Der Beitrag Why did Torsten Bröhan lie about the purchase price for his collection’s sale to the city of Hangzhou? erschien zuerst auf Torsten Broehans million dollar secret.
]]>Bröhan acted especially aggressive against Johst in 2015 with regard to the purchase price for his collection of 7,000 design classics to the city of Hangzhou.
More information on Torsten Bröhan you’ll find → here.
Many Chinese and international media outlets had reported about the sale of his collection for € 55 millions. Johst proceeded likewise, considering himself on the safe side by referring to these articles. But Bröhan pushed through that Johst is not allowed to mention this sum. He made an affidavit in order to underpin his credibility before the responsible judge.
This is the wording of the affidavit:
“Knowing the penalty of perjury under the laws, I herewith affirm before the court in lieu of oath: …the alleged purchase price of € 55 millions … is wrong by more than 10 percent…“
Johst had to delete the corresponding text parts and bore substantial judicial costs arising from the proceedings. I report about this in → this article.
The following is generally valid: making an affidavit before a German court and lying thereby and causing damage to the opposing party is fraud and bears the risk of custodial sentence of up to five years or a fine.
Fraud is anything but a small offence. Who commits perjury has to be driven by substantial criminal energy.
Years later, in late 2018, when Bröhan still fought over the collection’s purchase commission with his former consultant Stephan Balzer, Torsten Bröhan had his lawyer Ralf Kemper present the following at court:
„…is the information provided that the purchase price agreed upon between Bröhan Art Design Ltd. and China Academy of Arts sums up to € 55 millions…“
After all – a purchase price of € 55 millions! Why did Bröhan lie when he sued Johst? Bröhan did not react to a respective inquiry until this article was published.
Back to the trial Balzer against Bröhan. In a terse letter to court Bröhan’s lawyer attempted to get his act together by claiming that the vendor hadn’t been Bröhan himself but Hong Kong based Broehan Art Design Ltd. and that expenses had to be deducted, blah blah… The judge saw through the stunt and was not impressed.
Meanwhile, the Berlin disctrict court has passed a judgement, Case No. 28 O 14/14: Torsten Bröhan has to pay a commission of € 5.5 millions plus interests to Stephan Balzer for the latter’s brokering of Bröhan’s collection of design classics to the city of Hangzhou. The judge sentenced that Bröhan owes Balzer more than € 6 millions. The decision is not legally effective yet. Bröhan’s lawyer announced that his client will appeal. Here you’ll find → Stephan Balzer’s press release on this court decision.
Journalist Marcus Johst is preparing to take legal action. He states in a general declaration: “The art world is full of big and small cheaters, that’s like folklore. But liars and fraudsters who try to harm others have to be unmasked and sentenced. This applies to the art market exactly as to any other economic sector.“
Der Beitrag Why did Torsten Bröhan lie about the purchase price for his collection’s sale to the city of Hangzhou? erschien zuerst auf Torsten Broehans million dollar secret.
]]>Der Beitrag Angry mail from Torsten Bröhan – what is the millionaire design collector trying to hide? erschien zuerst auf Torsten Broehans million dollar secret.
]]>We took the reported purchase price from ChinaDaily.com and HangZhou Weekly but were not able to check this information. Now a court has forbidden us from publishing this figure.
Why are we no longer permitted to cite the purchase price for Bröhan’s collection? Because, according to an angry letter from Bröhan’s lawyers, the sum is incorrect. The strange thing about this legally binding court judgment is that Torsten Bröhan did not even have to specify the correct sum, but simply stated that the actual amount differed by more than 10% from the amount cited, which Bröhan says is incorrect.
Why has Bröhan suddenly become so aggressive?
We have to wonder where this aggressive oversensitivity has suddenly come from, after the purchase price Bröhan is criticizing as incorrect had already been disseminated all around the world for years. Is there something in particular that Torsten Bröhan wants to hide?
From 2005 to 2011, Torsten Bröhan tried to sell his collection of design classics to museums and institutions all around the world, even hiring an agent – the German consultant Stephan Balzer – for this purpose. For a long time, his efforts were in vain. Until the Chinese Academy of Art (CAA) came and snapped up the opportunity. The city of Hangzhou paid the enormous bill.
PR wave for Hangzhou with the “Bauhaus collection”
In announcing the purchase of the Bröhan collection, the municipal government of Hangzhou set off a proud wave of PR. And the news of this fantastical purchase price, which Bröhan says is incorrect, spread around the world. Has Torsten Bröhan ever taken legal action against this before? We don’t know.
Four years later, everything is different: Bröhan is reacting angrily to our reports and having parts of them banned. What is the reason for this odd behavior?
Der Beitrag Angry mail from Torsten Bröhan – what is the millionaire design collector trying to hide? erschien zuerst auf Torsten Broehans million dollar secret.
]]>Der Beitrag May we introduce: this is Mr. Torsten Bröhan erschien zuerst auf Torsten Broehans million dollar secret.
]]>Who exactly is this Torsten Bröhan? „As a young boy of 14 or 15, I was already interested in Bauhaus,“ Bröhan says and shows how well he can combine great feelings with great business deals.
Torsten Bröhan is primarily a friendly elderly gentleman who lives in Berlin and has written numerous reference books: “Glasskunst der Moderne [Glass art of the modern age]“, Munich 1992; “Avantgarde Design 1880-1930“, Cologne 2001; “Glass of the Avant-Garde“, Munich 2001.
The father of the design-crazy businessman was a famous art collector: Karl H. Bröhan (1921 – 2000), a Hamburg medical entrepreneur who sold his company in the middle of the 1960s, moved to West Berlin and from then on dedicated himself to his passion: art. Bröhan senior built up an impressive collection of 16,000 works from the Art Noveau, Art Deco and Functionalism movements, which he donated to the city of Berlin in 1981. This exhibits Bröhan’s treasures in a museum named after him.
Father Karl H. Bröhan already started hording animal pictures and cigarette inserts at the age of eight. Son Torsten tried to build on the legend. And the way it looks, he actually managed to do so. However not in Germany but in China.
Retrospection: 1983 Torsten Bröhan opened a gallery for design classics and became the pioneer for dealing in decorative art. In 1992, however, he had to close again and sell his stock.
Bröhan switched to consulting and made his expert knowledge available to important institutes such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Victoria and Albert in London, the Musée d’Orsay in Paris and the Bauhaus Archive in Berlin.
Bröhan, however, did not lose his business sense. In 1997 he was involved in the establishment of the Global Art Fund of the German DZ-Bank in Luxemburg as fund manager, where investors could participate in a top-class collection in order to profit from its appreciation. Quite astonishing gains were actually achieved: almost 40% within a short period of time! 2000 however the fund was closed.
On the occasion of the third auction of a design Collection by Sotheby’s in 2005, the New York Times wrote an enthusiastic profile to the German dealer, which paints a picture of a friendly expert in his field with a well developed business sense who keeps on building up collections in order to unload them at a profit.
The auction was meant to finance his Bröhan Design Foundation. There he wanted „to establish an online archive of 20th and 21st century design and promote innovation in contemporary design“, said Bröhan.
In 2008 the next homage to Torsten Bröhan appeared, this time in the Financial Times where he was allowed to advertise his next sale. Once again a Bröhan Collection was to be unloaded. This time, however, to a buyer who would have to build a museum specifically for it. Bröhan: “It should be in a large city, somewhere with enough of a cultural infrastructure to guarantee the largest possible flow of visitors.” To a large extent, this is obviously the collection that created such a furor in China a few years later as the so-called Bauhaus Collection (according to Chinese officials and media).
There Bröhan found a buyer matching his taste in 2010 – the rich Chinese city of Hangzhou. A design museum is built, that in parts is dedicated to the name Bröhan as reported by the weekly magazine Nanbu Zhoukan. And Bröhan is supposed be awarded an honorary professorship at the China Academy of Art, it says there. (Source: Nanbu Zhoukan, verification not possible)..
His father Karl H. Bröhan would certainly have liked this.
*We have asked Torsten Bröhan for a comment on this issues. So far, no such comment has been received.
(picture: Jan Frommel)
Der Beitrag May we introduce: this is Mr. Torsten Bröhan erschien zuerst auf Torsten Broehans million dollar secret.
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