Schwarz, Heinrich M.

Scholar of Mediterranean gothic art and architecture. Schwarz was the son of Mathias Schwarz, a teacher in the Volksschule in Borghees, and Wilhelmine Kaiser (Schwarz), both devout Roman Catholics. He graduated from the gymnasium in Emmerich in 1931 with degrees in Germanistik and history. After two years ("four semesters") studying philology in college, he began art history courses at the universities of Hamburg and Bonn, hearing lectures by the young Fritz Baumgart, Hans Burmeister (Hamburg), Paul Clemen (Bonn), Eugen Lüthgen, Erwin Panofsky (Hamburg), and Charles de Tolnay (Hamburg) and Hans Weigert. During World War II, Schwarz and the museum director Ernst Nawrath (1890-) authored a cultural guidebook on Sicily, published in 1945. It became a popular guide translated and reissued in several editions. In 1957 Schwarz was engaged in editing a joint Festschrift for Leo Bruhns, Franziskus Wolff Metternich and Ludwig Schudt when he was killed in an accident in 1957. The project was taken over by Hanno Hahn who himself was also killed in an accident in 1960. The ill-fated festschrift was finally given to Harald Keller to complete.