Place Born: Brno, Jihomoravsk, Kraj, Czech Republic
Place Died: Stanford, Santa Clara, CA, USA
Home Country/ies: United States
Subject Area(s): French (culture or style) and painting (visual works)
Career(s): educators
Overview
Stanford University Art History professor and Géricault scholar. Eitner was the son of William Eitner and Katherine Thonet [Eitner], Austrians citizens living in Czechoslovakia. His father worked in his wife’s family bentwood furniture business, a process which the Thornet family had founded. After attending grade schools in Frankfurt and Berlin, his family, then living in Brussels, immigrated to South Carolina in 1935. He entered Duke University the following year. While a student at Duke, Eitner wrote a somewhat positive account of his experiences in Hitler’s Germany for the school literary magazine. He graduated summa cum laude at Duke. in 1940, he was drafted into the U.S. Army in World War II, serving in intelligence with the Office of Strategic Services. Stationed in Washington, London, Paris and Salzburg, he headed the research section in the Office of Chief Prosecution for the Nuremberg Trials. Following the war, he married Trudi von Kathrein in 1946, a member of the Austrian resistance. At the conclusion of his Office of Chief of Prosecution duties at the Nuremberg War Crimes trials in 1947, he returned to the United States completing an M.F.A from Princeton University in 1948. Eitner began teaching art at the University of Minnesota in 1949. He continued his graduate studies at Princeton, studying with among others Kurt Weitzmann. In 1952 he received his Ph.D. from Princeton writing on what would be his area of expertise, Theodore Géricault. Eitner continued researcch as a Fulbright Fellow during the 1952-1953 year in Brussels. The publication of his dissertation in book form by Princeton University press in 1952 appeared the same year as the first full-length biography on Géricault (in German) by the German-American art historian Klaus Berger. Eitner took Berger to task for his overtly Marxist methodology and authentication of some of questionable Géricault paintings. In 1955 he was elected chair of the College Art Association. A Guggenheim Fellowship was awarded for the 1956-1957 year for Munich. He left Minnesota to chair of the Department of Art and Architecture at Stanford University in 1963, which included on a volunteer basis the administration of the Stanford art museum. Under his tenure he refocused university art museum to be a center for art; it previously had held a variety of realia including a railroad car and biological specimens. A gifted fundraiser, Eitner was able to buy Turners and Géricaults at auctions in London and New York. The 52,000-square-foot Cummings Art Building was completed in 1968. Eitner developed the art history department at Stanford, hiring the Rodin scholar Albert E. Elsen in 1963, the Asianist Michael Sullivan and future Getty director Kurt Forster. Eitner received both The Mitchell Prize for the History of Art and a Charles Rufus Morey Book Award of the College Art Association in 1983 for his book Géricault: His Life and Work. He retired from the University in 1989; two months before the Loma Prieta earthquake closed the university’s art museum for a decade. Eitner was working on his autobiography at the time of his death. His students included Kirk Varnedoe.
Selected Bibliography
[dissertation] The Work of Theodore Gericault, 1791-1824. Princeton, 1952; “How I saw Hitler.” The Archive [Duke University] 50 no. 3 (December 1936): 5, 19; “The Pacifist, A Satire.” The Archive 51 no. 5 (February 1938): 6-8; The Flabellum of Tournus. Studies in Art and Archaeology 1. New York: The College Art Association of America, 1944; “The Open Window and the Storm-tossed Boat.” Art Bulletin 37 (1955): 281-90; “Open Window and the Storm-tossed Boat: an Essay in the Iconography of Romanticism.” The Art Bulletin 37 (December 1955): 281-90; Géricault: an Album of Drawings in the Art Institute of Chicago. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960; “Homage to Delacroix.” Apollo 77 (January 1963): 32-5; Introduction to Art: an Illustrated Topical Manual. Minneapolis: Burgess Pub. Co. 1967; Neoclassicism and Romanticism, 1750-1850; Sources and Documents. 2 vols. Englewood Cliffs, NJ, Prentice-Hall, 1970; Géricault. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1971; Géricault’s Raft of the Medusa. London: Phaidon, 1972; Gericault: His Life and Work. Ithica, NY: Cornell University Press, 1983; An Outline of 19th-century European Painting: from David through Cézanne. New York: Harper & Row, 1987; The Drawing Collection. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Museum of Art, 1993; French Paintings of the Nineteenth Century. Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 2000; 19th Century European Painting: David to Cézanne. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2002;
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. 67 mentioned; [obituary:] Haven, Cynthia. “Lorenz Eitner, founding spirit behind museum and Art Department, dies at 89.” Stanford Report March 13, 2009.
Stanford University Art History professor and Géricault scholar. Eitner was the son of William Eitner and Katherine Thonet [Eitner], Austrians citizens living in Czechoslovakia. His father worked in his wife’s family bentwood furniture business, a
Place Born: Olomouc, Olomoucký Kraj, Czech Republic
Place Died: Vienna, Vienna state, Austria
Home Country/ies: Austria
Overview
Early academic art historian; founder and first chair of art history (Ordinarius) at the University of Vienna (1851) and founder of the österreiches Museum für Kunst und Industrie. Eitelberger was the son of an Austrian military officer. He was born in Olmütz, Olomouc, Moravia, which is present-day Olomouc, Czech Republic. He studied law in Olmütz in 1832 before changing to Romance philology in which he gained his degree under Julius von Ficker (1826-1902). He lectured in philology between 1839-1848 at the University in Vienna. In the 1840s he started making connections with art collectors, such as Joseph Daniel Böhm (1794-1865), director of the Graveurakademie am k. k. Hauptmünzamte (Engraving Academy and Royal Mint) whose art objects later became the core of the Austrian Museum. Eitelberger’s first essay on art theory appeared in 1855 on the study of antiquity. In 1846 Eitelberger mounted a large show of old master paintings, organized around history rather than a stylistic continuum. He was also a Privatdozent (private lecturer) for theory and art history attached to the University in Vienna. Ever the reformist, he edited a pro-Revolutionary literary newspaper Wiener Zeitung in 1848. That same auspicious year he also published a diatribe against the teaching methods of the academy director, the artist Ferdinand G. Waldmüller (1793-1865). In 1850, he delivered a series of lectures on art history, his opening lecture entitled, “Die Bildungsanstalten für Künstler und ihre historische Entwicklung” (Educational Institutions for Artists and their Historical Development). Eitelberger’s revolutionary zeal was thereafter directed toward art history. His writing attracted the interest of Count Leo Thun-Hohenstein (1811-1888), the government minister who controlled cultural projects for Austria. Eitelberger was still so revolutionary that the Emperor Franz Joseph declined to give him a professorial appointment. Thun secured a travel grant for Eitelberger for Italy and resubmitted his request to the Emperor. On November 9th,1852, Eitelberger became the first Professor “für Kunstgeschichte und Kunstarchäologie” (Art History and Archaeology) at the University of Vienna, one of the first in the continent, and in direct acknowledgement (if not competition) with the appointment of Gustav Friedrich Waagen at a similar chair in Berlin in 1844. Eitelberger immediately set up a training facility where students could study art works directly. In 1854 he created and became the first President of the Kunsthistorisches Institut of the University in Vienna, drawing scholars from a wide array of disciplines and resulting in some of the first serious studies of iconography. He published (with Gustav A. Heider) the two-volume atlas of medieval monuments in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Mittelalterliche Kunstdenkmäler des österreichischen Kaiserstaates, between 1858 and 1860. He married Pauline Lederer, but she died two years later. Eitelberger and Jakob Falke founded the Kaiserliches Königliches österreichisches Museum für Kunst und Industrie (now the österreiches Museum für Angewandte Kunst) in Vienna in 1864, with Eitelberger as director and Falke as his assistant. The museum was a direct inspiration of the South Kensington Musuem (modern Victoria and Albert Museum). Again, Austria’s bid to be a world power lay at the heart of the Emperor’s commission of this museum. Eitelberger married a second time, to Marie Lott, a daughter of professor Franz Lott (1807-1874) at Göttingen. A separate building to house the structure was completed in 1871. Eitelberger lectured exclusively in the museum–covered all periods except the then maligned 18th century–in order to avoid conclusions too far afield from the objects themselves. This became a hallmark of the (first) Vienna school which Eitelberger’s colleagues Mortiz Thausing (q.v.) and Franz Wickhoff adopted. At his death in 1885, Wickhoff succeeded him as the chair and the university of Vienna and Falk as director of the Museum für Kunst. Eitelberger set as one of the hallmarks of the (first) Vienna School of art history the combined appreciation of the object and its history. Works of art were studied in their original in the museum. It was a tradition that Gustav A. Heider had initiated. The Vienna School trained the major art historians of the German-speaking world and not simply Austria. These included Robert Vischer, Justus Brinckmann, Hugo von Tschudi and Hubert Janitschek. Other Germans whom Eitelberger directly influenced included the later Director General of the Prussian Museums, Wilhelm Bode. A second characteristic of the Vienna School methodology was its allegiance to primary source documentation. Eitelberger founded the Quellenschriften für Kunstgeschichte series in 1871, a monographic series devoted to publishing the important documents of art history. It was continued in fact and in spirit by Julius Alwin von Schlosser, the last great practitioner of the School’s methods.
Selected Bibliography
Edited, Quellenschriften für Kunstgeschichte und Kunsttechnik des Mittelalters und der Neuzeit (series). 18 vols. Vienna: C. Graeser, 1871-1908; and Heider, Gustav. Mittelalterliche Kunstdenkmale des österreichischen Kaiserstaates. 2 vols. Stuttgart: Ebner & Scubert, 1858-60; Cividale in Friaul und seine Monumente. Vienna: K.-K. Hof-und Staatsdruckerei, 1857; Gesammelte kunsthistorische Schriften. 4 vols. Vienna: Braumueller, 1879-1894; Die preisgekrönten Entwürfe zur Erweiterung der inneren Stadt Wien: mit sieben in der Kaiserlich-Königlichen Hof- und Staatsdruckerei in Farbendruck ausgeführten Plänen und einem erläuternden Texte. Vienna: Aus der Kaiserlich-Königlichen Hof- und Staatsdruckerei, 1859; Die Reform des Kunstunterrichts und Professor Waldmüllers Lehrmethode. Vienna: [s.n.?], 1848.
Sources
Elsner, Wilhelm. “Eitelberger von Edelberg, Rudolf.” Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie 55 (1910): 734; Schlosser, Julius von. “Die Wiener Schule der Kunstgeschichte.” Mitteilungen des österreichischen Instituts für Geschforschungen 13 no. 2 (1934): 145ff.; Borodajkewycz, Taras von. “Aus der Frühzeit der wiener Schule der Kunstgeschichte.” in, Festschrift für Hans Sedlmayr. Munich: Beck, 1962, pp. 321-348; 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. 32; Bazin, Germain. Histoire de l’histoire de l’art; de Vasari à nos jours. Paris: Albin Michel, 1986, p. 155; German Essays on Art History. Gert Schiff, ed. New York: Continuum, 1988, p. xlii mentioned; Kultermann, Udo. The History of Art History. New York: Abaris, 1993, pp. 158-59; Metzler Kunsthistoriker Lexikon: zweihundert Porträts deutschsprachiger Autoren aus vier Jahrhunderten. Stuttgart: Metzler, 1999, pp. 76-78.
Citation
"Eitelberger von Edelberg, Rudolf." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/eitelbergerr/.
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Early academic art historian; founder and first chair of art history (Ordinarius) at the University of Vienna (1851) and founder of the österreiches Museum für Kunst und Industrie. Eitelberger was the son of an Austrian military officer. He was bo
Place Died: Neuilly-sur-Seine, Île-de-France, France
Home Country/ies: Germany
Subject Area(s): Expressionist (style), film (discipline), German (culture, style, period), German Expressionist (movement), painting (visual works), and photographs
Overview
Film and painting historian of German Expressionism. Eisner’s father was Hugo Eisner (1856-1924), a textile exporter and magistrate, and her mother Margarethe Feodora Aron (1866-1942). She was raised in a prosperous middle-class Jewish family living in near the Zoo quarter of Berlin. After receiving her Abitur at the Humanistisches Gymnasium in Karlsruhe, 1917, she studied archaeology, art history and philosophy at the universities in Berlin (under Heinrich Wölfflin), Freiburg im Breisgau (under Ludwig Curtius), Munich and finally Rostock where she was awarded her Ph.D. Her dissertation, written under the classicist Gottfried von Lücken on the compositional development of Greek vases, was accepted in 1924. She worked on Italian archaeological excavations in Italy, 1924-1926 and then journalism for the newspapers Literarische Welt and the Berliner Tageblatt, 1926-1927, writing arts reviews. She met Hans Feld (1909-1992) editor of the Berlin film periodical Filmkuriers in 1927. Feld invited her to review, and Eisner became the first woman film critic. Jewish and an exponent of Expressionism, the hated movement by the Nazis, she became a target of persecution. Filmkuriers was purged of Jews by the Nazis and, after a phone call warned her of her impending arrest, she fled to France in 1933 to live with her sister in Paris. Between 1933 and 1939 she was a film correspondent for the British Film World News, the Czech Internationale Filmschau and Die Kritik, supporting herself as a secretary, nanny and translator. When France entered World War II, Eisner was interned in an enemy alien camp at Gurs, France, for three months. She escaped and, using the name Louise Escoffier, worked as a cook in Figeac (déparetment Lot) of unoccupied France. Her mother perished in the camp at Theresienstadt, Czechoslovakia, in 1942. Even before the end of the war, Eisner worked for the film preservationist Henri Langlois (1914-1977), inventorying films he had saved from Nazi destruction. In 1945 she was appointed chief conservator for the Cinémathèque française in Palais de Challiot, Paris. She was naturalized a French citizen in 1952. The same year she wrote L’écran démoniaque: influence de Max Reinhardt et de l’expressionisme, her most important book. She co-founded the Musée Cinémathèque with Langlois in 1972. In 1980 a documentary film was made on her by S. M Horowitz, Lotte Eisner in Germany.The Times (London) obituary characterized her film reviews as that of an art historian.
Selected Bibliography
L’écran démoniaque: influence de Max Reinhardt et de l’expressionisme. Paris: A. Bonne 1952, English, The Haunted Screen: Expressionism in the German Cinema and the Influence of Max Reinhardt. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969. 0.Metzler
Sources
Horowitz, S. M. Lotte Eisner in Germany. New York: New Yorker Films, 1980; Eisner, Lotte H. Ich hatte einst ein schönes Vaterland: Memoiren. 2nd ed. Heidelberg: Wunderhorn, 1984; 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. 136-8; [obituaries] “Lotte Eisner.” Times (London) December 3, 1983, p. 8; “Lotte H. Eisner.” New York Times November 29, 1983, p. B5.
Film and painting historian of German Expressionism. Eisner’s father was Hugo Eisner (1856-1924), a textile exporter and magistrate, and her mother Margarethe Feodora Aron (1866-1942). She was raised in a prosperous middle-class Jewish family livi
Subject Area(s): Early Netherlandish, Northern Renaissance, and painting (visual works)
Overview
Art historian of Netherlandish painting and graphic works of art; Robert Lehman Professor of Fine Arts, New York University. Eisler was born to George B. Eisler, a Hamburg publisher, and Kate Basseches (Eisler). The family emigrated to the United States where the younger Eisler graduated from Yale University in 1952. He continued graduate study at Oxford University, 1952-53, before entering Harvard University. At Harvard he received his A.M. in 1954. While working on his doctorate, he was appointed instructor in art history at Yale and Curator in art gallery’s department of prints and drawings (1955-1957). He received his Ph.D. in 1957 from Harvard. He spent the 1957-58 academic year as a Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. He married Benita Blitzer (b. 1937) in 1961, a literary scholar and biographer. Eisler was made assistant professor, New York University, in 1958, advancing to associate professor in 1960. He was named professor of art history in 1968 and Robert Lehman Professor of Fine Arts. Eisler wrote an early summary of how the German expatriate art-history community affected American scholarship, “‘Kunstgeschichte’ American Style.” Eisler professed to disliking many major areas of art, German Expressionism, the art of Blake and Fuseli and the late Picasso. His specialty of northern Renaissance art was his major area of publication.
Selected Bibliography
Early Netherlandish Painting [Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection]. London: Sotheby’s (Philip Wilson Publishers), 1989; The Master of the Unicorn: the Life and Work of Jean Duvet. New York: Abaris Books, 1977; Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: European Schools Excluding Italian. Oxford: Phaidon Press, 1977; Flemish & Dutch Drawings from the 15th to the 18th Century. New York: Shorewood Publishers, 1963; The Seeing Hand: a Treasury of Great Master Drawings. New York: Harper & Row, 1975; “What Takes Place in the Getty Annunciation?” Gazette des Beaux-Arts 111 (March 1988): 193-202; “French Painting in the Time of Jean de Berry: the Limbourgs and Their Contemporaries.” The Art Bulletin 63 (June 1981): 328-32; “Two Entombments and a Deposition from Early Netherlandish Passion Altars.” Gesta 20 no. 1 (1981): 257-62; “American Art History, God Shed his Grace on Thee.” Art News 75 (May 1976): 64-73; “Golden Christ of Cortona and the Man of Sorrows in Italy.” The Art Bulletin 52 (June-September 1970): 233-46, part II, The Art Bulletin 51 (June-September 1969): 107-18; “‘Kunstgeschichte’ American Style,” in Fleming, D. and Bailyn, Bernard, eds. The Intellectual Migration: Europe and America, 1930-1960. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1969.
Sources
Eisler, Colin. [Memorial essay to Gert Schiff]. In Memoriam Gert Schiff, 1926-1990. New York: Institute of Fine Art, New York University, 1991, pp. 20-22.
Citation
"Eisler, Colin T.." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/eislerc/.
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Art historian of Netherlandish painting and graphic works of art; Robert Lehman Professor of Fine Arts, New York University. Eisler was born to George B. Eisler, a Hamburg publisher, and Kate Basseches (Eisler). The family emigrated to the United
Geschichte der bildenden Künste im 15. Jahrhundert. Edited by Wilhelm Lübke. Volume VIII of Geschichte der Bildenden Künste. 2nd ed. 8 vols. Stuttgart: Ebner & Seubert, 1866-79.
Citation
"Eisenmann, Oskar." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/eisenmanno/.
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Place Born: Neuwied, Rhineland Palatinate, Germany
Place Died: Lestelle-Bétharram, Nouvelle-Aquitaine, France
Home Country/ies: Germany
Subject Area(s): African (general, continental cultures), Cubist, German (culture, style, period), and Modern (style or period)
Career(s): art critics and art historians
Overview
Early writer on modern art in Germany; first to discus African art in aestheric terms and one of the first to connect it to Cubism. Einstein’s father was Daniel Einstein (1847-1899), a rabbi, Hebrew teacher and cantor. His mother was Sophie Lichtenstein (Einstein) (b. 1860). In 1888 the family moved to Karlsruhe, where the younger Einstein initially studied Banking. Between 1904-1908 he attended the philosophy lectures of Georg Simmel (1858-1918) at the University of Berlin and art historical lectures of Heinrich Wölfflin. Because Einstein lacked a high school diploma (Abitur) he was unable to attain his doctorate. In 1907 he made his first trip to Paris where he discovered Picasso, Braque, Gris and other artists. He wrote prose, joining the radical circle of Franz Pfemfert (1879-1954) and his magazine Die Aktion. In 1912 Einstein’s novel, Bebuquin oder die Dilettanten des Wunders, appeared, which included the graphic illustrations of the German Expressionist artist Wilhelm Lehmburck. He married Maria Ramm, Pfemfert’s daughter, in 1913 (divorced 1923). His first well-known work was an art-historical piece on primitivism, called Negerplastik (Black Sculpture). Negerplastik circulated widely among avant-garde artists of the time, though it incited controversy within the intellectual community, including the philosopher Ernst Bloch (1885-1977), the authors Hermann Hesse (1877-1862) and Hanns Johst (1890-1978) and the art historians Hedwig Fechheimer, Curt Glaser, Wilhelm Hausenstein and Hans Tietzte. In World War I, he was a soldier stationed in Brussels. Immediately after the war he lived in Berlin (1919-1928), working on the weekly magazine of Wieland Herzfelde (1896-1988) and George Grosz, Die Pleite. He became editor and publisher of the satirical paper Der blutige Ernst. He wrote several short essays on artists for Das Kunstblatt under Paul Westheim as well as for Der Querschnitt, Action (Paris) and Die neue Rundschau. His satirical depiction of god in Die schlimme Botschaft resulted in a fine. In 1922 he was commissioned to write the volume on Die Kunst des 20. Jahrhunderts for the Propyläen Art History series. It’s publication in 1926 made it the first survery of modern art (Foster et al). Einstein’s contacts with artists and dealers such as Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler (1884-1979) and others resulted in a diverse selection of art objects. In 1928, branded as a communist, he moved to Paris and, with Georges Bataille (1897-1962) and others, published the magazine Documents, 1929-1931. Einstein sided with Bataille in view of Surrealism that radically contrasted the official line set forth by André Breton (1896-1966). He wrote a monograph on Braque (1934) though more a theoretical work on the Cubist movement than the artist himself. In the 1930s, Einstein produced his Handbuch der Kunst which focuses primarily on modern art. He married a second time, in 1932, to an Armenian woman, Lydia Guevrekian. By this time he had become disillusioned by most modern artists has having capitulated to the ruling authorities. Though disillusioned with communism as well, he volunteered as a soldier in the Spanish civil war 1936-1937. After the defeat by Franco, Einstein returned to Paris, writing a German expatriate newsletter. With the fall of France in 1940 he was arrested by Vichy government officials and deported to the concentration camp at Lager Gurs. Though released he found himself unable to emigrate again to Spain. Hunted by the Gestapo for his communist beliefs and Jewish heritage, he committed suicide by throwing himself into the Pau river. The Kahnweiler placed a plaque in his gallery “Freedom fighter”. Negerplastik is one of the early links of so-called primitive sculpture and the modern art movement. The book was the first to discuss African sculpture in esthetic terms as opposed to ethnographic artifacts (Foster, et al). It postulated a spatial way of seeing “plastisches Sehen” that addresses the problems of Cubism. It is not a history of African sculpture as it ignored the peoples who made the sculptures. Einstein adhered strongly to the notion that sculpture “spoke” directly to the viewer and therefore required no background information. Die Kunst des 20. Jahrhunderts represented a genuinely original vision of modern art. Together with an handful of other modernist art historians, such as Max Osborn and Paul Ferdinand Schmidt he ushered in modern art as an art-historical subject in Germany. His criticism is akin to that of the Frankfurt School theorists, particularly Theodor Adorno (1903-1969) and Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) (Foster et al). Einstein had his blind spots, however. His Marxist beliefs precluded an appreciation of German Expressionism until after World War I, preferring French Cubism largely because of its closer connection to African art. His analytical style, especially in the shorter reviews of artists, often has a hyper-critical edge to it. Because of the political and cultural events of the 1930s, his major literary theory, Fabrikation der Fiktionen, only appeared in 1973.
Selected Bibliography
[complete bibliography:] Ihrig, Wilfried. “Bibliographie zu Carl Einstein.” Text und Kritik 95 (1987): 87-101; Bebuquin, oder, Die Dilettanten des Wunders: ein Roman. Berlin-Wilmersdorf: Verlag der Wochenschrift Die Aktion, 1912; Negerplastik. Munich: K. Wolff, 1915; Die Kunst des 20. Jahrhunderts. Propyläen Kunstgeschichte 16. Berlin: Propyläen-Verlag 1926; Georges Braque. Paris: éditions des Chroniques du jour/New York: E. Weyhe, 1934; Gesammelte Werke. Wiesbaden: Limes Verlag, 1962; Die Fabrikation der Fiktionen. Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1973.
Sources
[book review] Fechheimer, Hedwig. “Carl Einstein: Negerplastik.” Kunst und Künstler 13 (1915): 576 – 578; Bazin, Germain. Histoire de l’histoire de l’art; de Vasari à nos jours. Paris: Albin Michel, 1986, p. 204; Metzler Kunsthistoriker Lexikon: zweihundert Porträts deutschsprachiger Autoren aus vier Jahrhunderten. Stuttgart: Metzler, 1999, pp. 74-76; 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. 129-36; Carl-Einstein-Gesellschaft (website), “Biographie.” http://www.carleinstein.uni-muenchen.de/Index2.htm; “Album di famiglia – Storia di un incontro: Carl Einstein.” Bollettino Archivio Giuseppe Pinelli. no 15 (April 2000): 45-47; “Carl Einstein (1885-1940)” [inset]. in Foster, Hal, et al. Art Since 1900. 2nd ed. vol. 1 New York: Thames and Hudson, 2011, p. 265.
Early writer on modern art in Germany; first to discus African art in aestheric terms and one of the first to connect it to Cubism. Einstein’s father was Daniel Einstein (1847-1899), a rabbi, Hebrew teacher and cantor. His mother was Sophie Lichte
Place Born: Saarburg, Rhineland Palatinate, Germany
Place Died: Göttingen, Lower Saxony, Germany
Home Country/ies: Germany
Subject Area(s): art theory, eighteenth century (dates CE), German (culture, style, period), and nineteenth century (dates CE)
Overview
Historian of German 18th/19th-century art; methodological theorist. The son of a military officer, von Einem demonstrated an interest in art from high school. After studying law, he turned to art history in 1923, studying at Göttingen, Berlin and Munich. In 1928, he completed his dissertation under Georg Vitzthum von Eckstädt. Einem worked in the Field Museum in Hannover until 1936. His 1935 habilitationschrift was written under the classicist Carl Fernow and Wilhelm Waetzoldt in Halle and Göttingen. From 1936 he began publishing on the subject of Johan Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), of whose art theory he became an expert. In 1938 Einem published a monograph on Caspar David Friedrich which contradicted Kurt Karl Eberlein and Eberlein’s view that Friedrich held strong nationalist pride. Later he returned to privatdozent status for political reasons. Einem was forced to leave a 1936 essay of his on popular (volkisch) elements in art anonymous, though highly regarded by the Warburg school historians, because of the mounting political pressure of the Nazis. In 1943 he was appointed professor at Greifswald, but did not teach there due to military service and subsequent imprisonment (1945). After 1945 he published a series of shorter works dedicated to the master painters of European Renaissance art of the 17th century. He continued Vitzthum’s work as an Ordinariat in Göttingen and in 1947 held one of the chairs with Heinrich Lützeler at the University of Bonn. He and Lützeler founded the Bonner Beiträge zur Kunstwissenschaft in 1950. Einem remained at Bonn becoming emeritus in 1970. Because he had no ties to the Nazi regime, he was an ideal representative for post-war German art historical collaboration. Between 1960-1968 he headed the Association of German Art Historians and was the President of the International Committee of Art History (CIHA), 1964-1969. An invitation to succeed Hans Sedlmayr in Munich of 1963 was declined. In 1974 he returned to Göttingen. Einem was among the great theorists of art history. He regarded art history as a branch of general history, viewing the artist as a product of his/her historical period. He embraced the concept forwarded by Ernst Cassirer that art philosophy is not complete without art history and vice versa. In Fragen kunstgeschichtlicher Interpretation, 1952, von Einem wrote that art history as a particular language with mythical implications. The emergence of Christian mythos created a crisis of art, a loss of art’s order for von Einem. A strong supporter of academic training for art history, he argued that older art forms needed to be understood from a knowledge of contemporary art as well. In this regard, he contrasted art historians such as Joseph Gantner, asserting that the abstraction in Egyptian sculpture, for example, differed from modern sculptural abstraction (see, Revision der Kunstgeschichte? 1931/1932). Einem maintained that Kunstwissenschaft was a resource to understanding mankind. This explains in part his willingness to write on diverse art subjects. His students included Florens Deuchler.
Selected Bibliography
[complete bibliography through 1964:] Osten, Gert von der, editor. Festschrift für Herbert von Einem zum 16. Februar 1965. Berlin: Gebr. Mann, 1965; Caspar David Friedrich. Berlin: Im Rembrandt-verlag 1938; “Aufgaben der Kunstgeschichte in der Zukunft.” Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 5 (1936): 1-6; edited. Fernow, Carl Ludwig. Römische Briefe an Johann Pohrt 1793-1798. Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 1944; Die Bildnisse der deutschen Künstler in Rom, 1800-1830. Berlin: Deutscher Verein für Kunstwissenschaft, 1952; Beiträge zu Goethes Kunstauffassung. Hamburg: M. von Schröder, 1956; Masaccios Zinsgroschen. Cologne: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1967; Die Medicimadonna Michelangelos. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1973; Stil und überlieferung: Aufsätze zur Kunstgeschichte des Abendlandes. Dusseldorf: L. Schwann, 1971; “Die Folgen des Krieges”: ein Alterswerk von Peter Paul Rubens. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1975; Deutsche Malerei des Klassizismus und der Romantik: 1760-1840. Munich: Beck, 1978.
Sources
Metzler Kunsthistoriker Lexikon: zweihundert Porträts deutschsprachiger Autoren aus vier Jahrhunderten. Stuttgart: Metzler, 1999, pp. 70-73;
Contributors: Lee Sorensen
Citation
Lee Sorensen. "Einem, Herbert von." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/einemh/.
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Historian of German 18th/19th-century art; methodological theorist. The son of a military officer, von Einem demonstrated an interest in art from high school. After studying law, he turned to art history in 1923, studying at Göttingen, Berlin and
Director of the Picture Gallery of the Academy of Fine Arts (Akademie der Bildenden Künste) 1926-29, 33-65, Vienna. He was born in Sedlitz, Bohemia, which is present-day Sedlice, Czech Republic. Eigenberger studied art history at the universities of Prague, Munich and Göttingen, receiveing his Ph.D., in 1913 in Berlin. He served in the First World War (1915-16). After working in the cultural monuments division of the Austrian Ministry of Culture, he was curator (Kustos) at the Picture Gallery of the Academy of Fine Arts in 1922. He was made director in 1926. As the first director who was not exclusively an artist, Eigenberger reduced the exhibited to only objects of the highest quality and grouped them by schools. He also stopped the practice of “restoration” by retouching. Instead, beginning in the 1920s, he worked in conjunction with scientific experts to restore paintings using more appropriate materials. Eigenberger took over the fledgling “Meisterschule für Konservierung und Technologie” at the Academy in 1933, a facility that grew into the east wing of the museum. His service was suspended briefly in 1945 after World War II. He was reappointed and remained director until 1961, and retired as professor in 1965. Eigenberger was also a painter, a member of the Vienna Secession, and won the 1930 Austrian State Prize for painting.
Selected Bibliography
Die Gemäldegalerie der Akademie der Bildende Künste in Wien. Vienna: Manz, 1927; Peter Paul Rubens. Vienna: Kunstverlag Wolfrum, 1955.
Sources
Dr. Robert Eigenberger: 14. Februar 1890-14. April 1979 : Gedächtnisausstellung. Vienna: Akademie der Bildenden Künste, 1980; Trenk, Renate. The Picture Gallery of the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. Vienna: Böhlau, 2002, p. 24; “Master School for Conservation/Restoration, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna.” http://www.ffcr-fr.org/format/europe/autri/autriche.htm; Meissner, G. “Eigenberger, Robert.” Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon: die bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker. vol. 32. Leipzig: K.G. Saur, 2002, p. 545.
Citation
"Eigenberger, Robert." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/eigenbergerr/.
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Director of the Picture Gallery of the Academy of Fine Arts (Akademie der Bildenden Künste) 1926-29, 33-65, Vienna. He was born in Sedlitz, Bohemia, which is present-day Sedlice, Czech Republic. Eigenberger studied art history at the universities
Subject Area(s): Ancient Greek (culture or style), Antique, the, and Classical
Overview
Specialist in ancient Greek and Roman art, particularly sculpture and bronze statuary. Curator of varying rank at the Kunsthistorischen Museums, Vienna, beginning in 1915, and director of the Antiquities Collection, 1935-1952. Professor of Classical Archaeology at the University of Vienna (1953-1961), and director of the österreichische archäologische Institut (Austrian Archaeological Institute, or öAI) from 1953 to 1969.
Selected Bibliography
Die Reliefs des Heroon von Gjölbaschi-Trysa, 1950. Die Skulpturen des Heraions von Argos, öJh 19/20, 1919, 15 ff. Thronlehnenstützen des olympischen Zues des Phidias, öJh 45, 1960, 5 ff.
Sources
Archäologenbildnisse: Porträts und Kurzbiographien von Klassichen Archäologen deutscher Sprache. Reinhard Lullies, ed. Mainz am Rhein: Verlag Philipp von Zabern, 1988: 2
Citation
"Eichler, Fritz." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/eichlerf/.
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Specialist in ancient Greek and Roman art, particularly sculpture and bronze statuary. Curator of varying rank at the Kunsthistorischen Museums, Vienna, beginning in 1915, and director of the Antiquities Collection, 1935-1952. Professor of Classic
