Adolph Goldschmidt

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Adolph Goldschmidt (born January 15, 1863 in Hamburg , † January 5, 1944 in Basel ) was a German art historian .

Sigmund von Sallwürk : Portrait of Adolph Goldschmidt, 1909

Life

After an apprenticeship as a banker, which he didn't like, Goldschmidt began studying art history in 1885 at the universities of Jena , Kiel and in Leipzig with Anton Springer . In 1889 he received his doctorate with his dissertation Lübeck painting and sculpture until 1530 , the first detailed inventory of late Gothic art in north-east Germany. He traveled to the countries of Northern, Southern and Western Europe and, after submitting his work The Albanipsalter in Hildesheim and its relationship to the symbolic church sculpture of the 12th century (1893), became a private lecturer at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Berlin . In 1903 he became an associate professor for art history in Berlin , and in 1904 a full professor at the University of Halle . In 1912 he followed a call to Berlin to succeed Heinrich Wölfflin , who then moved to Munich. Wölfflin and Goldschmidt represented different methods in their subject and were also quite different personally. In doing so, they remained on friendly terms with each other in mutual respect.

As before in Halle, Goldschmidt expanded the art history seminar in Berlin into a place of work for his numerous students. Many of them later achieved professional success and reputation. But the poets Christian Morgenstern and Rainer Maria Rilke also heard from him. In 1929 he retired.

The focus of Goldschmidt's research on art history was on the art of the Middle Ages , especially in the field of Low German and Dutch painting from the late Middle Ages to the Baroque period , book illumination and Byzantine and medieval sculpture, especially ivory carving , which he recorded in a six-volume corpus, as well as the Norman architecture of Sicily. He traveled a lot and liked to travel, and his profound knowledge of materials is widely praised. Goldschmidt concentrated his research on objective features, researched iconographic contexts and placed the works of art in their historical context. Art history thus became an exact science for him.

In 1927 and 1930 Goldschmidt was one of the first German university lecturers to be a visiting professor at Harvard University ; in 1931 he was awarded an honorary doctorate from Princeton University , and in 1936 from Harvard. At that time he was offered the opportunity to be the first director to set up the mainly Byzantine research center of Dumbarton Oaks , but Goldschmidt returned to Berlin and after a long hesitation declined, as he felt protected by his position as a professor emeritus and his international reputation. He did not emigrate from Germany until 1939. Supported by Robert von Hirsch , he moved to Basel, where he died in 1944.

Adolph Goldschmidt was a member of the Academy of Sciences in Berlin from 1914 until his exclusion in 1938 . He was co-editor of the yearbook of the Prussian art collections, chairman of the Berlin Art History Society and department head in the German Association for Art History. On his 70th birthday in 1933, he was honored with the Goethe Medal for Art and Science and the Eagle Shield . He had a wide circle of friends, pupils and acquaintances, including Max Liebermann , Edvard Munch , Aby Warburg , Erwin Panofsky , Kurt Weitzmann and Friedrich Meinecke . He was a popular conversationalist and correspondent, humble and curious, and liked to share his own knowledge with others.

Works

Bibliography in Adolph Goldschmidt: Lebenserinnerungen , ed. by Marie Roosen-Runge-Mollwo. Deutscher Verlag für Kunstwissenschaft, Berlin 1989, p. 465–478, there p. 437 f. also an overview of the preserved parts of the estate.

literature

  • Carl Georg Heise (ed.): Adolph Goldschmidt on memorial , Hamburg 1963.
  • Hans KauffmannGoldschmidt, Adolph. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 6, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1964, ISBN 3-428-00187-7 , p. 613 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Kurt Weitzmann : Adolph Goldschmidt and Berlin Art History. Free University of Berlin - Institute of Art History, Berlin 1985.
  • Ulrike Wendland: Biographical handbook of German-speaking art historians in exile. Life and work of the scientists persecuted and expelled under National Socialism. Part 1: A – K. Saur, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-598-11339-0 , pp. 211-218.
  • Adolph Goldschmidt . In: Karin Orth : Expulsion from the science system. Memorial book for the committee members of the DFG who were expelled under National Socialism. Steiner, Stuttgart 2018 (contributions to the history of the German Research Foundation; 7), pp. 241-252, ISBN 978-3-515-11953-5 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Adolph Goldschmidt: Lübeck painting and sculpture until 1530. Lübeck 1889 - digitized in the digital library Mecklenburg-Vorpommern
  2. Adolph Goldschmidt: Memoirs of Life , ed. by Marie Roosen-Runge-Mollwo. Deutscher Verlag für Kunstwissenschaft, Berlin 1989, excursus pp. 459–462.
  3. Adolph Goldschmidt: Memoirs of Life , ed. by Marie Roosen-Runge-Mollwo, Deutscher Verlag für Kunstwissenschaft, Berlin 1989, p. 101.
  4. See for example A. Goldschmidt: Die deutsche Buchmalerei. Volume 1: Carolingian book illumination. Volume 2: Ottonian book illumination. 1928.
  5. Adolph Goldschmidt: Memoirs of Life , ed. by Marie Roosen-Runge-Mollwo, Deutscher Verlag für Kunstwissenschaft, Berlin 1989, p. 377f.
  6. Adolph Goldschmidt: Memoirs of Life , ed. by Marie Roosen-Runge-Mollwo. Deutscher Verlag für Kunstwissenschaft, Berlin 1989, p. 342.
  7. ^ Hans Kauffmann: Adolph Goldschmidt . In: NDB , Vol. 6, Berlin 1964, p. 614. Probably awarded on January 15, 1933. The eagle shield for Goldschmidt is not listed in the lexicon of German-Jewish authors .