Carl Neumann (art historian)

Carl Neumann (born June 1, 1860 in Mannheim , † October 9, 1934 in Frankfurt am Main ) was a German art historian and historian, known for his research on Rembrandt .

Life

Neumann came from a wealthy Jewish merchant family and studied history in Heidelberg from 1878 and in Berlin from 1880. In Berlin he heard lectures from Heinrich von Treitschke and Karl Wilhelm Nitzsch and worked on the Monumenta Germaniae Historica under Georg Waitz . In 1882 he received his doctorate in Heidelberg with a dissertation on Bernhard von Clairvaux and the beginning of the second crusade. He then went to Basel, where Jacob Burckhardt aroused his interest in ancient art history, whose studies he then continued at the Glyptothek in Munich. At the same time he found access to the circle around Anselm Feuerbach (he was friends with his mother Henriette and his friend Julius Allgeyer ). From 1884 to 1887 he traveled to Italy (as well as Istanbul, Egypt, Palestine, Syria, Athens) and converted to Protestantism in 1887. In 1894 he completed his habilitation in Heidelberg (The World Position of the Byzantine Empire before the Crusades).

As a historian, he was particularly concerned with late antiquity and the culture of the Middle Ages. As an art historian, a connection with contemporary art was important to him and, contrary to the usual procedure, he used to go back in time from the present in his lectures.

From the end of the 1880s a manic-depressive illness became noticeable, which led to hospital stays and several suicide attempts. During a recovery phase, he was so impressed by the observation of the Blessing of James from Rembrandt in Kassel that he turned away from the art of antiquity and the Renaissance and turned to Rembrandt and the 17th century. In 1902 his book on Rembrandt appeared, which established his reputation. In his Rembrandt book, after describing the decline in the appreciation of Rembrandt in the 19th century under the influence of classicism idealizing Renaissance art and the subsequent rediscovery by French critics, he ties the interpretation of Rembrandt to the folkish interpretation of Rembrandt as an educator from Julius Langbehn on, even if this is not an art history book and rather a columnist layout. He was very interested in down- to -earth German contemporary art and, most recently, in German art of the Middle Ages.

In 1903/04 he was a deputy professor in Göttingen (for Robert Vischer ) and from 1904 he was a full professor of art history in Kiel, succeeding Adelbert Matthaei .

In 1907 he became chairman of the Schleswig-Holstein Art Association. He organized many exhibitions in Kiel and played a major role in the redesign of the university auditorium and the new construction of the art gallery (the old building was demolished in 1888), which also housed his institute and the archaeological institute.

In 1911 he became a full professor in Heidelberg, where he retired in 1929. Shortly before his death he moved to Frankfurt.

Fonts

• The struggle for the new art, Berlin: Walther 1892
• Rembrandt, Berlin: Spemann 1902
• Three strange artistic suggestions from Runge, Manet, Goya. Heidelberg: C. Winter, 1916
• From Rembrandt's workshop. Heidelberg: C. Winter, 1918
• Rembrandt hand drawings, Munich: Piper, 1918
• From belief in a coming national art. Heidelberg: C. Winter, 1919
• (Ed.): John Kruse : The drawings of Rembrandt and his school in the National Museum in Stockholm . M. Nijhoff, The Hague 1920
• Jacob Burckhardt, Munich: F. Bruckmann, 1927
• Rembrandt van Rijn: the etched work of the master in true-to-original hand copper prints, 4 volumes, Berlin: Amsler, from 1928
• The painter Anselm Feuerbach: Memorial speech at the centenary for Feürbach at the University of Heidelberg, Heidelberg: C. Winters, 1929.

literature

• Andrea Fink-Madera: Carl Neumann 1860-1934 . P. Lang, Frankfurt am Main 1993 (= dissertation Heidelberg 1991).
• Ulrich Kuder: From the Rembrandt Experience to Rembrandt Research. Carl Neumann's Rembrandt . In: Klaus Gereon Beuckers , Ulrich Kuder (Hrsg.): Research in their time. 125 years of the Art History Institute at the Christian Albrechts University in Kiel . Kiel: Ludwig, 2020 (= Kieler Kunsthistorische Studien NF, Vol. 18), pp. 77–114.
• Neumann, Carl. In: Lexicon of German-Jewish Authors . Volume 17: Meid – Phil. Edited by the Bibliographia Judaica archive. De Gruyter, Berlin a. a. 2009, ISBN 978-3-598-22697-7 , pp. 305-310.
• Neumann, Carl , in: Joseph Walk (ed.): Short biographies on the history of the Jews 1918–1945 . Munich: Saur, 1988, ISBN 3-598-10477-4 , p. 280
• Neumann, Carl , in: Salomon Wininger : Great Jewish National Biography . Volume 7. Chernivtsi, 1935, p. 346

Web links

Wikisource: Carl Neumann  - Sources and full texts

• Biography of Tanja Soroka, University of Kiel
• Dictionary of Art Historians
• Portrait at HeidICON

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Neumann, Rembrandt , Spemann 1902, foreword, p. 28. In addition to the painter ... the German has been revealed to us, who brings us his special mission, whose active force should strike us more deeply than the rest of humanity.