Berlin Auction Commemorates 25th Anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall

The auction house Jeschke van Vliet Auctions Berlin is planning a February 22 sale of more than 700 works by such contemporary East German artists as Michael Morgner, Gudrun Trendafilov, and Fritz Cremer, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reports. The sale will commemorate of the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.

According to the report:

The contents are from the collection gathered by Jörg Hallerbach throughout the late 1980s. The sale had already been planned when the businessman [Jörg Hallerbach] died on December 19, 2013, while searching for rare orchids in the Teide Mountains in Tenerife. In addition to paintings, works on paper, and prints, the auction contents include 178 artists’ books, most of which Hallerbach bought from the artists themselves during business trips to East Germany. […] In contrast to the Federal Republic, where printing on valuable paper and selling by distinguished galleries was possible, the artists’ books in the Eastern part of Germany were created for a carefully selected group of buyers.