Full Name: Kühnel, Ernst
Gender: male
Date Born: 1882
Date Died: 1964
Place Born: Neubrandenburg, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Germany
Place Died: Berlin, Germany
Home Country/ies: Germany
Subject Area(s): Islam and Islamic (culture or style)
Career(s): curators
Overview
Curator over the Islamic collections of the State Museum (Kaiser Friedrich) in Berlin. During his time as a student at Heidelberg, his colleagues included Rosa Schapire, Edwin Redslob, Walter Kaesbach, and Emil Waldmann. Kühnel was part of the group who launched the important 1910 exhibition of Islamic art in Munich. Among his assistants in the late 1920s and 30s was Richard Ettinghausen. In 1922 he updated the book on Persian rugs by Wilhelm Bode. He and Heinrich Glück and Ernst Diez authored the Islamic art volume for the prestigious Propyläen Kunstgeschichte series in 1925. Kühnel wrote supplements to Adolph Goldschmidt‘s Die Elfenbeinskulpturen and his Die byzantinischen Elfenbeinskulpturen des X.-XIII. Jahrhunderts, Die islamischen Elfenbeinskulpturen. VIII.-XIII. Jahrhundert, published posthumously in 1971.
Selected Bibliography
[complete bibliography:] “Bibliographie des Schrifttums von Ernst Kühnel.” Aus der Welt der islamischen Kunst: Festschrift für Ernst Kühnel zum 75. Geburtstag am 26. 10. 1957. Berlin: Gebr. Mann, 1959, pp. 388-404; and Bode, Wilhelm von. Vorderasiatische Knüpfteppiche aus alter Zeit. 3rd ed. [first for Kühnel]. Leipzig: Klinkhardt & Biermann, 1922, English, Antique Rugs from the Near East. New York: E. Weyhe, 1922; and Sarre, Friedrich Paul Theodor, and Martin, F. R. Die Ausstellung von Meisterwerken muhammedanischer Kunst in München, 1910. Munich: F. Bruckmann, 1912; and Goetz, Hermann. Indische Buchmalereien aus dem Jahángîr-Album der Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin. Berlin: Scarabaeus-Verlag, g.m.b.h., 1924; and Glück, Heinrich, and Diez, Ernst. Die Kunst des Islam. Berlin: Propyläen-Verlag, 1925, English, Islamic Art & Architecture. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1966; Die islamischen Elfenbeinskulpturen. VIII.-XIII. Jahrhundert. Berlin: Deutscher Verlag für Kunstwissenschaft, 1971; and Volbach, Wolfgang Fritz. Late Antique Coptic and Islamic Textiles of Egypt. London: W. & G. Goyle, 1926; Islamische Kleinkunst. Berlin: R. C. Schmidt & Co., 1925, English, The Minor Arts of Islam. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1971.
Sources
Metzler Kunsthistoriker Lexikon: zweihundert Porträts deutschsprachiger Autoren aus vier Jahrhunderten. Stuttgart: Metzler, 1999, pp. 233-4.