Remembering Martin Roth--and Dresden

It was only last Autumn that Martin Roth, then a vigorous 61- year old, left London after five years as Director of the Victoria and Albert Museum and returned to Germany. There cancer, reportedly diagnosed soon after he arrived, felled him fast. He died on August 6.  When I heard the announcement on the BBC news I was shocked and also sad. I’d known and liked Martin for 15 years. 

I last saw Martin Roth last Autumn at a V&A party. Once it was decided that he would no longer be its Director he decided to leave before the very end of his contract..He and his wife were about to head for Berlin.

  “What are you going to do next?” I asked.

   “One thing for sure, I will spend more time in British Columbia,” he said.

     Although he loved it there this seemed improbable.  Martin was too ambitious; his need to scoot around the world to museums and conferences; to hang out with the rich, famous and//or beautiful was much too great for him to relax swaying in a hammock tied to the rough bark of a couple of sky- skimming trees. 

   

Tall and dark when we first met and later a distinguished gray, Martin Roth would have been handsome if there weren’t something sheepish about him. It was as if he were playing the lead in the story of his life without fully connecting with the character.. The plot involved driving fast cars, wearing beautifully cut suits, enjoying fancy company and maybe above all being seen to be a figure on the international culture scene. He relished it yet seemed a little embarrassed by the hot shot, glamorous character he played. . This sheepishness undercut the slickness and vanity. It made him approachable; likable.  Soon I came to admired him, too--not for his performance at the V&A (about which more in the next post), but for his brilliant achievements during the decade before.

Detail from the large jewelled tableau "Throne of the Great Moghul Aureng Zeb " in the Green Vault 

In 2001 Martin Roth became Director General of the Dresden State Art Collections. He was to oversee the reconstruction, restoration and re-display of its 12 museums (there are now 15).  Together they house the greatest surviving Western Princely treasure in the world. There is magnificent armour for men and horses, Old Master and Modern masterworks, important sculpture, the best early Meissen and Chinese porcelain,  an abundance of splendid jewels and objets d’art. There is folk art, too, and much else.  Also there are the palaces in which all this was housed. (Above a small part of the opulent and fabulous "Throne of the Great Mogul" with its bejewelled camels and elephants, diplomats and slaves all passing before Aureng-Zeb seated on a throne at the back of the tableau. It was created in the 18th century by Johann Melchior Dinglinger for Saxony's Elector August the Strong. "Over the top" would have had no meaning for him.  In fact, at first glance it seemed just the right description for this ostentatious piece. After a very few minutes it became a dream come true, a dream I didn't know I;'d had. It made the the far more famous works by Faberge seem derivative. Very well done of course but less imaginative; less brilliant; not thrilling..

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Martin Roth was also charged with making the world aware of Dresden’s splendor. I write for publications with a global reach. That is why I was invited to Dresden in 2002 and the reopening of the first of its exceptional museums: The Porcelain Gallery. From the start he and I had the usual mutually beneficial (exploitative) relationship of museum director and arts journalist. It was richer than that only because Dresden is..

About all I knew before I went was that the  RAF firebombing of the city near the end of the war destroyed it, tens or perhaps hundreds of thousands of people. It became an empty shell. End of story. The firebombing was a tragedy but it was not the end of Dresden.               

Dresden soon after the firebombing

During the war its princely treasures had been removed and hidden in the hills to the east of the city. Almost all of it survived. Quite a few of its Renaissance and Baroque buildings were flattened but many more survived like a congregation of ghoulish, blackened, stone stalagmites. 

   Dresden was cut off from most of us from the start of the Second World War through the decades of the Communist German Democratic Republic. It might as well have been flattened; its treasures destroyed. The government of a reunited Germany was determined to bring it back to life.

I accepted the invitation to go to Dresden because I am keen about old jewels. I'd been told by people who themselves had not yet managed to see it, that there in its  Green Vault was the best collection to see them in abundance. First of course,t I visited the Porcelain Gallery, which after all was the official reason for the trip.  Quickly and to my surprise I fell in love with early Meissen porcelain especially the magical menagerie of animals from a rhino to a turkey.  I visited the store rooms, too,  and the temporary installations.  Finally I managed to get into the Green Vault which was not on the itinerary. From August the Strong's suites of matching jewels (all diamonds or emeralds, coral or carnelian to Dinglinger's tableau.  Until then if I imagined Paradise it was Arcadian. Ever since it has become populated with wonders made by men. I left Dresden  awed,  excited and inspired.  I went back more than half a dozen times.

There were not so many other foreign journalists as besotted by the State Art Collections as I was. Naturally Martin Roth noticed. And naturally I grasped that it is handy to be friendly with the man who had keys to all that glorious stuff. But there was something else too: Dresden meant a lot to us both if in very different ways and we both knew it.  It was there that Martin became a player; an art star. .It was there that I was given an aesthetic jolt that expanded my consciousness which for all the hype LSD never did.    

I am glad that Martin Roth and I had Dresden to share; sorry not to have him to share it with any more. Sorry, too, if that word can express it, that his adventure in life ended so soon.