I've never been to an auction before. As it should show, this is bad when you want to bid for something. Especially when it comes to things you have no idea about, clothes by Hannelore Elsner, for example, a woman I only knew very briefly. To be precise, I only saw the actress, who died in 2019, once, in Frankfurt. Years ago I cycled through Grüneburgpark when she was walking with a young man, possibly her son, in a kind of velvet jogging suit. It would be best if I could bid for this jogging suit, then I would at least have to tell the story of Grüneburgpark for the FAZ magazine, because that commissioned me to take part in the special auction of the Elsner estate and to write about it. Budget: "a few hundred euros".
Timo Frasch
Political correspondent in Munich.
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But the velvet jogging suit is, as far as I can see, not on sale.
Among the 1,400 items auctioned on a hot day at the end of July, there are many dresses and coats from Elsner, but only a few bags and shoes;
they were “not her thing”, writes a professor of fashion journalism in the elaborately designed auction newspaper (there is something like that!).
One of the most famous photos of Elsner shows how she and Bernd Eichinger, her partner for a few years, sip champagne from their high-heeled shoes.
At the auction, auctioneer Katrin Stoll announced that it was “a heartfelt wish” for Elsner that “her clothes should posthumously end up in the hands of women who enjoy them”. But what if it gets into the hands of men? A Christian Dior bustier is called very sexy. From the depths of the room, as Karl Heinz Bohrer would have put it, suddenly comes a mysterious man who has been following the auction from outside, smoking a lot, often looking at his smartphone as if he were receiving instructions from someone who is even more mysterious than he. The middle-aged man has long gray hair and a somewhat untamed beard, but his Maserati brand shoes alone make it clear that the supposed negligence is well arranged. The auction starts at 250 euros,for 580 euros he gets the bid - and my respect. As a man, do you first have to dare to bid for a bustier; the line between fan and fetishist is pretty fine.
A Chanel handbag
I was aware of this when I asked the auction house people, for journalistic reasons, whether Elsner's clothes had been washed. Answer: Yes, you just don't know exactly when. I do my first finger exercises as a bidder with a Louis Vuitton scarf. Prosaic thought: you can do something with that. It goes away for 330 euros, I got out at 260, also out of a sense of responsibility towards my employer. I would like a Chanel handbag because the inside pocket has a label that says “Presse”. The auction house suspects Elsner could have got them for a photo shoot. In any case, it would be a nice story, a press bag for a press man like me. Problem: The bag starts at the lower limit of 800 euros,in the end, she buys an extravagantly dressed man whose back I can only see for 1,500 euros. So far. The mysterious one with the beard strikes again. A vintage evening dress by Galliano, net-like viscose knit, partly transparent. Elsner wore it in 2000 on the occasion of the German Film Ball in the Hotel Bayerischer Hof in Munich. The mysterious one is there for 750 euros.