Art Historians

Kurz, Otto

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Kurz, Otto

Gender: male

Date Born: 1908

Date Died: 1975

Place Born: Vienna, Vienna state, Austria

Place Died: London, Greater London, England, UK

Home Country/ies: Austria

Subject Area(s): Warburg School

Overview

Kurz was the son of a medical doctor, Maximilian Kurz (1871-1941) and Anna Mandel (Kurz) (1884-1941). He attended the humanistiches Gymnasium in Vienna before entering the University of Vienna to study art history in 1927. There he heard lectures by Josef Rudolf Thomas Strzygowski and Hans Tietze, eventually completing his dissertation in 1931 under Julius Alwin von Schlosser on the topic of the early work of Guido Reni, then a much under-valued artist. For two years he taught a course on conservation at the Institut für österreichischen Geschichtsforschung, an institution modeled after the école des Chartres. He also volunteered in the main art-history library of Vienna, the österreichisches Museum für Kunst und Industrie. Kurz assisted fellow Schlosser student Ernst Kris, now a curator at the Kunsthistorisches Museum, on the myths of artists, which appeared as the book Die Legende vom Künstler in 1933. While still a Schlosser student, Nazi thugs took advantage of the police immunity in the university, bludgeoning Kurz, a Jew, in the middle of the university library. Untimately unable to find work in an Austria evermore aligning itself with Nazi Germany, Schlosser and Kris, helped Kurz secure a job at the private Warburg Library in Hamburg, then under the direction of Fritz Saxl. Saxl returned to Vienna only long enough to pass the eleven examinations at the Geschichtsforschung institute (1933). When Saxl moved the Warburg to London, Kurz was invited to emigrate to England as well. In England he completed the first volume of Warburg’s Bibliography of the Survival of the Classics (1934). A fellow Schlosser student, the art historian Hilde Schüller accompanied him and the two were married in 1937 (see Hilde Kurz). Kurz was able to find employment editing a critical edition of Marco Polo’s Description of the World. His interest in Guido Reni caught the attention of art historian Denis Mahon, one of the few Italian baroque enthusiasts in England at the time. Kurz used an introduction from Heinrich Bodmer to assist Mahon with Italian translation and Mahon took Kurz to the Soviet Union to view baroque art. Mahon’s contribution to Kurz’s salary made it possible for Kurz to survive in England. He completed a book with Hugo Buchthal on Christian manuscripts. In 1939 Saxl secured a two-year grant for Kurz and Gombrich from Sir Percival David (1892-1964). When World War II was declared in Britain, Kurz was interned as an enemy alien. In 1943 he was commission by Anthony Blunt to catalog the collection of Bolognese drawings at Windsor Castle (published 1955). By 1944, Kurz had secured a position as assistant librarian at the Warburg, whose permanent home was now the University of London. He was made Librarian in 1949.Throughout his life, Kurz venerated the memory of his mentor, Schlosser. He updated and translated Schlosser’s Kunstliteratur into Italian (1964) and issued a moving personal memoir in 1955. Kurz was so enamored of his teacher that, according to Gombrich, Kurz deleted paragraphs of a draft of his dissertation with pencil marks next to them, assuming they were criticisms by Schlosser, never bothering to ask (they were marks of approval).

Selected Bibliography

[complete bibliography:] “Bibliography of O. Kurz’s Published Articles.” Otto Kurz, 1908-1975. s.l.: s.n, 1975, pp. 4-14; “Barocco: storia di un concetto.” Barocco europeo e barocco veneziano. Vittore Branca, ed. Florence: 1963; [and Kris, Ernst] Die Legende vom Künstler: ein geschichtlicher Versuch. Vienna: Krystall-Verlag, 1934, English, Legend, Myth and Magic in the Image of the Artist: An Historical Experiment. Trans. Alistair Laing. Revised by Otto Kurz. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1979; and Buchthal, Hugo. A Hand List of Illuminated Oriental Christian Manuscripts. London: The Warburg Institute, 1942; edited, with Gombrich, Ernst H., and Held, Julius. Essays in Honor of Hans Tietze, 1880-1954. New York: Gazette des Beaux-Arts, 1958; Bolognese Drawings of the XVII & XVIII Centuries: in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen at Windsor Castle. London: Phaidon Press, 1955, 2nd ed. Bologna: Nuova Alfa Editoriale, 1988; European Clocks and Watches in the Near East. London: Warburg Institute, University of London, 1975; Fakes: a Handbook for Collectors and Students. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1948; Selected Studies. London: Dorian Press, 1977-1982; Bibliography of Jewish Art. Jerusalem: Magnes Press, Hebrew University, 1967; and Mayer, L. A., and Ettinghausen, Richard. Mamluk Playing Cards. Leiden: Brill, 1971, [in fact, 1972]; “Julius von Schlosser: Personlità-Metodo-Lavoro.” Critica d’arte 11/12 (1955): 402-19.

Sources

Kleinbauer, W. Eugene. Research Guide to the History of Western Art. Sources of Information in the Humanities, no. 2. Chicago: American Library Association, 1982, p. 89 mentioned, 24 n. 48; Bazin, Germain. Histoire de l’histoire de l’art; de Vasari à nos jours. Paris: Albin Michel, 1986, pp. 165, 530; Wendland, Ulrike. Biographisches Handbuch deutschsprachiger Kunsthistoriker im Exil: Leben und Werk der unter dem Nationalsozialismus verfolgten und vertriebenen Wissenschaftler. Munich: Saur, 1999, vol. 1, pp. 399-404; “Words Spoken at Otto Kurz’s funeral, 10 September, 1975.” Otto Kurz, 1908-1975. s.l.: s.n, 1975, pp. 2-3; Gombrich, Ernst H. “Preface.” The Decorative Arts of Europe and the Islamic East. Selected Studies [of] Otto Kurz. vol. 1 London: Dorian Press, 1977, pp. i-iii; Gombrich, Ernst. “The Exploration of Culture Contacts: The Services to Scholarship of Otto Kurz (1908-1975).” Tributes: Interpreters of our Cultural Tradition. Ithica, NY: Cornell University Press, 1984, pp. 235-49.

Kurz, Hilde

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Kurz, Hilde

Other Names:

Hilde Schüller

Gender: female

Date Born: 22 February 1910

Date Died: 26 March 1981

Place Born: Vienna, Vienna state, Austria

Place Died: London, Greater London, England, UK

Home Country/ies: Austria

Subject Area(s): art theory and Vienna School

Institution(s): Universität Wien

Overview

Private scholar who worked extensively with husband Otto Kurz to produce publications on a variety of art historical topics. Hilde Kurz was born as Hilde Schüller in Vienna to parents Richard Schüller (1870-1972), a lawyer, doctor, and professor, and Emma Rosenthal (Schüller) (1880-1968). Hilda Schüller studied at Mädchenrealgymnasium in Josefstadt, Vienna, where she received her Abitur in 1928. In the same year, she began her studies in art history and archaeology at the University of Vienna (“Vienna School”), under professors like Julis Schlosser, Hans Tietze, and Karl Swoboda. Schüller took one semester off her studies at University of Vienna to study in Frankfurt. In 1933, she graduated and published her dissertation under Schlosser, titled Die Entwicklung der altniederländischen Tafelmalerei und Tapisserie von 1475 bis 1495 (The development of Old Netherlandish panel painting and tapestry from 1475 to 1495).

After earning her degree, Schüller completed a traineeship at the Albertina Collection of Prints and Drawings in Vienna. In 1937, she married Otto Kurz, a fellow art historian. Due to her Jewish heritage, Kurz was persecuted on “racial grounds” in the same year, and was thus forced to flee the country and emigrate to England. In the years following her arrival in England, Kurz worked mainly on her husband’s research. She published a larger essay of her own in 1952, titled Italian models of Hogarth’s picture stories.

Kurz experienced a significant health scare in 1952, which resulted in her undergoing brain surgery. She then developed hemiplegia and loss of speech. Kurz was taken care of by her husband in their home, against the recommendations of doctors. Regardless of a drastic decline in her health, Kurz still published works in the years following her brain surgery. In 1958, a joint work of hers written with Otto Kurz, titled “A bibliography of the writings of Hans Tietze and Erica Tietze – Conrat” in Feststhrift Hans Tietze, was published. Another joint essay between the two was published in 1972, titled The Turkish dresses in the costume-book of Rubens. As of 1979, Kurz lived in London, but her whereabouts afterwards are indeterminable up until her death in 1981.

Selected Bibliography

[dissertation:] Die Entwicklung der altniederländischen Tafelmalerei und Tapisserie von 1475 bis 1495. Vienna, 1933;
”Italian Models of Hogarth’s Picture Stories.” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 15 (1952): 136-168;
and Kurz, Otto. “A bibliography of the writings of Hans Tietze and Erica Tietze – Conrat.” Essays in honor of Hans Tietze, 1880-1954. New York: Gazette des Beaux-Arts, 1958, pp. 439-359;
and Kurz, Otto. “The Turkish Dresses in the Costume-book of Rubens.” Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 23 (1972): 275-290;

Sources

Wendland, Ulrike. Biographisches Handbuch deutschsprachiger Kunsthistoriker im Exil: Leben und Werk der unter dem Nationalsozialismus verfolgten und vertriebenen Wissenschaftler. Munich: Saur, 1999, vol. 1, pp. 351-355;
Nyburg, Anny.” ’’Dein großer Brief war ein Ereignis’: The Private and Professional Correspondence of the Refugee Art Historians Hilde and Otto Kurz”, in: Hammel, Andrea, ed. Anthony Grenville: Refugee Archives: Theory and Practice. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2007, pp. 123-139;
”Dr. Hilde Schüller.” Hohems Genealogy (website) https://www.hohenemsgenealogie.at/en/genealogy/getperson.php?personID=I5196.

Contributors: Helen Jennings

Kurth, Willy

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Kurth, Willy

Gender: male

Date Born: 1881

Date Died: unknown

Home Country/ies: Germany

Subject Area(s): graphic arts

Career(s): curators

Overview

Progressive curator of the Berlin graphics division (Kupferstichkabinett) at the Berlin Museums. Kurth served in the prints department under the director, Friedrich Winkler. His area was modernist graphics. At a time when the Nazi’s were attacking modern art, Kurth bought prints by some of their biggest targets, such as Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, for the collection. (wife, Bettina Kris)

Selected Bibliography

0.Metzler

Kurth, Betty

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Kurth, Bettina Dorothea

Other Names:

Betty Kurth
Bettina Dorothea Kurth
Betty Kris
Bettina Dorothea Kris

Gender: female

Date Born: 05 October 1878

Date Died: 12 November 1948

Place Born: Vienna, Vienna state, Austria

Place Died: London, Greater London, England, UK

Home Country/ies: Austria and England

Subject Area(s): decorative art (art genre) and textile art (visual works)

Overview

Private scholar; specialist in textile and medieval art; trained under the “Vienna School” scholars. Kurth was born in Vienna in 1878 to Samuel Kris, a court and judicial advocate (Hof- und Gerichtsadvokat), and Hermine Morawetz. She was the cousin of art historian Ernst Kris. Kurth attended school at a lyceum in Vienna, following which she took a teacher’s examination and spent several years working as a language teacher. In 1902, Kurth anonymously published the successful girls’ book Eine für Viele, a fictional diary concerning the sexual desires of a young girl and her interaction with bourgeois double standards. The book sparked the so-called “Vera debate”, prompting a number of counter-publications, and was considered scandalous within the women’s movement. In 1903, she married Peter Paul Kurth (1879–1924), a lawyer and archaeologist. She began attending the University of Vienna as a non-degree-seeking student in 1904. Kurth undertook gymnasium coursework and eventually took an external Abitur in 1907. Following the completion of her Abitur, Kurth enrolled at the University of Vienna studying art history and archaeology under Max Dvořák, Franz Wickhoff, Julius Schlosser, and Josef Strzygowski, whose methodology was known as the “Vienna School” of art history. Kurth was the first female art history student and one of the first female students ever at the University of Vienna. She received her doctorate in 1911 under Dvořák. Her dissertation was titled Die Fresken im Adlerturm zu Trient (The Frescoes in the Eagle Tower in Trento), and was published under the title “Ein Freskenzyklus im Adlerturm zu Trient” (“A Cycle of Frescoes in the Eagle Tower at Trento”) in the Jahrbuch des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Vienna in 1911. From 1911 onwards Kurth worked as a private scholar, focusing her research on textile art. She also lectured at adult education centers. Her husband died in 1924 at age 46. Kurth published her most notable work, the three-volume Die deutschen Bildteppiche des Mittelalters (The German Tapestries of the Middle Ages), in 1926. Following the Anschluss in 1938, Kurth emigrated to England because of religious persecution based on her Jewish heritage. From 1939 onwards, Kurth resided in London. She received financial support from the Society for the Protection of Science and Learning or SPSL (now the Council for At-Risk Academics); efforts by the SPSL to find employment for her were unsuccessful, mainly due to her age. Kurth published various articles and gave a lecture at the Warburg Institute, titled “The Wild Men in the Middle Ages and Their Analogies in the Antique”. She also worked on the collection of material for a catalog of all medieval textiles with representations of classical themes. After the evacuation of the Warburg Institute and its staff to Denham, Buckinghamshire because of the threat of bombing by Germany, Kurth lived with them, as she was nearly destitute. The art historian Hans Tietze gave a donation for her support to the SPSL in 1941. In 1945, she was contracted by the Glasgow Art Gallery to catalog the Sir William Burrell tapestry donations. Kurth died in an accident in 1948.

Kurth combined her work in art history with studies in historical research and medieval German literature, which “gave her work a rare width of scope”. Her papers on Gothic painting and iconography were significant in studies of medieval art history, and her volumes concerning German medieval tapestries became “indispensable to all students of the subject” and “a model of conscientious and successful research into technique, style, history and above all iconography”. Kurth was the first scholar to recognize the importance of the tapestry manufacture of Tournai as well as the flourishing of the arts at the court of Burgundy (Kurz).

Selected Bibliography

[dissertation:] Die Fresken im Adlerturm zu Trient. Vienna, 1911, [published:] “Ein Freskenzyklus im Adlerturm zu Trient.” Jahrbuch des Kunsthistorischen Institutes 5 (1911): 9–104;
Eine für Viele: Aus dem Tagebuch eines Mädchens. Leipzig: Seemann, 1902;
Das Lustschloss Schönbrunn. Vienna: 1920;
Gotische Bildteppiche aus Frankreich und Flandern. Munich: Riehn & Reusch, 1923;
Der deutsche Bildteppich der Gotik. Leipzig: E. A. Seemann, 1923;
Die deutschen Bildteppiche des Mittelalters. 3 vols. Vienna: Anton Schroll & Co., 1926;
“Two Hitherto Unknown English Embroideries of the 13th Century.” Embroidery 6, no. 1 (December 1937): 18–19;
“Two Unknown 15th Century Florentine Embroidered Pictures.” Embroidery 6, no. 2 (March 1938): 39–40;
“A Middle-Rhenish Bible Tapestry.” The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 75, no. 440 (November 1939): 210–213;
“Mediaeval Romances in Renaissance Tapestries.” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 5 (1942): 237–245;
“Matthew Paris and Villard de Honnecourt.” The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 81, no. 474 (September 1942): 227–228;
“Ecclesia and an Angel on the Andrew Auckland Cross.” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 6 (1943): 213–214;
“The Iconography of the Wirksworth Slab.” The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 86, no. 506 (May 1945): 114–121;
“Gothic Tapestries in the Burrell Collection.” Glasgow Art Review 1, no. 1 (January 1946): 3–8;
“Masterpieces of Gothic Tapestry in the Burrell Collection.” Connoisseur 117 (January 1946): 3–12;
“Some Hitherto Unknown Tapestries with the Story of Jonathan Maccabeus.” Connoisseur 120 (July 1947): 22–25;
“A Silesian Gold Embroidery of the 15th Century.” Connoisseur 121 (January 1948): 38–40;
“A ‘Tree of Jesse’ Tapestry Panel.” Connoisseur 122 (July 1948): 94–96.

Sources

[obituary:] Kurz, Hilde. “Betty Kurth.” The Burlington Magazine 91, no. 550 (1949): 23;
Wendland, Ulrike. Biographisches Handbuch deutschsprachiger Kunsthistoriker im Exil: Leben und Werk der unter dem Nationalsozialismus verfolgten und vertriebenen Wissenschaftler. Munich: Saur, 1999, vol. 1, pp. 394–397.

Contributors: Lindsay Dial

Kunzle, David

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Kunzle, David

Other Names:

David Mark Kunzle

Gender: male

Date Born: 1936

Place Born: Birmingham, West Midlands, England, UK

Home Country/ies: United Kingdom

Subject Area(s): art theory, comic strips, comics (documents), information artifacts, Marxism, posters, and social history

Overview

Marxist/social historian-style scholar of popular arts, the poster and comic strip. Kunzle was educated at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge University, receiving his B.A. in 1957 with honors. After his Ph.D. from the University of London, whose dissertation he wrote in 1964 under E. H. Gombrich, he was appointed assistant professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara the following year. Kunzle was awarded a grant from National Endowment for the Humanities in 1967. In between lectureships at the California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, 1972 and 1975, he published The Early Comic Strip, the first volume of his groundbreaking multivolume work, The History of the Comic Strip in 1973. Kunzle’s book was in fact popular graphic arts including the broadside. He translated Ariel Dorfman and Armand Mattelart’s 1973 Para leer al pato Donald in 1975 as How to Read Donald Duck, a stunning indictment of the pervasiveness of Capitalism (“Imperialism” to use the author’s phrase) through innocuous cartoon imagery. Kunzle was appointed associate professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1977, an art history department noted for its social-history approach to art history. He received an American Council of Learned Societies grant in 1978, advancing to (full) professor in 1981. The second volume of his History of the Comic Strip, The Nineteenth Century, appeared in 1990. In 1998, Kunzle worked on an exhibition at the UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History which resulted in his book, Che Guevara: Icon, Myth and Message. His From Criminal to Courtier: The Soldier in Netherlandish Art 1550-1670 was published in 2002. The same year, he issued an updated edition of Fashion and Fetishism, a social history of fashion creating body-sculpture in the West as part of the Penguin Social History Classics series.Kunzle’s Marxist methodology, like many social-history-style art historians, rankled more traditionally trained art scholars. His pointed if not combative replies to reviews of his books resulted in continual rows. He accused (in print) the Dutch scholar Josua Bruyn of being crude and malicious (Art Bulletin, December 1978). His critics chided The Early Comic Strip for examining only those images which proved Kunzle’s contention that graphic art represented popular unrest. Kunzle’s application of sociological criteria the to interpretation of prints and his unabashed political ideology rescued popular arts from the formalistic/iconographic studies to which they had been relegated. Together with Albert Boime and O. K. Werckmeister, he perpetrated the Marxist-bend art history for which the UCLA Art Department became known.

Selected Bibliography

The Early Comic Strip: Narrative Strips and Picture Stories in the European Broadsheet from c. 1450 to 1825. The History of the Comic Strip 1. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973; The Nineteenth Century. The History of the Comic Strip 2. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990.

Sources

Kleinbauer, W. Eugene. Research Guide to the History of Western Art. Sources of Information in the Humanities, no. 2. Chicago: American Library Association, 1982, p. 141; Adhémar, Jean. [Review of History of the Comic Strip, Vol. I.] Art Bulletin 57, no. 2 (June 1975): 301-302.

Kunze, Herbert

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Kunze, Herbert

Gender: male

Date Born: 06 December 1895

Date Died: 12 February 1975

Place Born: Stassfurt am Bode, Saxony, Germany

Place Died: Erfurt, Thuringia, Germany

Home Country/ies: Germany

Subject Area(s): museums (institutions)

Career(s): directors (administrators) and museum directors

Institution(s): Städtischen Museum

Overview

Museum director for the Städtischen Museum, Erfurt; staunch advocate for modern art, despite its contreversial nature under the Nazi Party in the 1920s and 1930s. Kunze was born in Staßfurt, Germany, to parents Gustav Kunze, a teacher, and Anna Beyer (Kunze). His formal education began in Haldensleben, where he received his Abitur in 1917 from the local gymnasium. In 1917, Kunze began studying at universities in Munich, Leipzig, and Halle, where he studied law, before ultimately switching to art history. His professors included Heinrich Wöfflin, Paul Frankl, Kurt Gerstenberg, and Wilhelm Pinder. Kunze’s college experience was interrupted for a year and a half due to his completion of military service during the First World War. He returned to school afterwards. At university in Halle in 1923, he completed his PhD in art history under Frankl. His dissertation titled Die Erfurter Plastik in der 2. Hälfte des 14. Jahrhunderts (The Sculpture of Erfurt in the 2nd Half of the 14th Century) was thus also published.

In 1925, Kunze published many scholarly works on sculpture, including Die Plastik des 14th Jahrhunderts in Sachsen und Thüringen (The Sculpture of the 14th Century in Saxony and Thuringia), Die gotische Skulptur in Mitteldeutschland (The Gothic Sculpture in Central Germany), and Die mittelalterliche Plastik im Oldenburger Landesmuseum (The medieval sculpture in the Oldenburg State Museum).

During this same year, Kunze became the Director of the Angermuseum in Erfurt, succeeding Edwin Redslob and Walter Kaesbach. At the Angermuseum, Kunze paid great attention to the care of the medieval art collection, consisting of works from Erfurt and Thuringia. His scholarly publishing then focused on the art and material culture of Erfurt, for which the museum was dedicated. A general work on Erfurt, Erfurt, appeared in 1928 followed the following year by one of the arts and crafts of the city, Das Erfurter Kunsthandwerk. In the early 1930s he wrote catalogs on the Erfurt cathedral museum (Das neue Dommuseum in Erfurt) and one on landscape painters in the Angermuseum (Landschaftsmalerei des 19. Jahrhunderts. Eine Führung durch das Erfurter Museum).

At the Angermuseum, Kunze’s most notable and controversial contribution was leading the expansion of the institution’s considerable modern collection, begun by his predecessors. During this time period, modern art was controversial. The Nazi party, who assumed power in Germany in 1933, considered the German Expressionist art degenerate (calling it un-German). Despite this, Kunze continued to purchase modern works as director until 1936. Because of his active engagement with modern art, Kunze was subsequently dismissed from his position at the Angermuseum in 1937. In that same year, the Nazi regime began their “Degenerate Art” campaign, and confiscated 591 works of art from Angermuseum. He was succeeded at the museum by Magdalene Rudolph (1901-1992) whom he married in 1942. Kunze kept an exceedingly low profile during this time.

In 1945, Kunze resumed his position as the Director of the Angermuseum. Upon returning, he commenced the reconstruction of the modern collection that had been destroyed by National Socialists. Erfurt, now in East Germany under communist control, had similar (though less violent) views on Expressionist art. He documented his experiences re-assembling the Museum collection in his Restaurierung von Museumsgut (Restoration of Museum Property, 1951). Kunze’s insistence of modern art’s importance ultimately led to his dismissal at the museum a second time in 1963. He died in his native city at eighty years old.

Selected Bibliography

Das Erfurter Kunsthandwerk. Erfurt 1929;
“Das neue Dommuseum in Erfurt.” In, Jahrbuch der Denkmalpflege in der Prov. Sachsen und in Anhalt. 1933/34, pp. 103-109;
Die Erfurter Plastik in der 2. Hälfte des 14. Jahrhunderts, Halle, 1923;
Die gotische Skulptur in Mitteldeutschland.. Bonn, 1925;
“Die mittelalterliche Plastik im Oldenburger Landesmuseum.” Oldenburger Jahrbuch 1925;
Die Plastik des 14th Jahrhunderts in Sachsen und Thüringen. Berlin 1925;
Erfurt. Berlin 1928;

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“Landschaftsmalerei des 19. Jahrhunderts. Eine Führung durch das Erfurter Museum.” In Die Akademie gemeinnütziger Wissenschaften zu Erfurt. New Series 521(935): 144-145;
Restaurierung von Museumsgut. In: Das Museum ist eine Bildungsstätte ersten Ranges. Erfurt 1951, pp. 21-27;

Sources

Wendland, Ulrike. Biographisches Handbuch deutschsprachiger Kunsthistoriker im Exil: Leben und Werk der unter dem Nationalsozialismus verfolgten und vertriebenen Wissenschaftler. Munich: Saur, 1999, vol. 1, pp. 351-355.
Nowak, Cornelia. “Herbert Kunze.” in Herrbach, Ernst, ed. Der Erfurter Kunstverein: zwischen Avantgarde und Anpassung: eine Dokumentation von 1886 bis 1945. Erfurt: Angermuseum, 2009, p. 224.

Contributors: Helen Jennings

Kunze, Emil

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Kunze, Emil

Gender: male

Date Born: 1901

Home Country/ies: Germany

Subject Area(s): bronzes (visual works), Classical, metalwork (visual works), and sculpture (visual works)

Overview

Classicist; scholar of bronzework.

Künstle, Karl

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Künstle, Karl

Gender: male

Date Born: 1859

Date Died: 1932

Home Country/ies: Germany

Overview

Patriological scholar who wrote an important early dictionary of saints iconography. Künstle’s work builds on a tradition of iconographic indexes begun by Anna Jameson in her Poetry of Sacred and Legendary Art, 1848.

Selected Bibliography

Ikonographie der christlichen Kunst. 2 vols. Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1926-28; Vita Sanctae Genovefae virginis Parisiorum patronae. Leipzig: B. G. Teubner, 1910; Eine Bibliothek der Symbole und theologischer Tractate zur Bekämpfung des Priscillianismus und westgothischen Arianismus aus dem VI. Jahrhundert: ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der theologischen Litteratur in Spanien. Mainz: F. Kirchheim, 1900.

Sources

Bazin, Germain. Histoire de l’histoire de l’art; de Vasari à nos jours. Paris: Albin Michel, 1986 p. 380

Patriological scholar who wrote an important early dictionary of saints iconography. Künstle’s work builds on a tradition of iconographic indexes begun by Anna Jameson in her Poetry of Sacred and Legendary Art, 184

Kümmel, Otto

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Kümmel, Otto

Other Names:

Otto Kümmel

Gender: male

Date Born: 22 August 1874

Date Died: 08 February 1952

Place Born: Blankenese, Hamburg, Germany

Place Died: Mainz, Rhineland Palatinate, Germany

Home Country/ies: Germany

Overview

Director of the Berlin State Museums during the Third Reich; Asianist. Kümmel came from a large family; his father, Werner Kümmel, was the director of city planning in the Altona section of Hamburg. Kümmel’s mother died of cancer when he was still small and his father shortly before his entering college at Freiburg in 1893. He studied archeology and philosophy, authoring a paper on the ancient Greek vase painter Brygos. Between 1896 and 1897 he attended classes at Bonn and the Sorbonne in Paris. While in Paris, he studied Hayashi offered at the Ecole des Langues Orientales. He mastered Japanese. Kümmel served a year in the military stationed in Lahr. He received his PhD in 1901 at Freiburg writting a thesis on Egyptian plant designs. The following year he joined the Hamburg Museum of Arts and Crafts (Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe) as a volunteer under Justus Brinckmann. In 1904 he moved to Berlin to the East Asia department of the Berlin Ethnological Museum (Völkerkundemuseum) under the distinguished Orientalist Friedrich W. K. Müller (1863-1930) and then, in 1905 at Freiburg. The following year, Wilhelm Bode hired him to be the first director of the new Department of East Asian Art at the Ethnological Museum in Berlin, part of the Berlin Museum structure Bode oversaw. He lived at the home of the collector Marie Toberentz Meyer (1833-1915) where he secured the property from burglars. Kümmel bought widely for the department, acquiring the inventory of Hayashi Tadamasa (1853-1906), an important early dealer of Japanese objects in the West. In 1911 he published Handbuch Das Kunstgewerbe in Japan (Manual of Arts in Japan). He contributed biographies for the Thieme-Becker biographical dictionary (Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler) on Japanese artists. Together with William Cohn (1880-1961) he founded Ostasiatische Zeitschrift, the first Western journal for East Asian art. He organized a major exhibition of East Asian art in Berlin the same year. Kümmel secured significant donations from Meyer and Gustav Jacoby (1856-1921). In 1912 he assisted in the Stockholm exhibition for Chinese art of the “Society of Friends of East Asian Art in Amsterdam.” The magazine was published continually through World War I. He authored the Die Kunst Ostasiens in 1921 in the post-war hardships prevented a separate Asian museum from opening until 1923 when Kümmel oversaw its opening on Prinz Albrecht Strasse in Berlin. Another exhibition, this time of Chinese art, was mounted under him in Berlin in 1929. Between 1925 and 1939 he often stayed at Gustav Adolf (1882-1973), later King Gustav VI Adolf, King of Sweden, in his castle. A devoted Asianist collector, the King facilliatated meetings with him and Bernhard Karlgren (1889-1978) and Osvald Sirén. Kümmel’s book on Chinese Bronzes appeared in 1928. He lectured at the University of Berlin as a professor of East Asian art history, and director of the Ethnographic Museum (Völkerkundemuseum) and the Museum of East Asian art (Museum für Ostasiatische Kunst). When the Nazis assumed power in Germany, Kümmel, a conservative and patriot, joined the Nazi party and was appointed Director General of the Prussian museums in Berlin. He dismissed those not in open alegience to the party (including Hermann Voss) replacing them with party stalwarts. A book on Japanese landscape painting appeared in 1939. Under the suggestion of Josef Goebbels (1897-1945), the Minister of Propaganda, Kümmel organized a “repatriation” of German art works in 1939 in the event of war. The so-called Kümmel Report formed a wish list of art the Nazi’s wanted for their new art museums. Kümmel’s two sons were both killed in the war. In February 1945 his office and research material were destroyed in a bombing. As the Russian army entered Berlin, Kümmel saw to it that soldiers understood where the art was stored inorder to ensure its survival. Much of the stored collection is today in the Hermitage, St. Petersburg. He was interviewed by Douglas Cooper, then a British Intelligence officer and subsequently relieved of his duties in 1945. In retirement he organized exhibitions at Celle (1950) and Berlin (1952). He fell ill in 1951 and worn-torn Berlin lacking hospital beds, was flown by U.S. military transport to the Mainz University Hospital. There he died in Mainz in 1952. His students included Werner Speiser (1908-1965), director of the Museum of East Asian Art in Cologne; Rose Hempel (1920-2009), Thomas Dexel (curator at the Metropolitan Museum in Braunschweig, Germany), Johanna Zick-Nissen (curator of Islamic Art at the Museum of Islamic Art in Berlin ), Gisela Armbruster (d. 1981) assistant professor in Heidelberg. Kümmel was among the first western art historians to speak Japanese and a respected Sinologist. However his complicity with Nazism has made his career infamous. His authoring of the three-volume, 500+ page “Kümmel Report” (a complete list of German art work that had been removed since 1500 [!]) “establish Kümmel as a leader among museum officials in the plundering campaign” (Petropoulos).

Selected Bibliography

[bibliography:] Walravens, Hartmut. Otto Kümmel.Bibliographien zur ostasiatischen Kunstgeschichte in Deutschland 3. Hamburg: Bell, 1984; Das Kunstgewerbe in Japan. Berlin: R. C. Schmidt, 1922; Chinesische Kunst: zweihundert Hauptwerke der Ausstellung der Gesellschaft für Ostasiatische Kunst in der Preussischen Akademie. Berlin: B. Cassirer, 1930; Die Kunst Ostasiens. Kunst des Ostens 4. Berlin: B. Cassirer, 1934.

Sources

Petropoulos, Jonathan. The Faustian Bargain: The Art World in Nazi Germany. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000, pp. 56-57; “Otto Kümmel.” Ostasien in Berlin: Biographische Notizen zu Personen, die zwischen 1905 und 1925 für die Ostasiatische Kunstabteilung der Berliner Museen bedeutungsvoll waren. http://www.w-ch-klose.de/html/ostasien_in_berlin#Otto;

Kultermann, Udo

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Kultermann, Udo

Gender: male

Date Born: 1927

Place Born: Szczecin, West Pomeranian Voivodeship, Poland

Home Country/ies: Germany

Subject Area(s): architecture (object genre) and sculpture (visual works)

Overview

Emeritus professor in architecture, Washington University, St. Louis, and art historiographer. He was born in Stettin, Germany, which is present-day Szczecin, Poland. Kultermann was the son of Georg Kultermann and Charlotte Schultz (Kultermann). Kultermann attended the University Griefswald, Germany from 1947 until 1950, and then the University Munster 1950-1953 where he was granted his Ph.D. Director, City Art Museum, Leverkusen, Germany (1959-1964). Kultermann moved to the United States in 1964 to be Professor of the history and theory of architecture, Washington University. He collaborated with Werner Hofmann on his Baukunst in unserer Zeit: Die Entwicklung seit 1850, Heyer, 1969. His second marriage was to Judith Danoof in 1975.

Selected Bibliography

Architecture in the Seventies. New York: Architectural Book Pub. Co., 1980; New Architecture in Africa. [Translated from the German by Ernst Flesch]. New York: Universe Books, 1963; New Japanese Architecture. New York: Praeger, 1960; Geschichte der Kunstgeschichte: Der Weg einer Wissenschaft. Vienna and Düsseldorf: Econ, 1966. 2nd ed. Frankfurt am Main and Vienna: Ullstein, 1981. English: The History of Art History. New York: Abaris, 1993; and Hofmann, Werner. Baukunst in unserer Zeit: Die Entwicklung seit 1850. Heyer, 1969, English, Modern Architecture in Color. New York: Viking, 1970.

Sources

Who’s Who in American Art 22 (1997-98):

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