Full Name: Dresdner, Albert
Gender: male
Date Born: 1866
Date Died: 1934
Place Born: Wrocław, Poland
Place Died: Berlin, Germany
Home Country/ies: Germany
Subject Area(s): art theory and Modern (style or period)
Institution(s): Technische Hochschule Berlin
Overview
Modernist (i. e., 19th-20th century) art historian and art theorist; university professor in art history. He was born in Breslau, Silesia, Prussia which is present-day Wroclaw, Poland. Dresdner was born in 1866 to Bertha Wiener and Rudolf Dresdner, the latter a synagogue cantor. He graduated from the Gymnasium Elisabethanum in 1884. From 1884-1889, the young Dresdner attended the university in Berlin where he studied history, geography, philosophy, and art history. His doctoral degree in history, written under the historian Harry Bresslau (1848-1926) was completed in 1890 with a dissertation, “Die italienische Geistlichkeit des 10. Und 11. Jahrhundert in ihrem Verhältnisse zur Kirche (mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der Entwickelung der Simonie), Ein Beitrag zu ihrer Kultur und Sittengeschichte“ (“The Italian Clergy of the 10th and 11th centuries and their relationship to the Church (with special attention to the evolution of simony), a contribution to their culture and moral history”). He married a Norwegian woman, Mia Schnelle. He found employment as a researcher for the publication Regesten zur Geschichte der deutschen Juden im Mittelalter (“Records of History of German Jews in the Middle Ages”) at the Historical Commission. In 1893, Dresdner turned his interest to the theater, training at the Kgl. Hoftheater (Royal Theatre) in Stuttgart, followed by employment as director. In 1894, he taught as a theater professor. He co-edited and wrote on modernist art for several publications, including Allgemeinen Korrespondenz, Weltkorrespondez, and Kleines Feuilleton. He contributed to the magazine Der Kunstwart and was an art critic for the Leipziger Tageblatt, Neue Hamburger Zeitung, Fränkischer Kurier, Zeitschrift für Bücherfreunde, and Zeitschrift für Innendekoration. His habilitation, which he completed and published in 1915, was the monumental examination of art criticism, Die Entstehung der Kunstkritik im Zusammenhang der Geschichte des europäischen Kunstlebens (The Rise of the Art Critic Considered within the History of European Art). That year he was appointed a non-tenure “ausserordentlich” professor for art history at the Technische Hochschule Charlottenburg/Berlin. As early as 1926 he began contributing articles in English to the British journal Studio. He taught at the TH until 1933 when he was forced into retirement as a “non-Aryan” under the Nazi racial law the “Gesetzes zur Wiederherstellung des Berufsbeamtentums” (Restoration of the Professional Civil Service Act.) He died the following year in Berlin.
Selected Bibliography
[habilitation?] Die Entstehung der Kunstkritik im Zusammenhang der Geschichte des europäischen Kunstlebens. Munich: F. Bruckmann, 1915, volume I of Die Kunstkritik, ihre Geschichte und Theorie; Schwedische und norwegische Kunst seit der Renaissance. Breslau: F. Hirt, 1924; “Modern German landscape painters.“ Studio. 1926 3-9; “Russian and Western cities, by Mstislav Dobuzinsky.“Studio. 1926 108-112; “Rudolf Schiestl.“ Studio. 1927, 155-151; “The New buildings of the Siemens Company.“ Studio. 1927, 406-410; “Glassware by Anton Peter Witt.“ Studio. 1928, 178-181; “Concrete Architecture and House-building.“ Studio. 1928, 231-238; “The work of Emil Preetorius.“ Studio. 1928, 339-342; “Walter Nitschke’s glassware.“ Studio. 1928, 347-348; “Stock furniture by Paul Griesser.“ Studio. 10 1929, 23-24; “Contemporary German Painting: Constantin Gerhardinger.“ Studio. 10 1929 111-112; “Modern ecclesiastical architecture. The archiepiscopal seminary at Bamberg.“ 251-254; “The Work of Paul Scheurich.“ Studio. 10 1929, 561-565; “Sculpture by Georg Kolbe.“Studio. 10 1929, 810-812; “Zwiesel glass.“ Studio. 1930 50-52; “Modern Tendencies in Architecture. The Work of Hans Poelzig“. Studio. 1931 367-371.
Sources
Ebert, Hans. “Die Technische Hochschule in Berline und der Nationalsozialismus.” in, Rürup, Reinhard, ed. Wissenschaft und Gesellschaft : Beiträge zur Geschichte der Technischen Universität Berlin, 1879-1979. Berlin: Springer, 1979, pp.455-476; 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. 127-9.
Archives
- Albert Dresdner letters received, 1904-1927., Getty Research Institute. https://primo.getty.edu/permalink/f/19q6gmb/GETTY_ALMA21126841850001551, 86-A901.
Contributors: Cassandra Klos and Emily Crockett