Full Name: Volkmann, Ludwig
Gender: male
Date Born: 1870
Date Died: 1947
Home Country/ies: Germany
Subject Area(s): art theory and education
Overview
Leipzig amateur art historian and education theorist. Volkmann studied at Bonn and Leipzig before receiving his Ph.D. in Munich under Heinrich Wölfflin in 1892. His dissertation, on the iconography of Dante’s Divine Comedy was published to enthusiastic reviews, among them Bernard Berenson. Volkmann never held a formal teaching position, choosing instead to manage the family’s prestigeous publishing house, Breitkopf & Härtel. Chief among his interests (other than renaissance symbolism) was art education and the arts and crafts. In 1891 he published “Methodology for School Instruction” (Methodik des Schulunterrichts) setting a theme for many of his later books. Volkmann, politically and artistically conservative, championed painting over photographic representation. The artist, according to him, employed Körpergefühl or appreciation of the body, whereas machines such as the camera could only mimic what they saw. Voltmann’s exaltation of art over machines was a contrast ‘inner truth’ over simple appearance. Art education was essential in this regard because otherwise society became the victim of appearances rather than mastering them. In the non-representative arts, such as architecture, Volkmann was slightly more progressive. Volkmann’s reputation today rests upon two works of the 1920s, his Bilderschriften der Renaissance (1923) a commentary on visual symbolism of Dante and Renaissance, and like Wölfflin, his own book called Grundfragen (Fundamental Questions) on aesthetic education (1925).
Selected Bibliography
[dissertation] Bildliche darstellungen zu Dante’s Divina commedia bis zum ausgang der renaissance. Leipzig: Breitkopf, 1892; Bilderschriften der Renaissance: Hieroglyphik und Emblematik in ihren Beziehungen und Fortwirkungen. Leipzig: K. W. Hiersemann,1923; Grundfragen der kunstbetrachtung: Die erziehung zum sehen; Naturprodukt und kunstwerk; Grenzen der künste. Leipzig: K. W. Hiersemann, 1925; Iconografia dantesca; le rappresentazioni figurative della Divina commedia. Florence: L.S. Olschki, 1898; Padua. Leipzig: E. A. Seemann, 1904; Der überlinger Rathaussaal des Jacob Russ und die Darstellung der deutschen Reichsstände. Berlin: Deutscher Verein für Kunstwissenchaft, 1934; Die Methodik des Schulunterrichts in den modernen fremden Sprachen gegründet auf die Methodik des deutschen Unterrichts dargelegt am Deutschen und am Französischen. Berlin: G.S. Mittler, 1891; Naturprodukt und Kunstwerk: Vergleichende Bilder zum Verständnis des künstlerischen Schaffens. Dresden: G. Kühtmann, 1902; Von der Weltkultur zum Weltkrieg: Vortrag, gehalten am “Vaterländischen Abend” in der Alberthalle zu Leipzig den 17. September 1914. Leipzig: Verlag des Deutschen Buchgewerbevereins, 1914; Grenzen der Künste: auch eine Stillehre. Dresden: Gerhard Kühtmann, 1903.
Sources
Jarzombek, Mark. The Psychologizing of Modernity: Art, Architecture and History. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000, pp. 111-113 and note 29, p.268; Berenson, Bernard. “Dante’s Visual Images and His Early Illustrators.” The Nation. December 24, 1893 (review of Volkmann’s book).