Scandal! Hermione von Preuschen and the “Mors Imperator”

A skeleton in a purple, ermine-trimmed cloak leans on a sword and tips over a throne. It wears a plain iron crown while a jewelled one falls to the floor, and one foot rests on a globe. In 1887 the Berlin Academy's jury called this lèse-majesté and "the unartistic expression of a crooked thought", because Emperor Wilhelm I was 90. The Emperor didn't object. The jury refused it anyway.

So Hermione von Preuschen rented rooms at Leipziger Straße 43, charged admission and let the press do the rest: a pop-up with a ticket desk, about 140 years early. The painting, long thought lost, is back on public view for the first time. Around it you get her letters, photographs and publications on the scandal, her world travels and the "Tempio Hermione" she built in Lichtenrade.

This is a cabinet show built around one painting, not a retrospective. Entry to all the gallery's exhibitions is €14 (€7 concessions), Tuesday to Sunday, 10:00 to 18:00, until 15 November.