Adolf Katzenellenbogen

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Adolf Katzenellenbogen (born August 19, 1901 in Frankfurt am Main ; died September 30, 1964 in Baltimore ) was a German-American art historian.

Life

Adolf Edmund Max Katzenellenbogen was the son of bank director Albert Katzenellenbogen (1863–1942) and Cornelia Josephine Doctor (1870–1941). He had two sisters. His father was murdered in the Maly Trostinez extermination camp . He attended the humanistic Goethe Gymnasium in Frankfurt and studied law at the University of Gießen from 1920 , where he received his doctorate in 1924. From 1926 to 1929 and from 1930 to 1933 he studied art history and philosophy in Leipzig and Hamburg and received his doctorate in Hamburg in 1933 with Erwin Panofsky with a dissertation on psychomachia . Because of his Jewish origins, after the transfer of power to the National Socialists in 1933, he was unable to find a job as a lawyer or art historian and lived as a private scholar on the family's fortune. In 1935 he married the Swiss piano teacher Elisabeth Holzheu (1904–1983), the couple had two children. He was mistreated during the November pogroms in 1938 and imprisoned for three weeks in the Dachau concentration camp . He was released through the intervention of the Swiss art collector Oskar Reinhart and fled to Switzerland and from there via England to the USA.

Erwin Panofsky and Walter S. Cook of New York University helped him find a job, and Katzenellenbogen was Visiting Lecturer at Vassar College , Poughkeepsie in 1940 , Assistant Professor in 1943, Associate Professor in 1947, and Professor in 1953. In 1946 he received US citizenship. In 1956 he became a visiting professor at Smith College and from 1958 he was a professor at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore . There he built the art history course into a leading one in the USA. The future Rembrandt specialist Gary Schwartz was one of his students. The University of Freiburg im Breisgau invited Katzenellenbogen to a guest professorship in 1963.

Fonts (selection)

  • The Psychomachy in Medieval Art from the Beginnings to the 13th Century . Hamburg, 1933 Hamburg, Phil. Diss., Ms.
  • Allegories of the virtues and services in mediaeval art: from early Christian times to the thirteenth century . Alan JP Crick in Romanian. London 1939; Norton, New York 1964.
  • The Central Tympanum at Vézelay: Its Encyclopedic Meaning and Its Relation to the First Crusade . In: Art Bulletin , 1944, pp. 141-151.
  • The sculptural programs of Chartres cathedral: Christ, Mary, Ecclesia . Johns Hopkins Press, Baltimore 1959.

literature

  • Katzenellenbogen, Adolf . In: Ulrike Wendland: Biographical handbook of German-speaking art historians in exile. Life and work of the scientists persecuted and expelled under National Socialism . Saur, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-598-11339-0 , pp. 357-359.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Katzenellenbogen, Adolf
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Katzenellenbogen, Adolf Edmund Max
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-American art historian
DATE OF BIRTH August 19, 1901
PLACE OF BIRTH Frankfurt am Main
DATE OF DEATH September 30, 1964
Place of death Baltimore