A Museum Treasury of Buddhist and Himalayan Art: The Peter Kienzle-Hardt Collection Part I

It is a special honor to present to you a collection that is truly one of a kind. The Peter Kienzle-Hardt Collection stands as a remarkable testament to the passion, dedication, and vision of its creators. This treasury of Buddhist and Himalayan art, assembled over decades by the Kienzle siblings and lovingly preserved through the stewardship of their sole heir Peter Kienzle-Hardt, reflects not only their shared fascination with Asian culture but also their profound respect for the spiritual and artistic heritage of the regions they explored. In this overview, we invite you to discover the compelling story behind this extraordinary collection, its journey through time, and the legacy it offers to connoisseurs and collectors around the world.

The Kienzle Siblings: A Shared Journey

 

The Kienzle siblings, from left: Reinhold, Else, and Horst

Dr. Horst Kienzle (1924-2019), the youngest of three siblings who grew up in Stuttgart before and during World War II, was only fifteen years old when the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939. His sister Else (1912-2006), the eldest, studied at the University of Tübingen from 1935 to 1937. She was a frontline medic during the war and later became a successful pharmacist who ran her own pharmacy near Bad Cannstatt station in Stuttgart for decades. His brother Reinhold (1917-2008) served in the Luftwaffe during the war and afterwards pursued a career as an engineer. Like all families during the Second World War, the Kienzle siblings must have witnessed unfathomable horrors. While all three led relatively long lives, none of them ever married or had any children.


Dr. Horst Kinzle


Dr. Horst Kinzle, chief of anesthesiology at the Klinikum Garmisch-Partenkirchen, a county hospital in Bavaria

The siblings lived together for much of their lives, sharing homes in the Stuttgart borough of Bad Cannstatt, where Else’s pharmacy still operates to this day, and Oberammergau in Garmish-Partenkirchen, where Horst was chief anesthesiologist at the county hospital between 1968 and 1990. They were avid travelers, beginning their journeys in the 1950s across West Asia with their mother Emilie (1882-1970). The family’s wealth originated from Kienzle Uhren, Germany’s oldest watchmakers.


Emilie and Else Kienzle on a study trip in West Asia

The Kienzle Uhren workshops in Wchwenningen am Neckar

Horst and Else’s professions provided the financial means to travel extensively and amass a significant art collection over decades. By the early 1970s, this collection had gained renown, as evidenced by a statement written by Dr. Marianne Yaldiz, director of the Museum of Indian Art in Berlin from 1986 to 2006.


Dr. Marianne Yaldiz (director of the Museum of Indian Art in Berlin from 1986 to 2006) holding a helcture at the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, Delhi

A statement written and signed by Dr. Marianne Yaldiz (director of the Museum of Indian Art in Berlin from 1986 to 2006) in December 2006, confirming her knowledge of the Kienzle Family Collection since the 1970s

Art and Adventure in the Himalayas

 

Günter Hauser at an expedition in Nepal, 1965

Many of the Kienzles’ trips, including their first ventures into the Himalayan realm, were organized by the mountaineer Günter Hauser (1928-1981) and his travel company Hauser Exkursionen. Günter Hauser was the first German to organize expeditions in Nepal, and for his services to the country he was named Royal Nepalese Consul in Munich (as can also be seen in visa stamps on the Kienzles’ passports). The siblings were also friends with the Austrian explorer Heinrich Harrer (1912-2006), author of Seven Years in Tibet (1952), famously portrayed by Brad Pitt in the 1997 film adaptation.

 

Heinrich Harrer, who was a friend of the Kienzles, and Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, in the early 1940s

While Hauser’s expeditions focused on extended hikes, ascending mountain peaks, and reaching new heights in a strictly literal sense, the Kienzles sought out and explored temples, monasteries, and markets, striving to experience religious festivals, cham dances, and other rituals and celebrations.

Driven by their ever-growing hunger for fine bronzes and thangkas, they would always try to find the best pieces wherever they traveled, investing large sums of money and forging lasting relationships to ensure they could acquire them. Their fervor and success in this pursuit, unparalleled among their fellow travelers, is not only demonstrated by their collection but further recorded in correspondences between Horst Kienzle and several businesses and individuals in Nepal and Ladakh, including the 12th Gyalwang Drukpa, Jigmet Pema Wangchen (b. 1963).


Dr. Horst Kienzle with the 12th Gyalwang Drukpa, Jigmet Pema Wangchen, circa mid-1970s


His Holiness the Gyalwang Drukpa, Jigmet Pema Wangchen (b. 1963)

The Kienzles supplemented their collection with purchases from auction houses and dealers such as Joachim Baader with his gallery Schoettle Ostasiatica in Stuttgart, Ludwig Bretschneider in Munich, and a young Peter Hardt, who would later play a pivotal role in the collection’s future. According to a statement written by Dr. Horst Kienzle on New Year’s Eve 2015, the siblings spent a total of DEM 2,500,000 or approx. EUR 4,000,000 on their collection alone – a conservative estimate calculating inflation based on the assumption that the bulk of their purchases were made between 1965 and 1985.

Peter Hardt: A Life Transformed by Art and Travel

 

Peter Hardt in Persepolis, 1973

Born in 1946 in Remscheid, Peter Hardt began his career as a graphic artist and typesetter. He and his wife Ingrid (d. 2005), a schoolteacher, lived a relatively simple life until one day Ingrid confiscated a book from a student and gave it to Peter to read: Ich radle um die Welt (‘I Cycle Around the World’) by the German journalist and travel writer Heinz Helfgen (1910-1990). Helfgen’s account of his trip around the world on a bicycle between 1951 and 1953 deeply inspired Peter, and he convinced Ingrid to embark on a similar journey beginning in 1973. For almost a year, they cycled around the globe and discovered breathtaking sights and fascinating cultures. The experience profoundly changed their outlook and their lives.


Peter Hardt's first wife Ingrid (d. 2005) 


Ingrid and Peter Hardt in 1973, shortly before their life-changing trip


Heinz Helfgen in Southeast Asia, illustrated in his book Ich radle um die Welt

Scenes from the bicycle trip around the world: the start in Koblenz in July 1973 (left) and Ingrid and Peter Hardt in Delhi, November 1973 (right)


The same column head Peter Hardt 'rode' in Persepolis, photographed almost forty years later in 2011

Upon returning to Germany, the couple began to sell some of the souvenirs they brought with them at local antique and flea markets. Their immediate success and heartfelt desire to share their experience of foreign cultures and passion for Asian art drove them to start a small business they named Kunsthandwerk der Nomaden (‘artisan crafts of the nomads’), Galerie Hardt, based in a small cottage in Sieplenbusch, Radevormwald in the former Duchy of Berg. Renamed simply Galerie Hardt in 1976, the gallery developed into one of Germany’s foremost purveyors of Asian antiques and works of art, particularly those from Tibet and other Himalayan regions. Numerous trips across Asia followed, although these were now usually made by car.

A Galerie Hardt exhibition at an art fair

Throughout his storied career, Peter organized countless exhibitions and participated in major international art fairs. He made many important contacts during this time and eventually met the Kienzle siblings, who shared his passion for Asian art and culture. A strong bond and deep friendship developed, ultimately leading to the creation of the Museum für Asiatische Kunst decades later.

The Birth of a Museum

 

An overhead view of the Museum für Asiatische Kunst in Sieplenbusch

In the early 2000s, nearly twenty years after the Kienzle siblings stopped collecting around 1985, they began searching for a custodian for their collection. They turned to their old friend Peter Hardt, but their initial hopes of donating the collection to a state museum were unfulfilled, as none could ensure its permanent exhibition. Eventually they decided that Peter Hardt would build a private museum of Asian art in Sieplenbusch – the same location as his first gallery. Planning and construction took over a decade and cost more than three million euros.

Peter Hardt and his wife Hong-Li Hardt in the garden of their Museum für Asiatische Kunst in Sieplenbusch, Radevormwald

When the museum opened to the public in 2014, Horst was the only surviving sibling. He attended the opening ceremony and moved to Radevormwald to remain close to the collection, living with Peter Hardt and his second wife Hong Li-Hardt (b. 1971). The museum became his pride, and he cheekily referred to himself as its ‘guard dog’. Featuring over 200 diverse and beautiful exhibits surrounded by a sculpture garden with over-lifesize statues of Buddha and other deities near a large koi pond, the museum was run by Li, who had emigrated from Shanghai and met Peter in 2009. Peter continued Galerie Hardt to help sustain the museum, even as visitor numbers remained modest. Before his death in 2019, Horst bequeathed his entire property to Peter and legally adopted him as his son, who has been using the name Peter Kienzle-Hardt ever since.

A Struggle to Preserve History

 

Dr. Horst Kienzle and the Hardts at the opening ceremony of the Museum für Asiatische Kunst in 2014

In the summer of 2024, the museum closed its doors, officially for renovations, but its future remains uncertain. It is a sad and telling fact that despite the years of hard work and millions of euros spent, the substantial, unique, and important collection built by the Kienzle siblings could be preserved in its entirety for only a short time in the oft-touted cultural landscape of Germany, which offers no subsidies for private museums and is mired in endless regulations. Yet the museum’s struggles have allowed us at Zacke the privilege of researching and presenting this extraordinary collection of Buddhist and Himalayan art featuring objects deaccessioned from the Museum für Asiatische Kunst, and offer you the reader an opportunity to give these remarkable works a new home and continue their legacy in your own collection.

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