Munich The Neumeister auction house is auctioning paintings by Lucas Cranach, but also the wardrobe of the late Hannelore Elsner. If you want to survive in the auction market, you don’t just need an understanding of art. Katrin Stoll, who has been managing the Munich auction house Neumeister for 15 years, will subscribe to this sentence without any ifs or buts.
The wind on the art market is blowing harder in her face today than it was fifty or sixty years ago against her father, company founder Rudolf Neumeister. The market is currently selling for millions with works by Ernst Wilhelm Nay, Albert Oehlen and paintings by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. However, for 65 years the Neumeister focus has been on ancient art.
Katrin Stoll, who has not lost her entrepreneurial energy at the age of 61 and who always shows a beaming smile and a Bella Figura at the auction desk, is committed to this collection division: “I don’t deal in shares, but in cultural assets,” she says in an interview the Handelsblatt.
How the trade in old art can be successful in the 21st century has been on her mind for years. “Unlike in France or Austria, tradition is considered unsexy here,” she regrets. But: “In terms of content, I would never break with the tradition of the house.” The old art is a value system that only a few collectors appreciate. It is Neumeister’s basis and competence. Success is a question of acquisition and the potential customers that you reach.
That’s why Neumeister put the old art on the most important online bidding platforms ten years ago. The new customers from Asia, USA and New Zealand have never set foot on Barerstrasse in Munich. But they buy. Neumeister could easily acquire many more works by Heinrich von Zügel or Eduard von Grützner or Biedermeier chests of drawers. But the taste has changed.
“I don’t deal in shares, but in cultural assets,” says the daughter of the company’s founder, who has managed the auction house for 15 years.
(Photo: Markus Bronner)
Lucas Cranach, Carl Spitzweg, world-class handicrafts – this is what Neumeister is achieving success with today. She achieved 95,000 euros for an 800-year-old pane of colored glass from the Church of St. Thomas in Strasbourg. It is not Heinrich Bürkel’s genre scenes that break the records, but the romanticizing 19th century. August Kopisch’s glowing red sunset over the “Pontine Marshes” of 1845 rose from an estimated 15,000 to 170,000 euros.
Katrin Stoll does not want to speak of curators. “We are subject to business demands. The question is always: What are the costs, what is the return?” The Varia auction was abolished years ago. Because lots with an estimated value of less than 600 euros are not profitable.
A magazine full of stories replaces the catalogues
With furniture, for example, the market for which has shrunk anyway, the logistical effort is particularly important. The consequence, not only at Neumeister, is concentration on high-quality pieces. Only when a writing cabinet from Mainz climbs from around 1750 to a gross price of 127,000 euros does the auctioneer’s profit margin also add up.
For Katrin Stoll, the conscious move towards a modern Neumeister brand also meant the discontinuation of the conventional catalogue. It also cost a lot of paper. Instead, for the past three years, the house has been publishing a magazine full of stories about and about the highlights of the auction. The rest can be found online.
“The Pontine Marshes at Sunset” from 1845 has its price: 169,000 euros including buyer’s premium.
(Photo: Neumeister)
Stoll is convinced that digitization will turn the art market inside out in a way that we cannot even imagine today. The first painting created with AI has already been auctioned by her.
However, she was overtaken by others in the field of classic modern and contemporary art. “If I wanted to expand in this area, I would have to create a whole new department,” she counters. At that moment, a note of annoyance creeps into her voice. It remains her weak point, even though just a few days ago a painting by Lovis Corinth sold for over 220,000 euros.
Appreciated by aristocratic consignors
Katrin Stoll constantly questions well-trodden paths. “Do we really need another preview that costs a week to set up? Or could one also imagine a Schaulager with a modernity like the new depot of the Boijmans van Beuningen Museum in Rotterdam?” she asks purely rhetorically. But that’s music for the future.
The reality, however, is that Neumeister has established itself as a hub for aristocratic collections. “From Wittelsbach and Habsburg estates,” it said nine years ago. These auctions don’t just excite royalists. They always bring cultural and historical interesting things to light. In 2022, museums from Poland and Germany were interested in a bundle of rare maps hidden under the “Hidden Treasures from the House of Württemberg”.
In order to advance into these circles, you need good contacts. “The Neumeister brand is highly valued by the aristocratic consignors,” is the succinct comment of the native of Munich, who sometimes accompanies Duke Franz of Bavaria to the Munich Opera and is otherwise very well connected socially.
Looking back, 2008, the year of the business acquisition, was the hardest for her. Shortly before, Rudolf Neumeister had signed the company over to his three daughters. At that time, his son-in-law Michael Scheublein was available as heir to the throne. “My father was a patriarch who for a long time could not imagine that a woman would one day succeed him,” she describes the situation at the time. Controversy was in the air. In the end, Katrin Stoll paid off her sisters and their private fortune melted away. Neumeister was financially stricken.
The Munich lawyer Wolf-Rüdiger Bub joined the company as a partner, but remained in the background. When the lawyer died in the fall, some predicted a new bloodletting for Neumeister. But Katrin Stoll defends himself: “Bub was always about continuity. And it looks like his heirs will continue to be shareholders.” But as an entrepreneur, she is well aware of an old business adage: you should never assume that things will stay the same.
Fast cars and steep ski slopes
This also applies to your own visions. She was the first in Germany to dare to openly deal with the Nazi past of the art trade in-house. She had the explosive accounts of the Weinmüller art dealership, which Rudolf Neumeister took over in 1958, scientifically reviewed. Stoll thus shook a taboo. Today she also sees it as the completion of the generational change in her own company.
Bernhard Maaz, Director General of the Bavarian State Painting Collections, admires Stoll’s passion for great works of art and masterful craftsmanship, but also her passion in this matter: “She not only had the documents in the company archive processed and evaluated by one of the best researchers in the German-speaking area, but also a contributed a high level of financial participation, but also donated these company files to the Central Institute for Art History.”
The feedback on consignments remained manageable. The case of Carl Spitzweg’s “Justitia” moved people’s minds in 2020, in the middle of the Corona lockdown. The allusive painting from 1857 hung in the Federal Chancellery in Bonn for many years before it was returned to the heirs. The proceeds of 698,000 euros is a top price for the painter of ironic scenes.
In addition to art, Katrin Stoll loves lively car rides and steep ski slopes. Standing still isn’t comfortable for her either privately or professionally. When Germany was in design fever, she brought in a new clientele with special auctions such as “Plastic Fantastic” and “Shape”. When other houses started offering luxury handbags, she started her first vintage auctions with haute couture and ready-to-wear fashion.
The next fashion event was the auction of actress Hannelore Elsner’s wardrobe. Neither section has become a fixture in the Neumeister repertoire. They certainly drew attention and blew away the old-fashioned dust from the house’s image.
Some in the industry claim that the Neumeister boss has more good ideas than stamina. One of her entrepreneurial strengths is undoubtedly an irrefutable optimism. And anyone who loves fast cars also wants to get to their destination quickly.
Read more from the series “Women in the Auction House”:
Part 5 of the series will be released on April 14th: Gudrun Ketterer