Betty Kurth

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Betty Kurth, 1908
Personal biography around 1910
Cover of One for Many

Betty Kurth (born October 5, 1878 in Vienna , Austria-Hungary ; † November 12, 1948 in London ), full name Bettina Dorothea Kurth b. Kris , was an Austrian art historian . She did particular research on medieval tapestries .

Life

Her parents were the Viennese lawyer Samuel Kris and his wife Hermine nee. Morawetz. Betty was a cousin of the art historian Ernst Kris . She graduated from the Lyceum of the Vienna Women's Employment Association and then worked as a teacher. In 1903 she married the lawyer Peter Paul Kurth (1879–1924). From 1904 she attended the University of Vienna as an extraordinary student of art history and classical archeology , from 1907 she was matriculated there as a student. She was the first Vienna art history student and one of the very first students at the University of Vienna. In 1911 she was awarded a doctorate degree with a dissertation supervised by Max Dvořák , The Fresken im Adlerturm zu Trient , "which dealt with this monument in detail for the first time and placed it in the northern Italian-French development of the early 15th century". phil. PhD.

She did research as a private scholar . After Austria's "annexation" to the National Socialist German Reich , she had to emigrate as a Jew in 1939. The Society for Protection of Science and Learning (SPSL) sought in vain for paid employment. She gave lectures, for example, at the Warburg Institute in London and was at times almost penniless. In 1941, the Austrian art historian Hans Tietze, who emigrated to the USA, made a donation to the SPSL for its maintenance. In 1943 she received a work contract with the Glasgow Art Gallery to catalog the Sir William Burrell Collection of Tapistries . In 1948 she was killed in an accident.

In 1900 she published a fictitious diary, One for Many, under the pseudonym Vera . The book "is about the sexual needs and desires of a young girl and how she deals with the bourgeois double standard" and was published in 23 editions.

Her main art-historical work, published in 1926 in a text volume and two illustrated books, is entitled The German Tapestries of the Middle Ages. She dedicated it to the memory of her husband and wrote in the foreword:

“This publication, which owes its creation to a commission from the German Association for Art Research, dares for the first time to attempt to give a comprehensive overview of German art in the Middle Ages. In many years of collecting, the German knitted tapestries in museums and public buildings, in church treasures and private property, and - as far as accessible - all pieces that appeared and disappeared in the antique trade, were systematically examined and processed, a total of over 320 works that were in storage after almost all countries in Europe, even in Russian and American collections. <...>

If the work essentially also represents a collection of materials, the new and presented for the first time to compensate for their mistakes, the attempt was made to determine the individual knitting locally and chronologically and to classify it in the overall development of art, with purely intuitive judgments , art-historical routes were avoided whenever possible. <...>

The publication of the publication, which began in 1913, has been halted by various fates. If the physical and psychological obstacles of the war, which made the completion of the collection of material impossible, delayed the completion of the work by several years, these obstacles were far exceeded by the difficulties with which the work had to struggle in the post-war period. Composition of the work began in 1920. Then the work stagnated for several years, until the takeover by the Schroll publishing house enabled the work to appear quickly. <...>

Without the suggestion and active interest of my late, honored teacher Max Dvořák, I would not have been able to start and finish the work. I owe a special debt to my dear teacher Julius von Schlosser , whose constant lively sympathy, whose suggestions and perspectives promoted the work in every respect, as well as Mr (sic!) Privy Councilor Otto von Falke in Berlin, who through his rich experience and his tireless willingness to help cleared many difficulties out of my way. "

"Her three monumental volumes on medieval German tapestries are not only indispensable for all relevant scientists, but also a model for responsible and successful research on technology, style, history and, above all, iconography ." She was the first to recognize the importance of the carpet manufacture in Tournai .

Publications

  • The German tapestries of the Middle Ages. One volume of text, two table volumes. Schroll, Vienna 1926.

literature

  • Betty Kurth †. In: Austrian magazine for monument preservation. Volume 2, 1948, p. 192.
  • Selma Krasa-Florian:  Kurth Betty. In: Austrian Biographical Lexicon 1815–1950 (ÖBL). Volume 4, Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Vienna 1969, p. 365.
  • 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. 394-397.
  • Monica Stucky-Schürer: Betty Kurth (1878-1948). A pioneer in art history . In: Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 72, 2009, pp. 557–576.

Web links

Wikisource: Betty Kurth  - Sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Studies at the University of Vienna, doctorate in 1902 as Dr. jur., 1915 with an archaeological thesis on Dr. phil., active as a lawyer ( obituary notice in the New Free Press of August 3, 1925).
  2. ^ Betty Kurth †. In: Austrian magazine for monument preservation. Volume 2, 1948, p. 192.
  3. ↑ a b Wendland 1999.
  4. ↑ Kurth 1926, Volume 1.
personal data
SURNAME Kurth, Betty
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Kurth, Bettina Dorothea; Kris, Bettina (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian art historian
DATE OF BIRTH October 5, 1878
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH November 12, 1948
Place of death London