THERE MUST BE MORE THAN EVERYTHING: Leonie Herweg on GROTTO and Café Tiergarten
"First and foremost, I try to create memories that move people."
Berlin hardly lacks interesting, sometimes bizarre, architectural sites. But even here, the Hansaviertel stands out as a tour de force of urban planning.
Bleeding into the north-western side of Tiergarten, the streets were once lined by historicist facades that, at one point or another, housed Else Lasker-Schüler, Lovis Corinth, Nelly Sachs, Kurt Tucholsky, Rosa Luxemburg, and, for a summer at least, Lenin. Nazi persecutions destroyed the creative and social infrastructure before aerial bombing in 1943 made the wasteland manifest.
The Hansaviertel of today is a product of Interbau 1957, an architectural exhibition that advocated for a particular midcentury vision of “the city of tomorrow.”
To list the contributing architects would just be name dropping the stars of global modernism, so I will avoid the litany. But! Despite the oedipal powers of these very serious forefathers, the Hansaviertel remains a quirky place, home, for example, to what may well be the most architecturally noteworthy Burger King in the world.
Until recently, art was, however, not exactly on the map in this part of the city. That changed in 2024, when Leonie Herweg opened GROTTO, a project space for contemporary art, in the Hansaviertel’s shopping mall. Next to Rewe, DHL shop, and Blumenstudio is now a small but ambitious gallery space, with a truly on-point program of exhibitions, readings, lectures, listening sessions, that even hosts a yearly book fair.
In August, Leonie and I spent time together at Café Tiergarten, which she opened this summer, just across the street from GROTTO. As a complement to the gallery, the café offers a different kind of social space, one that draws visitors who may be less inclined to cross the threshold of an art space, or those who simply want to spend an hour or two taking in the neighborhood.
Under blue skies and a striped marquee, we sat on monobloc chairs, surrounded by many other guests. Everything about the place is welcoming, and I felt that I could glimpse a future for the Hansaviertel that is rooted in its social as well as architectural histories, that doesn’t divorce one from the other in order to turn modernist architecture into a stylish background for an inflated, anything but site-specific art market.1 A breath of fresh air!
Leonie herself speaks with the eloquent precision of someone who reads books and really listens; some of the most expressive formulations—“auf Zack sein!”—can’t quite be captured in translation. She weaves quotes, references, and anecdotes into her sentences, which struck me as testament to how friends, mentors, and historical figures populate her awareness. It’s a playfully serious way of engaging with the world, one that I see reflected in both GROTTO and Café Tiergarten.
As for the mystery projects that are somewhat hinted at in the end of this interview: in September, MANIFESTA 16 announced Leonie as part of the Artistic Team for next year's edition in the Ruhrgebiet. I am definitely going!
Luise: Shall we start at the beginning? How did you get to where you are, Leonie?
Leonie: Last year, I was in London doing my master’s degree in curatorial studies at the Royal College of Art. Before that, I worked at the auction house Grisebach in Berlin. My background, however, is in a very different field. I have worked in the art world for nine or ten years now, but before going to London, I had never studied anything art-related before. For a long time, that didn’t matter much, but at a certain point, academic training becomes necessary or is expected. When that became clear, I thought to myself, now or never. My grandfather always says, “Enough is not enough, there must be more than everything.” That’s kind of my motto.
Luise: Now you’re back in Berlin and are living right here in the Hansaviertel, right?
Leonie: Yes, my boyfriend Simon and I live together in the Giraffe. I am really happy to be here, my life is 24/7 Hansaviertel right now. Our home is here, we opened the café, my grandfather lives in the house with the red stripes by [Luciano] Baldessari right on Hansaplatz, and our art space GROTTO is right across the street from the café.
Luise: My own apartment is also very close to here, and I love this part of the city. But I remember feeling quite disoriented the first time I landed here. It was a scorching hot summer day, I was riding my bike on one of the roads that radiates outward from the Siegessäule, and got very lost. Ending up between these large, modernist housing blocks was like landing on another planet.
Leonie: It’s a completely different experience of Berlin here.
Luise: You already mentioned that you studied something unrelated to art at university. Can you describe how your path toward art unfolded?
Leonie: In some ways, there was already an affinity for art in my family. That doesn’t mean that I come from a family of collectors or from a very art-oriented household, but we would go to museums or to the theater together. As a result, art was part of my childhood in a way, but it was also something I sought out strongly myself, as a space where the world becomes visible in a different way. I remember asking my great-grandmother, whose house I grew up in, for a book on the Baroque period, and she gifted me one that contained this crazy painting by Artemisia Gentileschi, whom I still admire very much, of Judith and Holofernes.
“I spent more time in the gallery than in the lecture hall. It was simply more entertaining to spend time around people who had lunch at 11 p.m. and didn’t necessarily follow the very orderly Swiss routines.”
Luise: I also have a semi-mythical childhood memory like that. For me, it’s Rembrandt’s Anatomy Lesson that haunted me for years.
Leonie: In retrospect, the fact that this painting made such a lasting impression on me at the age of eight was probably a key moment. Yet I remained on a different kind of track for a long time and studied international relations and international law in Geneva. But my interest in art remained throughout. I was visiting a lot of museums and then found my way into the field through internships and first jobs. In Geneva, I worked at Galerie Mezzanin for five years and lived in the apartment right above it. As a result, I spent more time in the gallery than in the lecture hall. It was simply more entertaining to spend time around people who had lunch at 11 p.m. and didn’t necessarily follow the very orderly Swiss routines.
Luise: You also worked at the mumok in Vienna, right?
Leonie: Yes, I did two internships in Vienna right after school because I had a best friend there who I really wanted to spend time with. That’s why I applied to mumok. And I also worked for Rosemarie Schwarzwälder, a true grande dame who has been running a highly respected gallery in Vienna for decades, with a great program. That’s how the ball started rolling, even though I had initially chosen a very straightforward path, as is perhaps inevitable when you’ve been socialized in Switzerland. I thought I would go to university, learn French, and maybe end up at the International Court of Justice. But then I realized there are plenty of people who really want to do that job and are certainly a thousand times better at it than I am.
Luise: And what kept you in the art world?
Leonie: At the end of the day, art is what really fascinates me. The conversations, being around those people, that was always the most exciting thing for me. I worked for Karin [Handlbauer, of Galerie Mezzanin] in Geneva for almost five years. Because the team was small, I gained a lot of insight and took on a lot of responsibilities, in both good and less good ways. It’s a world where the personal and the professional are very intertwined, and sometimes that can be difficult. But it was a great learning experience for me, and I still benefit from the people I got to meet there. Sunah Choi, whose work we are currently showing at GROTTO, I have actually known since my very first day at work. Now I have the privilege of exhibiting her work here, and come full circle in this way. It’s like a spider’s web that you keep weaving, enriched with many impressions and experiences.
“I enjoy talking to older people and realizing how much knowledge they have and the value that is in their expertise […]. Art is an area where you can really grow and be recognized in different ways as you gain more experience.”
Luise: The spider’s web is also an ambivalent image. It is a home to the spider, but a trap for the insect.
Leonie: Yes, once you’re in, the journey continues, you jump from A to B, the web tightens. Art is an area where you can really grow and be recognized in different ways as you gain more experience. Of course, there are newcomers who have a lot of energy, especially in the sales departments of galleries, and often don’t have such high expectations when it comes to salaries. But nonetheless, time and experience are still important. That’s what I love about this profession, that you can improve like a fine wine. I look forward to getting to a stage where I have firsthand experience of certain eras and artistic circles.
Luise: At the same time, the art world can also be incredibly fast-paced.
Leonie: Yes, there are definitely areas where the individual is completely replaceable. But I do believe that there are ways to grow and develop over long periods of time. I really enjoy talking to older people and realizing how much knowledge they have and the value that is in their expertise.
Luise: It’s great that you see it that way. I sometimes notice a superficiality in the art world, an unwillingness or inability to really engage with something. But perhaps there are ways of consciously positioning yourself in relation to the different timelines of history and newness.
Leonie: I think it’s very important to surround yourself with the right people. Maybe I’m speaking from a privileged position, but that ethos is also essential for GROTTO. Especially in the art world, there are so many people I don’t want to work or even interact with, really. And I think it’s important to listen to your gut, to trust who you want to do business or projects with, who you want to spend your time with. For me, it’s important to be surrounded by a small but great group of people.
“We’re back to the question of what actually makes art good. And, again, there are different responses: aesthetic, intellectual, emotional. In my opinion, there should be no hierarchy.”
Luise: How would you describe the people you like to work with and surround yourself with?
Leonie: Since I myself am very much at the beginning of something, I have a lot of admiration and respect for older generations. Many things were perhaps done with a different level of seriousness. I place a lot of trust in whether you feel like you’re on the same wavelength as someone else. It also has to do with a certain professionalism and experience. That doesn’t mean you have authority over everything; fresh ideas and new energy are important, especially in the art world, but you can learn a lot from the past. And I think it’s great when people are passionate and have the drive to make things happen. Many people have big ideas, but I always admire those who actually realize them. And I like people who are on their toes! I think that suits me very well, I am immediately drawn in when people are sharp and energetic.
Luise: In terms of form or content, what is it that draws you in? Can you put into words what constitutes “good art” for you?
Leonie: There is a sentence by the writer Jörg Fauser: “The story doesn’t have to be true, it just has to be really good.” I think that applies to me too. Stories are what constitutes us as human beings, and art can express that. Of course, there are also things that appeal to me foremost aesthetically, but that might be something that was more important to me in the past than it is today. Nowadays, it’s often the content and the story that fascinate me. You can find something beautiful, but that can also fade away. But if you have to think about something again, if it stays with you, that is good art in my eyes. There is also an emotional component. I think about that a lot when it comes to the relation to the public, because it’s also very important to me to open art to many people. I worked in rather elitist art circles for a long time and acquired the knowledge and skills you need to survive there. But of course not everyone has had those experiences, and that’s why I often ask myself how we can bring art, which is so much fun and can open so many perspectives, to the people. And then we’re back to the question of what actually makes art good. And, again, there are different responses: aesthetic, intellectual, emotional. In my opinion, there should be no hierarchy.
“People pass by on their way to the subway, to the supermarket, to the pharmacy. They can stop and take advantage of what we have to offer, or they can move on. That’s what’s really important to me, that it is an offer to the people.”
Luise: The shopping center where GROTTO is located is visited by a wide variety of people. My impression of the Hansaviertel in general is that many different generations and socio-economic backgrounds live side by side, or rather together, in this part of the city.
Leonie: That was one of the reasons why this place appealed to me so much in the first place. That we’re not on Linienstraße or Fasanenstraße, where there’s a certain clientele, but here. People pass by on their way to the subway, to the supermarket, to the pharmacy; they can stop and take advantage of what we have to offer, or they can move on. That’s what’s really important to me, that it is an offer to the people.
Luise: How would you describe the interactions between the gallery and the public or the neighborhood?
Leonie: Especially here at the café we have a very mixed crowd, and I think that’s great. The GROTTO openings are perhaps a little more homogeneous than usual. The artists bring their friends and then other people who already are interested in art come specifically for the opening. But on a day-to-day basis, it’s really very different people that stop by, and I think that’s great. We always leave the door open and have fixed opening hours, which is incredibly important to me because it means that people can drop in spontaneously. Maybe they’ll just look at a postcard from the neighborhood, which we offer on a permanently installed shelf in cooperation with the citizens’ association, and then as a side-effect they also get something from the art. Those are actually the most beautiful encounters. Because then the gallery also becomes a space of possibility. And there can be conversations about art, but also about what is happening here in the neighborhood. It’s actually just as much local politics and community work as art education. And that kind of effort is only possible because I have a fantastic team. Maria Helena Nerhus Konttinen from Norway joined the team in March, and Nina Achtelik from Ireland joined at the beginning of October. They both support GROTTO immensely and carry it forward with their energy and ideas in a way that I could never do on my own. It is entirely thanks to them that we are able to maintain our opening hours and develop new events and projects.
Luise: How do you envision the collaboration between the café and the gallery in the future?
Leonie: The café opened in early July and is set to become a partner venue for GROTTO. There will be events here, and we have art on the walls. Gradually, the connections are becoming closer. In the shopping center we were a bit like the proverbial Englishman in New York. Now you can point to the café and say, hey, I’m here to see this exhibition, do you want to get a coffee? That creates a microcosm where the neighborhood can really come together. Almost 7,000 people live in the Hansaviertel. It’s very spread out, but now everyone comes together here in the café. You can see that there was a need for it.
Luise: In the 1950s, when the Hansaviertel was planned, a lot of urban planning projects were based on the idea that there was supposed to be lots of green space, but also places for people to meet and exchange ideas, in keeping with the spirit of democratic urban planning. In Le Corbusier’s Unité d’habitation in Marseille for example, which was completed in 1952, the roof terrace originally also had a kindergarten, a theater, and a gym. Over time, however, in many of these housing projects across Europe, these meeting places were usually the first things to go. My impression is that you are recreating these kinds of social spaces, where the architectural frame itself can flourish anew.
Leonie: Many of the apartments in the neighborhood were planned as social housing. In my building, the Giraffe, there used to be a community center on the 17th floor. And then in the 1990s, when so much of the housing in Germany was privatized, it disappeared.
Luise: Do you also work with other cultural institutions in the Hansaviertel?
Leonie: With GROTTO, we are the library’s official cooperation partner and organize many events together. On August 31, for example, the annual art book fair GROTTO Books, which we initiated together with our friend Stefan Marx, will take place there for the second time. We also organize readings, listening sessions, and concerts at the library. Everything is free of charge, which is important to make the events accessible.
Luise: That’s impressive, especially because GROTTO is not primarily a commercial gallery. How do you sustain it financially?
Leonie: The rent for the space is relatively low because it’s an old lease and we cooperate with the citizens’ association of the Hansaviertel. We sell books on their behalf, and in return we are granted of the space at a lower rent. At first, I was a little skeptical about this solution and thought that a bookshelf like this might interfere with the white cube aesthetic or make us seem less serious as an art space. But now I find it very charming and somehow cool that this cooperation exists and that it is visible in the space of the gallery itself. Then there are my colleagues that are partly employed through the Erasmus Plus program and Maria Helena who is generously supporting us on a volunteer basis. Everything else is financed by myself. I used to be able to cross-finance GROTTO through my full-time job at Grisebach. Last year, when I was studying in London, the situation was more precarious, so I also taught German and worked a couple of different smaller jobs to keep the art space afloat, but that wasn’t very sustainable.
Luise: The artwork you exhibit is also for sale, right?
Leonie: Yes, you can buy the works, and for almost every exhibition we also offer editions that are less expensive. However, sales are still very difficult in Berlin, perhaps even more so because GROTTO is not a commercial gallery. You really have to convey to people that they can also buy the art and support us in doing so. It’s different in London, in the US, and definitely in China. I think we’re still stuck in this “poor but sexy” mode, which is actually no longer that accurate, even in Berlin.
Luise: Do you see that at other galleries too?
Leonie: Of course the city has well-known galleries here that sell a lot of works, but they often have an international collector base and regular customers that they have built up over decades. Of course a space that has only been around for a year and a half can’t have achieved that. To do that, I would have to shift my priorities and probably spend every evening at one event or another to meet the right people.
“I think we’re still stuck in this “poor but sexy” mode, which is actually no longer that accurate, even in Berlin.”
Luise: But I imagine that calling GROTTO a project space rather than a gallery also offers a degree of freedom from the expectation to sell as much as possible.
Leonie: Absolutely. I think that’s an incredible freedom, and I definitely want to preserve it. When you’re not publicly funded or have the expectations of a collector base breathing down your neck, you have a lot more wiggle room. The freedom to do what you want cannot be measured in monetary terms. But of course it’s also difficult to cope with this great financial uncertainty. We always have great exhibition texts that have to be paid for, we hire people to take professional photographs to document each show. All of this is important in order to even get attention and be taken seriously, but it costs money.
Luise: On the topic of attention: how does GROTTO get into the world? How do you reach people?
Leonie: One of my friends jokingly calls me Marketing Barbie because I enjoy that side of the job so much. I think when you believe in the work, you want to get the message out, tell people about it, and that conviction is what drives me to do it. I do my job because I want to create a platform for my friends, for the artists I believe in. That’s also why the space is called GROTTO and not Galerie Leonie Herweg. It’s not about me, it's about the work we show. And of course it’s always much easier to promote other people than to promote yourself.
Luise: That’s a very true statement.
Leonie: I’m a little bored by Instagram, with all of the so-called shadowbanning and everything that goes on there, but that's just part of the platform now. I use it primarily to create a kind of archive, and because people search there much more than they do on Google these days. But first and foremost, I try to create memories through experiences that touch people, as corny as that may sound. I want to create events where people ask themselves at the end: wow, why was that free? I would have paid for that. At the last opening, we gave instant noodles to everyone, which you could then pour hot water over. That was much better than beer, something different, it was fun.
Luise: What are some of events that you have organized recently, in addition to the openings?
Leonie: Last August, we organized a sculpture walk around the neighborhood. A sculpture by my friend Hannah Sophie Dunkelberg marked each stop where another friend, Theresia Enzensberger, read from her book. Everyone walked through the neighborhood with their Bluetooth headphones and listened to the reading. At the end, there was a fantastic cake that looked like the cover. Something like that creates strong memories and also appeals to people who might not visit art galleries. We also do a lot of intergenerational work. The next exhibition is with Galli, an 81-year-old Berlin artist who most recently exhibited at the Palais Populaire and CCA Goldsmiths. I’m also interested in this interplay between larger institutions and smaller project spaces.
“First and foremost, I try to create memories through experiences that touch people, as corny as that may sound. I want to create events where people ask themselves at the end: wow, why was that free? I would have paid for that.”
Luise: These different levels are also reflected in the artists you exhibit at GROTTO. You show the work of someone like Galli, who already looks back on a long and prolific career, but then also include younger artists like Tanita Olbrich, who graduated from art school only a few years ago.
Leonie: At the beginning of the year we had an exhibition with Ayşe Erkmen, who has lived in Berlin for many years and taught at the Städelschule for a long time. That was great, because not only does it attract a slightly different audience than usual, but it’s also fun for me, as someone who is in constant exchange with my artists, to create dialogues between people who are just starting out and someone like Erkmen, who is very well established internationally. That creates an ongoing conversation across the exhibitions. At GROTTO Books, these kinds of encounters on equal terms also take place. We always manage to get a few stars on board. Last year, for example, AA Bronson, who founded the Art Book Fair in New York, took part and was happy to participate in our small art book fair in the Hansaviertel, next to someone who had just published her first DIY zine.
Luise: What you are saying really illuminates how important galleries and project spaces are for establishing these connections between individual artists. These links are really a first stop in the historiography of art. I imagine what it will be like in sixty years to go through the GROTTO archives, what kind of image of the Berlin art world in 2025 will emerge from them.
Leonie: The spider’s web is again an important image for me here. Our exhibition with Sunah Choi was created in cooperation with Edition Block, founded by the curator René Block. He is a key figure who, as a gallery owner since the 1960s, has built a huge archive and forged connections that have had a profound influence on contemporary art in Germany, Europe, and beyond.
“How can we preserve something like this, but also make it accessible to a new generation? It’s not about nostalgia, but about the relevance of these works for today.”
Luise: In 2016, there was a retrospective of Block’s curatorial work at the Berlinische Galerie and at nbk, and you could see very clearly how many different people he has brought together across his career.
Leonie: I’m always looking to make connections like that. Next year, we’re organizing an exhibition with Gabi Dziuba, a jewelry designer who has collaborated with many artists and was firmly rooted in the punk scene in the 1980s. When you put her work side by side with the work of someone who is a bit younger, something new emerges. How can we preserve something like this, but also make it accessible to a new generation? It’s not about nostalgia, but about the relevance of these works for today.
Luise: I also think it’s important that artists like Galli or Dziuba, who have a strong connection to Berlin as a city, are offered a space that carries this connection into the future. The city’s art scene has grown and internationalized considerably since the 2000s. Many people only have a very vague idea of what actually made Berlin the place that it is today. There are very diffuse myths that define the city's image: techno, hedonism, the supposed zero hour of the fall of the Berlin Wall, a kind of ideological void that is then available as a playground. But of course, that’s a very watered-down image, because in fact there are these very concrete figures who embody the history of art and space. An example that comes to mind is the exhibition Eccentric 80s, which was on display close to here, at the Kunstverein Tiergarten, and was dedicated to the work of Tabea Blumenschein, Rabe Perplexum, and Hilka Nordhausen. Or the Claudia Skoda exhibition at the Kunstbibliothek that happened the year before. Both exhibitions provided a historiographical classification for these rarely shown works, but showed the art's relevance for the present and the future.
Leonie: We recently had a customer here who said, “It’s about carrying the torch forward, not preserving the ashes.” I think that sums it up well. I can’t relate to this romanticization of nostalgia. I wasn’t in Berlin in the 90s and it’s not my generation. Sure, it’s cool, but I don’t know if it was as cool as people make it out to be.
“I’m not as interested in institutional work as I used to be. Perhaps you have a fancy title, but ultimately you sit at your desk and move emails from one folder to another.”
Luise: How then would you describe your, our, generation?
Leonie: That’s a difficult question to answer because everyone’s perspective shifts depending on their standpoint. Again, it really depends on who you surround yourself with. I have so many wonderful people around me that I’m tempted to say if we ruled the world, it would be a better place. At the same time, however, there is a certain inertia or fatigue in many places, which is certainly also caused by social media. But I’m not one to lament that everything was better in the past. So I’d answer your question with: if not us, then who?
I know so many smart, wonderful people whom I trust very much. Yet it’s terrible to see what is happening in the world. But that doesn’t mean you should give up, you have to apply yourself to what is possible in your surroundings. Someone who has lived in the Hansaviertel since 1971 now regularly comes to the café and chats with my former intern because they both have connections to England. There is also our neighbor, whom we hired last week and who has a lot of knowledge about the furniture and architecture that he can now share with our guests. And he gets along well with a colleague who has arrived from New York and who is in her early twenties. It makes me happy and also a little proud that this place is becoming a visible part of the community. There is also a scenario where the revolution happens and no one shows up. That doesn’t do any good either.
Luise: The verve and spirit with which you manage both GROTTO and the café is admirable and, to use , inspiring. What are your plans for both of them, and perhaps beyond?
Leonie: Right now, it’s like having two full time jobs. We’re here all day and then I come home to write emails until late into the night. That’s not at all something I want to glorify, I think the hype around constant busyness is stupid. But right now, that’s just how it is. And it’s nice to see that things are moving ahead. Right now, I am giving myself time to continue building the café and GROTTO. As you can see, I am currently working in service because I had never done that before and want to have first-hand experience. Then I have a few freelance projects that I am curating, in addition to GROTTO. One is an annual exhibition by the Hansaviertel Foundation for Art Week. And we’re going to activate the vacant Kaiser-Friedrich-Gedächtniskirche with a concert and a performance by Daria Blum.
There are also a few things that aren’t quite set in stone yet, so we’ll see. I’m not as interested in institutional work as I used to be. Perhaps you have a fancy title, but ultimately you sit at your desk and, to put it bluntly, move emails from one folder to another. It’s nice to indulge a little bit without immediately looking for the next permanent job. That’s the luxury I’m allowing myself right now. But when the moment comes that someone calls and it feels right, I wouldn’t say no. I am just not interested in working in a hostile environment right now. I’m fortunate to have that freedom at the moment. I’m grateful for that.