Full Name: Schmoll genannt Eisenwerth, Josef Adolf
Other Names:
- J. Adolf Schmoll genannt Eisenwerth
Gender: male
Date Born: 15 February 1915
Date Died: 20 December 2010
Place Born: Berlin, Germany
Place Died: Munich, Bavaria, Germany
Home Country/ies: Germany
Subject Area(s): Medieval (European), photographs, and sculpture (visual works)
Institution(s): Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München
Overview
Rodin and photo historian; medievalist; Professor (Ordinarius) of art history at Munich. Schmoll’s father, also named Joseph Adolf Schmoll Eisenwerth (d. 1914), was a Mannheim-based mechanical engineer and his grandfather the renowned hydraulic engineer and bridge designer, Anton Adolph Schmoll genannt Eisenwerth (1834-1918). His father was killed in action in 1914 in the département Vosges. Schmoll received his Abitur in 1934 at the Berlin Schulfarm Insel Scharfenberg, an experimental progressive school. Schmoll studied art history, archeology, history and philosophy in Berlin, receiving his Ph.D. in 1939 with a dissertation written under Wilhelm Pinder on the topic on the Kloster Chorin in Brandenburg. During World War II, Schmoll served in the German military, 1939-1945, stationed in occupied France and later wounded. Upon his release in 1945, he became a teaching assistant at the University of Hanover and, in 1946, a lecturer in medieval architecture and deputy head of the department for art history at the Technische Universität Darmstadt (Technical University of Darmstadt). He lectured at the School for the Arts and Crafts (Centre Sarrois d ‘art et Metiers) in Saarbrücken, 1949-1950. Schmoll developed an interest in modern art, writing his habilitation under Hans Gerhard Evers in 1951 on Auguste Rodin. He was appointed as the founding director of the Art Institute the same year, where he published Der Torso als Symbol und Form in 1954 and rose to Professor in 1955. In 1962 the French medievalist Marcel Aubert died and Schmoll was asked to complete Aubert’s survey book on Gothic art together with Hans Hellmut Hofstätter. 1966 he joined the Department of Art History at the University in Munich. There he introduced modern art into the art-historical program, lecturing on Picasso, Klee, and the Bauhaus (of which he was a member of the Board of Trustees). Schmoll was a visiting professor at Pennsylvania State University in 1970 and the University of Zürich 1974-1976. He retired emeritus from Munich in 1980, lecturing as a visiting scholar at the University of Vienna (1988) and the following year in Salzburg. The Deutsche Gesellschaft für Photographie (German Society for Photography) bestowed him an achievement award in 2000. Germany
Selected Bibliography
[bibliography:] Nerdinger, Winfried, ed. Festschrift für J. A. Schmoll genannt Eisenwerth zum 90. Geburtstag. Munich: Zentralinst. für Kunstgeschichte, 2008; [dissertation:] Die Bauhütte von Chorin und die märkische Backsteinarchitektur bis zum Ende der askanischen Herrschaft. Berlin, 1939, published as, Das Kloster Chorin und die askanische Architektur in der Mark Brandenburg, 1260-1320. Berlin: De Gruyter, 1961; [collected essays:] Nerdinger, Winfried, and Schubert, Dietrich, eds. Epochengrenzen und Kontinuität: Studien zur Kunstgeschichte. Munich: Prestel, 1985; Der Torso als Symbol und Form: Zur Geschichte d. Torso-Motivs im Werk Rodins. Baden-Baden: Verl. f. Kunst u. Wissenschaft Grimm, 1954; Das Unvollendete als künstlerische Form. Bern: Francke, 1959; and Aubert, Marcel, and Hofstätter, Hans Hellmut. Hochgotik. Baden-Baden: Holle, 1963, English, High Gothic Art. London: Methuen, 1964; and Koopmann, Helmut. Beiträge zur Theorie der Künste im 19. Jahrhundert. Frankfurt am Main: V. Klostermann 1971; Das Phänomen Franz von Stuck: Kritiken, Essays, Interviews 1968-1972. Munich: Stuck-Jugendstil-Verein e. V., 1972; Kunstgeschichte. Darmstadt: Habel, 1974; Rodin und Camille Claudel. Munich: Prestel, 1994, English, Auguste Rodin and Camille Claudel. Munich: Prestel-Verlag, 1994.
Sources
“Vielseitig und undogmatisch: Zum Tod des Kunsthistorikers J. A. Schmoll gen. Eisenwerth.” Süddeutsche Zeitung December 29, 2010.
Contributors: Lee Sorensen