Max Liebermann
A Key to the Garden

1 MAY until 1 AUG 2026
Opening – 1 MAY 2026, 6-9 pm

In 1909, Max Liebermann acquired a property with lake access on the west shore of Lake Wannsee. He commissioned the architect Paul Otto Baumgarten to design a »classical« country house. His idea was a country house »built by a city dweller«. He meticulously laid out the large garden together with his friend Alfred Lichtwark: an anatomy of strictly mapped symmetry, composed of flower terraces, formally arranged flowerbeds, and hedge gardens.

For 20 years, the »Palace on the Lake« (Max Liebermann) served as the summer residence of the painter and his family. Summer after summer, in more than 200 paintings dedicated to the garden, one of his largest series of motifs took shape, in which Liebermann gained a deep understanding of nature’s metamorphoses and rendered the sensuality of what is seen through endless metaphors of color.

Max Liebermann perceived the changing light on blooming flowerbeds – unlike Monet, who sought to alter both his own and the viewer’s perception of nature – through the conception of a poetic realism: initiation and completion, one of the most significant late paths of Impressionism.