Berlin Wall pieces sold at the Monaco auction of June 1990
Where lots from the 1990 sale that opened the trade in the Wall ended up: a Swiss suburb, a cognac estate, a cement works, a Silesian meadow and the Vatican.
On 23 June 1990 the LeLé Berlin Wall Verkaufs- und Wirtschaftswerbung GmbH auctioned eighty-one pieces of the Berlin Wall at the Hotel Metropole Palace in Monaco, before about a hundred collectors and dealers, with the proceeds promised in full to the failing health service of a GDR that still existed. The catalogue listed thirty-three segments painted by Thierry Noir and twelve by Kiddy Citny, and presented them as keystones in the longest work of art in the world. The atlas can follow five of its lots. Lots 33 and 34, the two halves of a Citny heart that had greeted the bidders at the hotel entrance, went to the Swiss entrepreneur Pascal Märki for over 100,000 marks and stand on his family's property near Basel. Lot 81, the last in the catalogue, was bought by the cognac heiress Ljiljana Hennessy and is in the tea house on the estate near Jarnac, repainted on camera by Citny in 2009 after the weather had worn it. The managing director of an Italian cement works paid 20,000 marks for a segment that Stern judged extraordinarily ugly, for a factory art museum at Merone that no longer exists. And Marco Piccininni bought a Kreuzberg element and gave it to John Paul II; it stands at the edge of the Vatican Gardens.
The fifth record is the auction's remainder. Eight brightly painted segments sold that day were never collected by their buyers, one of them knocked down to Japanese bidders for 40,000 marks before they changed their minds, and they stand today among the forty-three in Ludwik Wasecki's meadow at Sosnówka. The principality itself kept a fragment, at the railway station, and can no longer say when or how it arrived: the place that dispersed the Wall to the world lost track of its own piece. What the sale did to the artists whose work it sold is told in Who Painted the Berlin Wall?.
Basel
Lots 33 and 34, the Citny heart from the catalogue's cover, bought by Pascal Märki for over 100,000 marks plus duty.
Jarnac
Lot 81, the last in the catalogue: a 1.85 m Waldemarstraße fragment with certificate 263, bought by Ljiljana Hennessy.
Merone
Bought for 20,000 marks by a cement works director for a factory art museum that was later wound up.
Vatikanstadt
Bought by Marco Piccininni and given to John Paul II; at the edge of the Vatican Gardens, commonly dated to 1994.
Sosnówka
Eight painted segments sold at Monaco and never collected, now among forty-three in a Silesian meadow.
Sources
- Chronicle of the Berlin Wall 1990 — Chronik der MauerThe Monte Carlo catalogue listed 81 segments, 33 painted by Thierry Noir and 12 by Kiddy Citny, presented as keystones in the longest work of art in the world.
- Federal Foundation — Berlin Wall worldwide, Monaco site entryNeither the principality's administration nor its tourist office could say when or how the fragment at Monaco station arrived.
Each site says what its evidence rests on, from Listed to Confirmed, and whether the piece can be seen today; a listing in a source inventory is not a confirmation that anyone has seen it. The research methodology explains how claims are weighed.