spaces for social interaction, fresh forms of cultural meaning, and novel possibilities of representing power and hierarchy. That Kuhrau yokes the social to the cultural and sees in this synergy a mutually enriching opportunity for analytical precision is nothing new, but he offers us the chance to observe the exciting results of this method.

The heart of Kuhrau’s argument begins by situating the act of collecting in a broader social context. Readers are introduced to the bounded social landscape of the collectors, but the cultural messages produced in and disseminated through collecting are never far from Kuhrau’s mind. Collecting, when undertaken by the aristocracy, provided a mechanism for maintaining aspects of their control in a society undergoing incredible stress. Through collections, aristocrats were offered a format for the expression of their tastes and a social mechanism, patronage, by which they were able to distribute resources. For bourgeois industrialists, the practice of collecting offered a means to demonstrate a commitment to “Bildung” while the very existence of a “market” in art meant that culture was being spoken in a language familiar to them. Art collecting, Kuhrau suggests in one especially provocative section, even offered a means of “acculturation” to Jews living during the age of Wilhelm Marr’s “Antisemitenliga” and of “emancipation” to women who could see in groups like the “Deutscher Bund zur Bekämpfung der Frauenemanzipation” a not-so-subtle attempt to limit the roles women could play in the public sphere. And for all sorts of aspiring Germans, art collecting – like the patronage of public collections and museums – granted them powerful new ways to rethink the differences between luxury and need, authenticity and dilettantism, parvenuism and Junkerdom. Indeed, an important aspect of Kuhrau’s work is found in the suggestion that the cultural politics of collecting cannot be divorced from the social conflicts that were such a part of the rich history of the Kaiserreich.

The second half of the argument is concerned with an explanation of the ways that the histories of collecting and of taste were intertwined. Kuhrau is most impressive here when discussing the manias that swept Berlin in the second half of the 19th century, describing them not only as “invented traditions” but also successfully indicating the ways that late medieval Italy and golden age Amsterdam were useful means to speak of the presumed power and influence then thought to be felt in Berlin. Such a style – revealed as much in Jakob Burckhardt’s glorious history of the Renaissance as in the fetish for Rembrandts – dominated discussions of artistic taste. Collecting such works, even when they were copies, marked out a social space significant for the power it was given to “represent” cultural values. If the collections created by individuals spoke to the powerful social changes experienced by all Berliners during the Kaiserreich, then the collections created by Berliners during this time could be said to represent the unstated dreams of a newly-dominant city. The value that art collectors in Berlin placed on the old masters did not go unchallenged of course. The Berlin Secession was only one attempt to integrate modernism into the culture of collecting in Berlin, but its transformative effects were significant. If anything, Kuhrau could have indicated how more radical groups like Die Brücke were also a part, albeit unacknowledged or excluded, of the collecting scene in Berlin.

Much of Kuhrau’s analysis of these matters stems from his creative and judicious use of a rich body of sources describing the contents of various art collections in Berlin. His analysis of nearly 75 collections described in publications like “Kunsthandbuch für Deutschland” is balanced by archival materials documenting the architectural decisions and correspondence of Berlin collectors. Working from what were essentially photographs and lists of works collected for display in various Kunstaustellungen – both private and public – Kuhrau pieces together evidence of an opulent climate of collecting, one that resulted as much from social conditions as from cultural attitudes.

While Der Kunstsammler im Kaiserreich does a wonderful job of investigating the ways that art, cultural taste, and social power were intertwined in those years, one wonders if a focus on a single city, even one as powerfully significant as Berlin, is too limiting. Including in the field of analysis comparisons to collections gathered together in Munich, Hamburg, Düsseldorf, or even Dresden (not to mention other “world cities” located outside of Germany) could have indicated the ways that a unified national social/cultural matrix functioned – or did not – during the Kaiserreich. In addition, widening the field of analysis to include the overseas Empire created in the 1880s and 1890s might also shape the story differently. How are we to understand the significance of a massive iron globe suspended from the ceiling of Eduard Simon’s “Herrenzimmer” (cover; p. 17) or the tiger-skin rugs plopped down amidst the 17th century Flemish tapestries (p. 71) in Paul Meyerheim’s Tiergarten house without also considering the extension of German power around the world or without examining the questions about modern and primitive, core and periphery, metropole and colony that are raised by a collection with such juxtapositions? While these interiors were perhaps nothing more than reflections of a bourgeois “eclecticism,” imperialism might also in this case usefully add a fourth axis of social and cultural analysis to race, class, and gender.

Despite these criticisms I want to reiterate that Sven Kuhrau has produced an exciting and important book here, one that will appeal to many types of scholars. Historians will be impressed with this new way of thinking about the social and cultural history of the Kaiserreich. Art historians too will find the book valuable for what it has to say about the mechanics of collecting and the meanings that those collections were thought to hold in the wider public sphere. Social scientists of many stripes will likewise be impressed by Kuhrau’s mindfulness of the connections between society and culture and of the ways that they have mutually constituted one another. Altogether, Sven Kuhrau demonstrates how we might move forward in our understanding of the social and cultural schisms felt so acutely in Berlin during the Kaiserreich.