1960–2009: Goethe House New York
ARTS & CULTURE
Goethe House New York brought literature, film, music, art, science, and philosophy to 1014 Fifth Avenue. Named in honor of the iconic German author and playwright, Goethe House was founded in 1955 as a New York-based, non-profit educational institute. Its purpose was to strengthen U.S.-German cultural relations in the aftermath of the Second World War. Initially based in an office suite on East 56th Street, Goethe House moved into the former Gerard mansion in 1961, six months before the Berlin Wall severed ties between East and West Germany. In 1969 Goethe House became part of the global network of the Goethe-Institut, West Germany’s network of cultural and language centers. For nearly 50-years, the house hosted lectures, exhibitions, screenings, concerts, and other cultural programs.
Dedicated to Culture
In 1960 the Federal Republic of Germany decided to support the fledgling Goethe House by giving it a larger and more graceful space. After considering several Manhattan properties, the German government bought 1014 Fifth Avenue from the Gerard estate via an intermediary, the developer Manny E. Duell, for $325,000 (equivalent to approximately $3 million today). The ground floor housed the Goethe House library, offering 11,000 books and more than 50 German-language periodicals, while the salon became an auditorium and screening room. Following the dedication ceremony on February 6, 1961, West German ambassador Wilhelm Grewe hosted a glamorous reception at Goethe House for the actor-director Gustaf Gründgens and his acclaimed Hamburg-based theater company, who were in New York to perform a two-week run of Goethe’s masterpiece, Faust.
Caricature of German actors Gustaf Gründgens and Will Quadflieg starring in Goethe’s Faust during a two-week run in New York in Feb. 1961. Gründgens and his Hamburg-based theater company were fêted with a reception at the newly dedicated Goethe House at 1014 Fifth Avenue. Illustration © William Auerbach-Levy / Museum of the City of New York
Transatlantic Trustees
A group of Americans with close ties to post-war Germany initially defined the cultural mission of Goethe House. The first chairman of the board of trustees was John J. McCloy, former U.S. High Commissioner in Occupied Germany. McCloy recruited James B. Conant, ex-president of Harvard University and the first U.S. ambassador to the Federal Republic of Germany, to serve as board president. Arts patrons and diplomats rounded out the board. Some trustees, like banker Eric M. Warburg, had left Germany to escape Nazi persecution. Yet the first program director, Hans Egon Holthusen, a poet and literary critic, was later denounced for serving the Nazi Party, specifically its SS paramilitary wing, starting in 1933. Such contradictions characterized the era.
A Haven for Exiled Intellectuals
For many intellectuals driven out of Germany by the Nazi regime, the trauma of displacement did not kill their passion for literature, science, and the arts. Goethe House, through its programs and library, offered emigrants and refugees a link to new currents in German arts and letters—and the cultural heritage they had been forced to leave behind. Hannah Arendt’s 1968 lecture on Walter Benjamin was emblematic of this vital community, as was the 1985 “Exile U.S.A.” symposium at Goethe House. Henry Marx, the Goethe-Institut’s director of programs for U.S. and Canada from 1969 to 1980, had been confined in a Nazi concentration camp in 1934. After moving to New York he wrote 20 books on German arts and music.
Cinema Across Borders
New German Cinema—the 1960s–70s films made by a new generation of fearless directors such as Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Wim Wenders, Volker Schlöndorff, Alexander Kluge, Margarethe von Trotta, and Werner Herzog—often reached New York audiences via the Goethe-Institut New York. Ingrid Scheib-Rothbart, the institute’s film coordinator for more than 30 years, worked with film curators at the Museum of Modern Art, Lincoln Center, Anthology Film Archives, and other New York art houses to present the latest films from Germany. The cozy auditorium at Goethe House screened older and more obscure films, and hosted talks and receptions with prominent directors.
Programs and Partners
In 1969 Goethe House became a branch of the Munich-based Goethe-Institut and has since continued to bring cultural luminaries to 1014 Fifth Avenue while collaborating with dozens of New York cultural institutions, universities, and theaters. The 1970s saw visits from literary giants like Günter Grass and Max Frisch, as well as multi-venue programs on “Berlin Now” (1977), German Expressionism (1978), and 19th-century German culture (1981). The center also expanded its library and provided pedagogical trainings, coaching, and conferences for German language instructors across America; and administered travel grants to Germany for teachers, exchange groups, and individual students.
A Modern Renovation
The third renovation of 1014 Fifth Avenue was completed in 1991. Peter Englert & Associates, a planning and design firm based in Mamaroneck, New York, overhauled the building’s infrastructure and expanded the usable space to a total of 22,884 square feet—almost double that of the original 1907 home. The library extended into a new glass-walled, skylit reading room appended to the rear of the building. The auditorium received an audio-visual upgrade, and office spaces were improved. Lighting, bathrooms, and kitchenettes were modernized both upstairs and in the superintendent’s basement apartment. Remnants of the old service stair were removed. A glass display case formed a “street gallery” on Fifth Avenue.
A new organization follows in the footsteps of cooperation across the Atlantic. Learn about 1014 - a not-for-profit with plans to revive the building...