I grew up in Heidelberg, in a family where a great deal revolved around culture. My father built up a market research institute, and what I took from that early on was this: don’t simply accept things, question them – and try to understand the dynamics that really drive how people act. I grew into the art world step by step: first with individual projects for the Keil Collection Heidelberg and the Matthias Maaß Collection, and since 2021 at the Historia auction house in Berlin. So I didn’t come in through art history, but through the question of how this market actually works.

What does a business psychologist do in the auction business?

More than you might think. The art market doesn’t trade in objects, it trades in trust, scarcity and meaning – and those are psychological currencies. Anyone who understands why people collect, buy and let go will appraise better, negotiate better and advise better. Especially with estates, where emotion and market reality meet head-on.

Why do people entrust you with entire collections?

Because I take them on in full – not just the highlights – and stand behind the result. And perhaps because I work by a principle I picked up at home: a good deal is one in which everyone wins. Maximising my own interest is alien to me – what matters to me is the project as a whole: the collection, the people behind it, and the buyers who carry it onwards. The largest project so far, the closing auction of the Majolika Manufaktur Karlsruhe, showed me that this really does work: more than 10,000 objects, three auction days – and every single piece sold.

What can’t you do?

I’m not an art historian – and I don’t pretend to be. For expert opinions, conservation and specialist fields I have a network grown over years, of people who are better at it than I am. My work is to bring the right people to the right collection at the right moment – and to keep the overview. And if an auction isn’t worth it, I say so. Even when it costs me the commission.

Why do you do all this?

It sounds sentimental, but to a large extent it is simply love of art. Every work has its own story – a reason why it once entered a collection, and a reason why it is leaving it now. Unlike almost everything else that is traded today, these objects have a soul. That fascinates me. It is why, with Art Unscripted, I hold long conversations with people who devote their lives to art. And why I stood behind the rostrum at a charity auction where young first-time bidders acquired their very first works – with all proceeds going to children with cancer. Art shouldn’t disappear into storage; it should find its way to people who know how to value it.