Art Historians

Kaufmann, Emil

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Kaufmann, Emil

Gender: male

Date Born: 1891

Date Died: 1953

Place Born: Vienna, Vienna state, Austria

Place Died: Cheyenne, Laramie, WY, USA

Home Country/ies: Austria

Subject Area(s): architecture (object genre), French (culture or style), revolutions, and sculpture (visual works)

Overview

Ledoux and French Revolutionary architecture scholar. Kaufmann was the son of Max Kaufmann (d. 1902), businessman, and Friederike Baumwald (Kaufmann) (b. 1862). He was raised in Vienna, attending the Maximiliansgymnasium, 9th region of the city (IX Bezirk) along with the future Warburg School art historian Fritz Saxl. He received his Abitur in 1909 and entered the Exportakademie (literally, Export Academy), studying trade through 1911. Beginning in 1913 he attended lectures in the humanities at the Universities of Innsbruck and Vienna. At Innsbruck he studied art history under Heinrich Hammer, at Vienna archaeology with Emanuel Löwy, general history under Ludwig Pastor (1854-1928), and art history under Hans Semper and the Vienna School masters Max Dvořák and his students Julius Alwin von Schlosser and Hans Tietze. He also attended the competing school of art history at the University of Vienna run by Josef Rudolf Thomas Strzygowski and M. Dreger. Kaufmann fought as a soldier in World War I and attending school intermittently because of illness. He received his Ph.D. in 1920, writing his dissertation under Dvořák on the development of the architecture of Ledoux and classicism. After graduation Kaufmann could find no work as an art historian. He earned a living as a bank employee in Vienna, continuing his art-history research on the side. In 1933, Kaufmann published a monograph on Ledoux (the first full-length one) Von Ledoux bis Le Courbusier. The work was in fact a polemic on the development of modern architecture from 1770 to 1920. This sweeping thesis found many opponents. Most famously Meyer Schapiro, who found it simplistic, and the conservative Vienna-School Hans Sedlmayr (Schapiro’s nemesis) who found it a symptom of the pathology of modernism (Verlust der Mitte). He published numerous articles and dictionary entries (the Thieme-Becker lexikon ones on Ledoux and Marmorek). He lectured at the Urania museum, the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe and Austrian radio. Significant articles on Ledoux and the architect Boullée (the latter in English) were also published. With the annexation of Austria by the Nazi’s, Kaufmann, a Jew, emigrated to the United States. With little means of support, he lived penuriously, continuing to research French architecture, “the only reward was his satisfaction in revealing hidden aspects in the history of architecture and in scholarly work well done” (Schapiro). He was a Fellow at the Research School of the University of Southern California in 1941. He moved to the eastern United States were he lectured at Princeton, Harvard, Yale and the University of Chicago. While lecturing, Kaufmann worked on his book on revolutionary architecture. Kaufmann received grants from the American Philosophical Society and a Fulbright. He died in Wyoming while traveling to Los Angeles before his magnum opus could be completed. It was published posthumously in 1955. Some of his papers are at the American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia. Kaufmann brought the theories and work of the innovative architects prior to and of the French Revolution to modern scholarship. Using largely formal analysis and theoretical writings to exact social-historical significance, he created what Germain Bazin termed the “hétéronome” Baroque. Like his contemporary Pierre Francastel, Kaufmann has been accused of writing Franco-centric architectural histories (Bois). Erwin Panofsky wrote at the time of his immigration the the U.S. that he was the only person in his field of neo-classical architectural theory. Kaufmann’s use of the Kantian notions of autonomy and modernism influenced the work of later critics, historians and architects such as Philip Johnson in the 1940s, Colin Rowe in the 1950s and Aldo Rossi (1931-1997) in the 1950s and 1960s (Vidler, 2002).

Selected Bibliography

[dissertation:] Die Entwürfe des Architekten Ledoux und die Àsthetik des Klassizismus. Vienna, 1920, partially published in several venues as, 1) “Die Architekturtheorie der französischen Klassik und des Klassizismus.” Repertorium für Kunstwissenschaft 44 (1924) , 2) “Architektonisch Entwurfe aus der Zeit dere fanzosischen Revolution.” Zeitschrift für bildende Kunst 64 (1929) , 3) “Die Stadt des Architekten Ledoux: Zur Erkenntnis der autonomen Architektur.” Kunstwissenschaftlichen Forschungen 2 (1933); Von Ledoux bis Le Corbusier: Ursprung und Entwicklung der Autonomen Architektur. Vienna: Passer, 1933; “Etienne-Louis Boullée.” Art Bulletin 21 (September 1939): 212-27; Three Revolutionary Architects Boullée, Ledoux and Lequeu. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1952; Architecture in the Age of Reason: Baroque and Post-Baroque in England, Italy, and France. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1955.

Sources

“Biographical Note.” American Society of Architectural Historians Journal 3 no. 3 (July 1943): 12; Teyssot, Georges. “Emil Kaufmann and the Architecture of Reason: Klassizismus and ‘Revolutionary Architecture’.” Oppositions 13 (Summer, 1978): 47-74; Watkin, David. The Rise of Architectural History. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980, p. 180; Bazin, Germain. Histoire de l’histoire de l’art; de Vasari à nos jours. Paris: Albin Michel, 1986 p. 198-199; Kleinbauer, W. Eugene. Modern Perspectives in Western Art History: An Anthology of 20th-Century Writings on the Visual Arts. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971, p. 51 mentioned; Teyssot, Georges. “Neoclassic and Autonomous Architecture: the Formalism of Emil Kaufmann.” Architectural Design (London) 51 no. 6/7 (1981): 24-29; Metzler Kunsthistoriker Lexikon: zweihundert Porträts deutschsprachiger Autoren aus vier Jahrhunderten. Stuttgart: Metzler, 1999, pp. 208-210; 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. 360-362; Bois, Yve Alain. “Forward.” Francastel, Pierre. Art & Technology in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. New York: Zone Books/MIT Press, 2000, p. 13; Vidler, Anthony. “The Ledoux Effect: Emil Kaufmann and the Claims of Kantian Autonomy.” [Mining Autonomy issue] Perspecta 33 (2002): 16-29; Damisch, Hubert. “Ledoux with Kant.” Perspecta 33 (2002): 10-15;Vidler, Anthony. “Neoclassical Modernism: Emil Kaufmann.” in Histories of the Immediate Present: Inventing Architectural Modernism. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008, pp.16-59; [obituary:] Schapiro, Meyer. “Emil Kaufmann (1891-1953).” College Art Journal 13, no. 2 (Winter, 1954): 144.

Kaufmann, Edgard, Jr.

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Kaufmann, Edgard, Jr.

Gender: male

Date Born: 1910

Date Died: 1989

Place Born: Pittsburgh, Allegheny, PA, USA

Place Died: New York, NY, USA

Home Country/ies: United States

Subject Area(s): architecture (object genre), Modern (style or period), and sculpture (visual works)

Career(s): educators

Overview

Columbia University architectural historian, Frank Lloyd Wright scholar. Kaufmann was born to parents who were both heirs to a department store fortune. At age 10, his parents took him on a year tour of Europe, developing in him his taste for art. Kaufmann declined to attend college, preferring to study painting and architecture in Vienna and Florence and department store design in Germany. This constituted his only formal education. He moved to New York in his early twenties to become a painter. In 1934 he entered the Taliesin studio of Frank Lloyd Wright at Spring Green, Wisconsin. Although he remained there only one year, Wright’s work so impressed his father that the elder Kaufmann commissioned the architect to design their summer home. Perhaps, today, the most famous building by Wright, the commission also renewed the architect’s flagging reputation. In 1935, Kaufmann returned to Pittsburgh to run a department in the family business, but this, also, lasted briefly. When the Museum of Modern Art installed a photo exhibit of Fallingwater, the wealthy foundering Kaufmann was offered a job at MoMA by its director, Alfred H. Barr, Jr. Kaufmann’s resources and enthusiasm for modern art made him an ideal choice for Barr, who’s mission was to develop taste for modern art among potential MoMA patrons. The following years, Kaufmann assumed a position of personal assistant to Barr, accompanying him on buying trips to Mexico and Cuba when World War II precluded european travel. Thoroughly under Barr’s spell, Kaufmann contributed unrestictedly to Barr’s art funds. During World War II, he served in photo-intelligence in Austrailia. Afterward he returned to New York. When the senior Kaufmann died in 1955, his son inhabited Fallingwater for eight years. In 1963 he donated the house and surrounding woods to the Western Pennsylvania Land Conservancy. The same year he was appointed adjunct professor of Art History at Columbia University, a position he held until 1980. In 1970, he organized the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s exhibition, The Rise of American Architecture, the catalog of which remains an important contribution to architectural history. Among Kaufmann’s many benevolences included money for Alvar Aalto to design a room for the United Nations, major support for the Architectural History Foundation, and the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed office of his father to the Victoria and Albert Museum. Kaufmann published comparatively little. His writings draw largely on his personal experience with architects and knowledge of art as opposed to archival research. His contribution lies in promoting modernist- designed useful objects as works of art.

Selected Bibliography

Taliesin drawings; recent architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright, selected from his drawings. New York: Wittenborn, Schultz, 1952; and Hitchcock, Henry-Russell, and Scully, Vincent. The Rise of an American architecture. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Praeger, 1970; Introductions to modern design: What is modern design? What is modern interior design? New York: Museum of Modern Art, Arno Press, 1969; Fallingwater, a Frank Lloyd Wright country house. New York: Abbeville Press, 1986; 9 commentaries on Frank Lloyd Wright. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1989.

Sources

New York Times, August 6, 1989, Section 2, p. 29; The Independent (London), August 7, 1989, p. 10; The Daily Telegraph, August 9, 1989, p. 15; Marquis, Alice Goldfarb. Alfred H. Barr, Jr: Missionary for the Modern. Chicago: Contemporary Books, 1989, pp.

Kauffmann, Hans

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Kauffmann, Hans

Other Names:

Hans Johannes Kauffmann

Gender: male

Date Born: 1896

Date Died: 1983

Place Born: Kiel, Schleswig Holstein, Germany

Place Died: Bonn, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany

Home Country/ies: Germany

Overview

Kauffmann wrote his dissertation under Adolph Goldschmidt in Berlin. His students included Günter Bandmann and Martin Warnke.

Sources

Kleinbauer, W. Eugene. Modern Perspectives in Western Art History: An Anthology of 20th-Century Writings on the Visual Arts. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971, p. 46 mentioned; Metzler Kunsthistoriker Lexikon: zweihundert Porträts deutschsprachiger Autoren aus vier Jahrhunderten. Stuttgart: Metzler, 1999, pp. 204-7.

Kauffmann wrote his dissertation under Adolph Goldschmidt in Berlin. His students included Günter Bandmann and Martin Warnke.

Kauffmann, C.

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Kauffmann, C.

Other Names:

Claus Michael Kauffmann

Gender: male

Date Born: 1931

Home Country/ies: United Kingdom

Subject Area(s): Gothic (Medieval) and Romanesque

Career(s): directors (administrators)

Overview

Romanesque and Gothic art scholar; director, Warburg and Courtauld Institutes. Student of Hugo Buchthal.

Selected Bibliography

[collected essays] Studies in Medieval Art. London: Pindar Press, 1992; An Altar-piece of the Apocalypse from Master Bertram’s Workshop in Hamburg. London: H.M.S.O., 1968; The Baths of Pozzuoli: a Study of the Medieval Illuminations of Peter of Eboli’s Poem. Oxford: Bruno Cassirer, 1959; The Legend of Saint Ursula. London: H. M. Stationery Off., 1964; Romanesque Manuscripts, 1066-1190. London: Harvey Miller, 1975; Sketches by John Constable in the Victoria and Albert Museum. London: H.M.S.O., 1981; Catalogue of Paintings in the Wellington Museum. London: H.M.S.O., 1982.

Romanesque and Gothic art scholar; director, Warburg and Courtauld Institutes. Student of Hugo Buchthal.

Katzenellenbogen, Adolf

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Katzenellenbogen, Adolf

Other Names:

Adolf Max Katzenellenbogen

Gender: male

Date Born: 1901

Date Died: 1964

Place Born: Frankfurt am Main, Hesse, Germany

Place Died: Baltimore, Baltimore Independent City, MD, USA

Home Country/ies: Germany

Subject Area(s): French (culture or style), French Medieval styles, Medieval (European), and sculpture (visual works)

Career(s): art historians

Overview

Medievalist, wrote important monograph on sculpture at Chartres. Katzenellenbogen (literally, “cat’s elbow” in German) was the son of the jurist and bank director Albert Katzenellenbogen (1863-1942) and Cornelia Josephine Doctor (1870-1941), both assimilated Jews. His parents, intent on him pursuing a business career, sent him to England to learn the language at an early age. In Frankfurt, he received his Abitur from the Goethe-Gymnasium in 1920. Katzenellenbogen studied Law at Giessen, 1920-1923, receiving his doctor of jurisprudence in 1924. Beginning in 1926, he pursued art history at the newly-established University in Hamburg under the outstanding “Hamburg school” art historians Erwin Panofsky, Fritz Saxl and to a lesser extent, Charles de Tolnay. His dissertation, written under Panofsky, was on medieval iconography. His Ph.D. was granted in 1933. He moved to Konstanz (Constance), Germany, the same year as a private teacher associate with the university, supported by his family. He married the Swiss native Elisabeth Martha Holzheu (1904-1983), in 1935, a pianist. During these years, Katzenellenbogen researched the influence of theology on medieval iconography, findings which would later become his book on medieval allegories. His liberal political affiliations and his “non-Aryan” status resulted in his 1938 interning at the Dachau concentration camp. His health seriously declined there. Through the intervention of the Swiss art collector Oskar Reinhart (1885-1965) in Winterthur, he was freed and brought to Switzerland. After convalescence, Katzenellenbogen emigrated to England in 1939. There he published the first of two important monographs on medieval iconography, Allegories of the Virtues and Vices in Medieval Art, under the auspices of the Warburg Institute. He next emigrated to the United States late the same year. Through the assistance of his dissertation advisor, Panofsky, already a professor in the U.S., and New York University professor Walter W. S. Cook, he secured academic positions, beginning with Vassar College as a visiting lecturer in 1940. While in the U.S. he learned his father had perished in the extermination camp at Auschwitz in 1942. In 1943 he was appointed assistant professor at Vassar. Katzenellenbogen published a groundbreaking article on the influence of the Crusades in medieval iconography, “The Central Tympanum at Vézelay: Its Encyclopedic Meaning and Its Relation to the First Crusade,” in 1944. He became an American Citizen in 1946 and was promoted to associate professor in 1947. Katzenellenbogen was made (full) professor in 1953. With Panofsky he was a member of the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, N. J. After a visiting professorship at Smith, 1956-1958, he accepted the position as professor of Johns Hopkins University in 1958. The following year he published his important Sculptural Programs of Chartres Cathedral, which won the College Art Association’s Charles Rufus Morey award. He was a visiting professor at University of Freiberg in 1963. He died at age 63 after returning from an art conference in Germany. His M.A. students at Hopkins included the Dutch scholar Gary Schwartz. Katzenellenbogen was first an iconographer, trained by Panofsky and influenced by the French iconographer Émile Mâle. A “true heir to the Warburg [Institute] tradition” (Bober), he interwove theology and iconography into a blend of art analysis. Whitney Stoddard placed Katzenellenbogen in a straight continuum from the “father of modern [medieval] stylistic analysis,” Wilhelm Vöge, through the patterns-of-stylistic-transmission-theory of A. Kingsley Porter, commenting that while both the former writers conclusions had been questioned, Katzenellenbogen’s would likely not.

Selected Bibliography

[dissertation:] Die Psychomachie in der Kunst des Mittelalters von den Anfängen bis zum 13. Jahrhundert. Hamburg, 1933; Allegories of the Virtues and Vices in Medieval Art from Early Christian Times to the Thirteenth Century. London: Warburg Institute, 1939; “The Central Tympanum at Vézelay: Its Encyclopedic Meaning and Its Relation to the First Crusade.” Art Bulletin 26, no. 3 (September 1944): 141-151; The Sculptural Programs of Chartres Cathedral: Christ, Mary, Ecclesia. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1959.

Sources

Stoddard, Whitney A. “[Review of] The Sculptural Programs of Chartres Cathedral: Christ–Mary–Ecclesia by Adolf Katzenellenbogen.” Speculum 35, no. 4 (October 1960): 613-616; Kleinbauer, W. Eugene. Modern Perspectives in Western Art History: An Anthology of 20th-Century Writings on the Visual Arts. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971, p. 65 cited; 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. 81 mentioned; 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. 357-9; personal correspondence, John Katzenellenbogen, December 2009; [obituaries:] Bober, Harry. “Adolf Katzenellenbogen (1901-1964).” Art Journal 24, no. 4 (Summer 1965): 347; Schnell, Hugo. “Prof. Dr. Adolf Katzenellenbogen.” Münster 17 (1964): 427.

Contributors: Lee Sorensen

Kaschnitz von Weinberg, Guido, Freiherr

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Kaschnitz von Weinberg, Guido, Freiherr

Other Names:

Freiherr Guido Kaschnitz von Weinberg

Gender: male

Date Born: 1890

Date Died: 1958

Place Born: Vienna, Vienna state, Austria

Place Died: Frankfurt am Main, Hesse, Germany

Home Country/ies: Austria

Subject Area(s): ancient, archaeology, and Classical

Career(s): educators

Overview

Archaeologist and classical art professor, first post-war director of the Deutsches Archaölogisches Institut in Rome; major exponent of strukturprinzip approach to ancient art. Kaschnitz von Weinberg received his doctorate at the University of Vienna under the so-called (first) Vienna school of art history, whose faculty included Max Dvořàk, and Franz Wickhoff. His dissertation, written in 1913, was on Greek vase painting. Kaschnitz served in the Austrian Army during the First World War. Afterward he traveled widely, spending much research time (1923-1927) at the German Archaeological Institute (Deutsches Archaölogisches Institut or DAI) in Rome. During this time he wrote an article distancing his views from those of the Vienna school and advancing a structural methodology for the study of vases (see below). In 1925 he married the writer Marie-Luise von Holzing-Berstett (1901-1974), who took his name. From 1927-1936 he worked on cataloging the ancient Greek art collection of the Vatican. In 1929 he wrote an influential review of the new edition of the Die spätrömische Kunstindustrie of Aloïs Riegl. He taught for one semester at the University of Freiburg before accepting an appointment as Professor of Classical Archaeology at the University of Königsberg in 1932. At Königsberg he published some of his most significant essays in the structure-analytical (strukturprinzip) mode of the methodology of Riegl, a Vienna-school art historian whom he had never met. These essays included “Bemerkungen zur Struktur der ägyptischen Plastik” (1933). He subsequently was appointed to positions at the universities in Marburg (1937-1940) and Frankfurt (1940-1956). In 1953 he became the first director of the post-war incarnation of the Deutsches Archäologisches Institut in Rome, which he held until 1955. For the DAI, he resumed publication of the Römische Mitteilungen, which had been interrupted since 1944. He was assisted in this by the young scholar Helga von Heintze. He was succeeded at the DAI in 1956 by Reinhard Herbig. While at work on a synthetic work of ancient art, a project he had devoted some 20 years to, he died. Freifrau von Heintze became his literary executor, publishing his Römische Kunst postumously (1961-1963) as well as his collected writings. Methodologically, Kaschnitz-Weinberg was the closest follower of Riegl. He employed what he termed Struktur-analyse (Strukturforschung) to group works of ancient art, the principles that determined the work of art. A German theoretical notion attempting to replace the concept of style with a spatial structural analysis, it linked the objects to cultural identity. Applying it to a wide range of monuments, Egyptian, Greek, Etruscan and Roman, he analyzed the elements of an object’s formal structure which he postulated caused its particular stylistic appearance. Etruscan art in particular benefited from his early articles using this approach. Kaschnitz-Weinberg used this approach in a long series of articles in the 1920s and 30s (mostly in the Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archaölogischen Instituts, Römische Abteilung) contrasting his analysis with what he felt was the traditional, more subjective approach to art. This enthusiasm for “structural analysis” (distinct here from the post-modern use of the term) is a form of Riegl’s concept of Kunstwollen. Use of this method enabled Kaschnitz-Weinberg’s to conclude, among much else, that all ancient Greek architecture derived from the phallic cult brought to the south by Indo-Germanic tribes. His approach was typically to conclude an entire world-view from the analysis of a few core monument or objects of the culture. He further asserted that Roman architecture is founded on subterranean mother earth worship where the underground chambers represented the womb (Die Mittelmeerischen Grundlagen, 1944). The influence of his thought is most noticeable in the writing of Friedrich Matz (1890-1974) and Ranuccio Bianchi Bandinelli.

Selected Bibliography

Ausgewählte Schriften. Edited by Helga von Heintze. 3 vols. Berlin: Gebrüder Mann, 1965; [review of Alois Riegl, Spätrömische Kunstindustrie] Gnomon 5 (1929): 195-213; Ludwig Curtius: das wissenschaftliche Werk. Baden-Baden: B. Grimm, 1958; Marcus Antonius, Domitian, Christus. Halle (Saale): M. Niemeyer, 1938; Die mittelmeerischen Grundlagen der antiken Kunst. Frankfurt am Main: V. Klostermann, 1944; Römische Kunst. Edited by Helga von Heintze. Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1961-1963; Sculture del magazzino del Museo Vaticano. Rome: Vatican City, 1936-1937; “Bemerkungen zur Struktur der ägyptischen Plastik” Kunstwissenschaftliche Forschungen 2 (1933): 7ff., English, “Remarks on the Structure of Egyptian Sculpture (1933).” in The Vienna School Reader: Politics and Art Historical Method in the 1930s. Christopher White, ed. New York: Zone Books, 2000, pp. 199-241.

Sources

Blanckenhagen, Peter H. von. “Necrology” American Journal of Archaeology 63 (1959): 87; 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. 19 mentioned, 85-86, 123; Kleinbauer, W. Eugene. Modern Perspectives in Western Art History: An Anthology of 20th-Century Writings on the Visual Arts. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971, p. 21 mentioned, 84; Bazin, Germain. Histoire de l’histoire de l’art; de Vasari à nos jours. Paris: Albin Michel, 1986, pp. 347-48; Archäologenbildnisse: Porträts und Kurzbiographien von Klassichen Archäologen deutscher Sprache. Reinhard Lullies, ed. Mainz am Rhein: Verlag Philipp von Zabern, 1988: 248-249; The Vienna School Reader: Politics and Art Historical Method in the 1930s. Christopher White, ed. New York: Zone Books, 2000, pp. 198; Homann-Wedeking, E. “Kaschnitz-Weinberg, Guido von (1890-1958).” Encyclopedia of the History of Classical Archaeology. Nancy Thomson de Grummond, ed. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1996, vol. 1, p. 629-30.

Archaeologist and classical art professor, first post-war director of the Deutsches Archaölogisches Institut in Rome; major exponent of strukturprinzip approach to ancient art. Kaschnitz von Weinberg received his doctorate at the Universi

Karo, Georg

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Karo, Georg

Gender: male

Date Born: 1872

Date Died: 1963

Place Born: Venice, Veneto, Italy

Place Died: Freiburg im Breisgau, Hesse, Germany

Home Country/ies: Germany

Subject Area(s): Ancient Greek (culture or style), Antique, the, Classical, Cretan, Creto-Mycenaean, Early Western World, Late Helladic, Mediterranean (Early Western World), and Mycenaean

Overview

Specialist in Cretan and Mycenean art. Karo studied archaeology at the University in Bonn, writing his dissertation under Georg Loeschcke. Professor of Archaeology at Halle, 1920-1930. Director of Deutsche Archäologische Institut in Athens, 1912-1916, 1930-1936.

Selected Bibliography

Die Schachtgräber von Mykenai, (2 vols.) 1930, 1933. Greifen am Thron, 1959.

Sources

Archäologenbildnisse: Porträts und Kurzbiographien von Klassichen Archäologen deutscher Sprache. Reinhard Lullies, ed. Mainz am Rhein: Verlag Philipp von Zabern, 1988: 181-182.

Kantorowicz, Ernst Hartwig

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Kantorowicz, Ernst Hartwig

Other Names:

"Eka", nickname

Gender: male

Date Born: 1895

Date Died: 1963

Place Born: Poznań, Greater Poland Voivodeship, Poland

Place Died: Princeton, Mercer, NJ, USA

Home Country/ies: Germany

Subject Area(s): iconography and Medieval (European)

Overview

Medievalist historian who employed iconography in the analysis of his important book, The King’s Two Bodies. He was born in Posen, Prussia, which is present-day, Poznań, Poland. Kantorowicz’ parents, Joseph Kantorowicz and Clara Hepner (Kantorowicz), were wealthy, non-practicing Jews, descended from the Bronfman liquor-distribution fortune of eastern Germany. Ernst Kantorowicz was raised among the socially prominent Junker aristocracy in Prussia, graduating from the Auguste Victoria Gymnasium in Poznań with extremely low marks. He started in the family business in 1913 until World War I was declared. Joining the German army, he was wounded at Verdun and later stationed in Turkey. A furlow allowed him to begin classes at the University in Berlin, but he returned to service. After the war he volunteered for several right-wing nationalist paramilitary organizations in Poland and Germany (Munich Freikorps). He moved to Heidelberg University. His dissertation, on oriental economic history, written under Eberhard Gothein (1853-1923), was accepted for his Ph.D. in 1921. Kantorowicz had become a member of the intellectual circle form around the German poet, art-magazine publisher and conservative nationalist Stefan George (1868-1933). He, Kantorowicz, had been assigned by ultra-Neitzschian George to write a popular (though thoroughly researched) biography of Frederick II in order to stir the German people during the muddled years of the Weimar Republic. At Heidelberg he met fellow medievalist Percy Ernst Schramm. Like Schramm he studied under Heidelberg’s two major Geistesgeschichte medievalists, Karl Hampe (1869-1936) and Friedrich Baethgen (1890-1972). The result of his research was the two-volume Kaiser Friedrich der Zweite, published in 1927 with a red reverse swastika on the cover. The book was a popular success selling 10,000 copies in the first two years. Kantorowicz had no intention of an academic position, the book was to instead inspire the German people along Georgekreis lines. As such, it lacked footnotes. His detractors, particularly the University of Berlin professor Albert Brackmann (1871-1952) denounced him in 1929-1930 for Mythenschau (i.e., using myths to create a greater myth) and lacking Kleinarbeit (detailed research). That year Kantorowicz was appointed an honorary professor of medieval history (he was only 35) at Frankfurt. To quell continuing criticism of his book, Kantorowicz issued a third Ergänzungsband to his book, one solely of footnotes to his text in 1931. The same year the book appeared in English as Frederick the Second as well as in an Italian translation. He became a full professor at Frankfurt in 1932, following the death of Fedor Schneider (1879-1932). Kantorowicz began research on a book on theocratic kingship, Laudes regiae in 1934. However, though a supporter of the Nazi’s rise to power, his Jewish heritage force his chair from him because of the Nuremberg laws forbidding Jews to teach. He remained in Germany (Berlin) a friend of high-ranking Nazis like Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring (1893-1946). On the advice of the British classicist C. M. Bowra (1898-1971) Kantorowicz fled Germany, leaving his library and art collection, and accepted a postion at Oxford as a lecturer in 1938. The flamboyant scholar wrankled the conservative Oxford dons and he found a position as associate professor at the University of California Berkeley in 1940. Ironically it was to teach English constitutional history, a subject he knew little about. He rose to (full) professor at Berkeley in 1945. His book on theocratic kingship, Laudes regiae employing a new area of studies, political theology, i.e., how liturgy can be used to write history, finally appeared in as volume one in 1946. When the McCarthy-era Red Scare resulted in the California legistature requiring all University of California faculty to take a loyalty oath in 1949, Kantorowicz refused and was fired from Berkeley. He taught for a year at Dumbarton Oaks, Harvard’s medieval center near Washgington, D. C. In 1951 Erwin Panofsky urged J. Robert Oppenheimer (1904-1967), director of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, to offer Kantorowicz an appointment. He became a member the same year. Kantorowicz completed his iconographic study, begun at Berkeley, The King’s Two Bodies appeared in 1957. He began experiencing health problems in 1960. He suffered an aneurism at age 68 and died at his home. After his death, Selected Studies was published in 1965. Kantorowicz integrated art history (and a belief in dynamic personalities leading history) into medieval history. Initially lead by an intellectual vision of history (George and his circle) as large topics, his Frederick II book was written in a neo-Victorian mode with verve and eloquence, the “most exciting biography of a medieval monarch produced in this [i.e., twentieth] century” (Cantor). His The King’s Two Bodies uses symbolism and iconography to document the two roles a monarch served, mortal ruler and embodiment of the law. Interest in the book revived in the mid 1980s with translations in Italian, French, Spanish and German appearing in a five year span.

Selected Bibliography

Laudes Regiae: A Study in Liturgical Acclamations and Medieval Ruler Worship. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1946; The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Medieval Political Theology. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957; Selected Studies. Locust Vally, NY: Augustin, 1965 [includes papers, “The King’s Advent” and “Gods in Uniform.” “The Baptism of the Apostles.”] Dumbarton Oaks Papers 9/10 (1955/56): 203-51. “The Archer on the Ruthwell Cross.” Art Bulletin 43 (1960): 57-9.

Sources

Evans, Arthur R., Jr. ed. On Four Modern Humanists: Hofmannsthal, Gundolf, Curtius, Kantorowicz. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1970; Kleinbauer, W. Eugene. Modern Perspectives in Western Art History: An Anthology of 20th-Century Writings on the Visual Arts. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971, pp. 87, 55 n. 117; Kleinbauer, W. Eugene. Research Guide to the History of Western Art. Sources of Information in the Humanities, no. 2. Chicago: American Library Association, 1982, pp. 124, 125; Grünewald, Eckhart. Ernst Kantorowicz und Stefan George: Beiträge zur Biographie des Historikers bis zum Jahre 1938 und zu seinem Jugendwerk ‘Kaiser Friedrich der Zweite’. Wiesbaden: F. Steiner, 1982; Cantor, Norman F. “The Nazi Twins: Percy Ernst Schramm and Ernst Hartwig Kantorowicz.” in, Inventing the Middle Ages: The Lives, Works and Ideas of the Great Medievalists of the Twentieth Century. New York: William Morrow, 1991, pp. 79-117; Landauer, Carl. “Ernst Kantorowicz and the Sacralization of the Past.” Central European History 27, no. 1 (1994): 1-25;Lerner, Robert E. “Ernst H. Kantorowicz (1895-1963).” in Damico, Helen and Zavadil, Joseph B., ed. Medieval Scholarship. Biographical Studies on the Formation of a Discipline. vol. 1. New York: Garland, 1995, pp. 263-276; Ruehl, Martin A.” ‘In This Time without Emperors’: The Politics of Ernst Kantorowicz’s Kaiser Friedrich der Zweite Reconsidered.” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 63, (2000): 187-242; Boureau, Alain. Kantorowicz: Stories of a Historian. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001; [obituary:] “Prof. Ernst H. Kantorowicz, 68, of Advanced Study Institute Dies.” New York Times September 10, 1963, p. 39.

Medievalist historian who employed iconography in the analysis of his important book, The King’s Two Bodies. He was born in Posen, Prussia, which is present-day, Poznań, Poland. Kantorowicz’ parents, Joseph Kantorowicz and Clara Hepner (K

Kalnein, Wend von

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Kalnein, Wend von

Other Names:

Karl Wend Graf von Kalnein

Gender: male

Date Born: 1914

Home Country/ies: Germany

Subject Area(s): architecture (object genre), French (culture or style), museums (institutions), and sculpture (visual works)

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

Institution(s): Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Kassel

Overview

Art museum director, wrote Pelican History of Art volume on French architecture. Karl Wend Graf von Kalnein was born the son of Karl Erhard von Kalnein (1873-1914) and Erna Countess von der Recke in Wald im Pinzgau (Austria). His father was killed the same year in the First World War and the family subsequently moved to Wald im Pinzgau, Austria, where he was raised. Kalnein attended the Maximiliansgymnasium in Munich beginning in 1929, receiving his abitur in 1932. After initially studying law, he switched to art history and archaeology at Bonn in 1935, graduating in 1939. Kalnein served as an officer in the German army (Wehrmacht) assigned to art protection in France, Russia, Germany and Romania, the latter of which advising the Romanian army. Captured by the Soviet army he spent his POW internment as an administrative advisor to Soviet Georgia overseeing industrialization of the region. In 1949 Kalnein acted as an interpreter for German prisoners for war crimes trials. His knowledge of the Georgian language led to suspicion and eventual arrest as a spy. In 1950 he was released to his native Austria. He returned to Bonn to pursue his doctorate in art history, granted in 1953. He joined the Margravial Badische collections in Salem. Moving to a directorship of the Zähringer Museum in Baden-Baden in 1957. He married Livia von Thielmann in 1959 and later the director of the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Kassel, Germany. In 1964 the city of Düsseldorf appointed new directors to their art facilities, Kalnein to the Städtisches Kunstmuseums, and Werner Schmalenbach as Generaldirektor of the Düsseldorfer Kunstsammlungen. Kalnein remained at Düsseldorf until 1979. His tenure there included co-authoring with Michael Levey the volume in the Pelican History of Art on eighteenth-century French art, published 1973. In 1995 he updated and expanded his portion of the book which was reissued separtely by Yale University Press as Architecture in France in the Eighteenth Century. Kalnein retire to Seekirchen in Austria. In 1979 he received an honorary degree in art history at the University of Salzburg. His son, Albrecht (Graf) von Kalnein was an historian at Mainz.

Selected Bibliography

[dissertation] Das kurfürstliche Schloss Clemensruhe in Poppelsdorf: Ein Beitr. zu d. deutsch-franz. Beziehungen im 18. Jahrhundert. Bonn, 1953, published, Düsseldorf: Schwann, 1956; and Levey, Michael. Art and Architecture of the Eighteenth Century in France. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin Books 1972; Die Düsseldorfer Malerschule: Kunstmuseum Düsseldorf, 13. Mai – 8. Juli 1979. Mainz: Von Zabern, 1979; Architecture in France in the Eighteenth Century. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995; Georgisches Tagebuch: fünf Jahre kriegsgefangen im Kaukasus. Osnabrück: Fibre, 2003.

Sources

Düsseldorfer Stadtchronik 2.1.1964 https://www.duesseldorf.de/stadtarchiv/stadtgeschichte/chronik/duesseldorfer-stadtchronik-1964.html; Georgisches Tagebuch (see above); Lehmann, Jürgen M. “Biographien der wissenschaftlichen Mitarbeiter am Hessischen Landesmuseum Kassel 1913–1988. Kunst in Hessen und am Mittelrhein 28, 1988, p. 161.

Contributors: Lee Sorensen

Art museum director, wrote Pelican History of Art volume on French architecture. Karl Wend Graf von Kalnein was born the son of Karl Erhard von Kalnein (1873-1914) and Erna Countess von der Recke in Wald im Pinzgau (Austria). His father w

Kallir, Otto

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Kallir-Nirenstein, Otto

Other Names:

Otto Nirenstein
Otto Kallir-Nirenstein

Gender: male

Date Born: 01 April 1894

Date Died: 30 November 1978

Place Born: Vienna, Vienna state, Austria

Place Died: New York, NY, USA

Home Country/ies: Austria

Career(s): art dealers

Institution(s): Galerie St. Etienne

Overview

Art dealer and publisher; credited with launching the late art career of Grandma Moses and popularizing the work of Austrian and German artists, including Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele, in the United States. Kallir was born in Vienna, Austria to parents Jacob Nirenstein, a lawyer, and Clare Engel. He was born as Otto Nirenstein. He received his Abitur in 1912 from Akademisches Gymnasium. Until 1914, Kallir was an apprentice at a lithographic institute, and also engaged in drawing and painting lessons during this time. From 1912 to 1914, and 1918 to 1920, Kallir studied engineering at Ingenieurwissenschaft in Vienna, but left the program before obtaining his diploma due to anti-semetic attitudes within the institution.

Upon leaving Ingenieurwissenschaft, Kallir pursued his lifelong interest in art. In 1919, he founded Neuer Graphik publishing house, printing the work of famous Austrian artists, including Johannes Itten and Egon Schiele, the latter recently deceased. In 1921, Neuer Graphik was acquired by Rikola Verlag, a larger publishing group, where Kallir began to work as Head of the Art Department in the same year. During this time period, Kallir also worked at the gallery Würthle & Sohn in Vienna, where he became accustomed to gallery business. In 1922, Kallir married his lifelong partner, a noble, Franziska (Fanny) Gräfin zu Löwenstein-Scharffeneck (1899-1992).

In 1923, Kallir ended his time at both Rikola Verlag and Würthle & Sohn to open his own gallery, called the Neue Galerie, which he ran until 1938. Neue Galerie specialized in contemporary Expressionist and Classic Modernist artists, including Van Gogh, Munch, and Signac, and was closely tied to the contemporary Viennese art scene of interwar Austria. During his time at the gallery, Kallir notably organized the first major exhibition of Schiele’s work in Europe. At Neue Gallery, Kallir worked with renowned scholars, including Otto Benesch, Alfred Stix, and Hans Tietze, to create scholarly exhibition catalogues. In 1924, Kallir returned to his interest in publishing and founded Johannes-Presse, which published original prints of contemporary artists, like Max Beckmann, and bibliophilic editions of works, including those of Thomas Mann.

Kallir returned to school in 1927, studying art history under Julius Schlosser, leader of the so-called Vienna School of art history. In 1930, Kallir published a catalogue raisonne of Schiele’s works, titled Egon Schiele: Persönlichkeit und Werk (Egon Schiele: Personality and Work). The publication is renowned for documenting many of Schiele’s work lost in World War II, and served as the foundation for later Schiele research projects. A year later, Kallir completed his PhD in Art History under Schlosser, finishing his dissertation on Beiträge zur Vischerforschung. In 1931, Kallir discovered the estate and collection of late artist Richard Gerstl, and secured his legacy by displaying his works at the Neue Galerie. Kallir similarly rescued the estate of the late Peter Altenberg, creating a permanent room at the Neue Galerie with his collection. Expanding his influence in the art scene of Vienna, Kallir became the Executive Vice President of the Hagenbund, a group of Viennese Secessionist and Expressionist painters, in 1931.

In response to Anschluss, Kallir legally changed his name to Kallir-Nirenstein, a family name, in 1933. He fled Austria in 1938 with the help of Otto Demus, in order to avoid immigrant arrest, and thereby freeing him to emigrate out of Europe. While in Paris, Kallir founded Galerie St. Etienne in 1938. Upon leaving France for the US in 1939, Kallir relocated Galerie St. Etienne to New York City, and served as the owner until his death. Because modernist Austrian work was so little valued (and considered degenerate by the Nazis), Kallir was able to take a considerable number of works with him. Galerie St. Etienne specialized in the work of Austrian and German expressionists, as well as American “Outsider” painters. Through his work at the gallery and more broadly in the US, Kallir built up American appreciation for Austrian and German art work, especially that of Schiele. From 1939 to 1941, Kallir served as Chairman of the conservative Austrian-American League and as a member of the Austrian Committee.

Through his exploration of “outsider” artwork, Kallir discovered and launched the career of artist Grandma Moses in 1940. In the same year, Kallir, using the Galerie St. Etienne, organized her first solo show. In 1942, Kallir refounded the Johannes Press in New York City, publishing works of many artists he represented. Kallir was the subject of an erroneous accusation by a jealous political rival, Wilhelm (“Willibald”) Plöchl (1907-1984), involving an FBI investigation, who after a time, exonerated him. As the sole representative and Chairman for Grandma Moses Properties Inc from 1950 until his death, Kallir’s relationship with Grandma Moses proved to be one of his greatest successes. Kallir published Grandma Moses: American primitive in 1947, and also was an editor for her autobiography My Life’s History (1952).

In 1960, Kallir helped organize the first American museum exhibition of Schiele’s work, which traveled to six different museums. In 1965, Kallir organized a large Klimt-Schiele exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum in New York. Once more with Otto Benesch, and Thomas Messer, Kallir also created Egon Schiele: Oeuvre catalogue of the paintings in 1966. In 1973, he published Grandma Moses’ Catalogue Raisonne, Grandma Moses. Kallir continued his work at Galerie Etienne and with Grandma Moses until his death in November 30th, 1978 in New York City. Some of his most notable awards include the Grand Medal of Honor of the Republic of Austria, and the Silver Medal of Honor of the City of Vienna.

Kallir almost single-handedly launched the artistic profile of the Austrian expressionists in the United States. A modernist devotee, he published their work in English and sold examples to American museums and collectors. His daughter, Jane Kallir (b. 1954), assumed the business and further published scholarly works on these artists. When the cosmetic magnate Ronald S. Lauder launched his 2001 museum of Austrian Expressionist art in New York, he named it the “Neue Galerie” in honor of Kallir’s work.

Selected Bibliography

[dissertation:] Beiträge zur Vischerforschung, University of Vienna, 1931;
Egon Schiele. Persönlichkeit und Werk. Vienna, 1930;
Grandma Moses: American primitive. New York 1946;
edited My life’s history by Grandma Moses. New York, 1952;
Egon Schiele. Oeuvre catalogue of the paintings. New York, 1966;
Grandma Moses. New York 1973, 1975.;

Sources

Glueck, Grace. “Otto Kaffir [sic], ‘Discoverer’ of Grandma Moses, Dies.” The New York Times December 1, 1978 https://www.nytimes.com/1978/12/01/archives/otto-kallir-discoverer-of-grandma-moses-dies-founded-his-own.html;
“Rikola Verlag, Verlag Neuer Graphik, Vienna.” in, Starr Figura, German Expressionism: The Graphic ImpulseNew York:The Museum of Modern Art, 2011https://www.moma.org/s/ge/collection_ge/artist/artist_id-19617_role-3_thumbs.html;
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.

Contributors: Helen Jennings

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