Zilkens' News Blog

Zilkens News Blog 10 2025

While carnival is being celebrated in Cologne and other places in Europe, there was an unspeakable, undignified and presumably staged appearance on Friday by the American president and his vice president in the style of the worst blackmailers, who were elected to office by the majority of the American population. In Europe, Orban has joined the Putinists. Europe must now at the latest manage on its own and whether the Community of 27 is the right organizational model or a new organization is to be founded in which Hungary and Slovakia, for example, are not included, but Great Britain will have to decide very soon. Europe's freedom is no longer being defended in Washington, but it is in Ukraine.

Whether the SPD can bring itself to join a CDU-led government as a junior partner is justifiably doubtful. They are far too happy to serve their own clientele who are more willing to demonstrate and strike. Alternatively, the CDU can only negotiate with the Greens and the Left, although this is unlikely to provide any positive impetus for the economy. There will be no talks with the party that every fifth person who went to the polls voted for. New elections then? The minimum wage is not a matter for politicians but for the organization responsible for it. Work must remain affordable and the 8% that is to be achieved now, before the continuation of negotiations in the public sector, has no rational basis. If anything, they are crying out for the axe to be applied there, because in the long term we can no longer afford anything apart from the military, judiciary, police, fire department and healthcare. Culture is always the first to go, and public resistance is hardly to be expected.

In Rome, the next counterfeiting workshop has been unearthed by the police. Their offers were sold on Ebay and Catawiki. The sales platforms should really not be used for art from the XIX and XX centuries. However, those who do not allow the trade the margin for serious work have only themselves to blame.

Annabel Fell-Clark, who has been responsible for the development of art insurance at Miller International in London for around two years, has left the company for an unknown destination.

There is good news to report from Essen: In addition to the Zeche Zollverein and the Museum Folkwang, a third cultural powerhouse is being created in the Heilig Geist church built by Dominikus Böhm. An exhibition curated by Ulrich Wilmes will open there on April 6 at 4:00 pm. It will be particularly exciting to see how the planned exhibitions will interact with the brutalist architecture. With all the difficult developments of the last few days, this is something positive that can only come to fruition through private initiative.

Let's hope that this week ends better than the last one. Stephan Zilkens and the team at Zilkens Fine Art Insurance Broker in Solothurn and Cologne wish you all the best