Dagobert Frey

Dagobert Frey (born April 23, 1883 in Vienna , Austria-Hungary , † May 13, 1962 in Stuttgart ) was an Austrian art historian .

life and work

After he had already completed a degree in architecture at the Technical University of Vienna , he found a job at the State Monument Office in 1911 as an employee of Max Dvořák . On his advice, he also began to study art history and received his doctorate in 1915 on Bramante's St. Peter's draft and his apocrypha . The architecture of the Renaissance , Baroque and Modern times became a focus of his research alongside numerous contributions to Austrian art topography. From 1922 Frey taught as an honorary lecturer at the Technical University of Vienna. In 1931 he was appointed professor of art history at the University of Breslau , where his perspective expanded to include art-geographical and national problems in the north-eastern European cultural area.

After the German invasion of Poland , Frey played a role in Poland in the kidnapping of art treasures from the National Museum in Warsaw and in the preparations for the demolition of the Warsaw Royal Castle . In Krakow he participated in the opening of the Institute for German Ostarbeit as a speaker on German architecture in Poland. He was considered the "Spiritus Rector" of this institute and worked there as a consultant. In 1944 Frey became a corresponding member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences .

In 1945 he returned to Vienna and resumed his work at the monument office. In addition, he dealt with theories and methodological issues.

From 1951 he lived in Stuttgart, where he held a chair for art history at the Technical University until 1953. In 1950 he was elected a corresponding member of the Austrian and in 1953 the Göttingen Academy of Sciences . In the writings of these last years he dealt with the great artistic personalities such as Giotto , Tizian , Michelangelo and Rembrandt van Rijn .

Frey's methodological position is a synthesis of the developmental, source-based approach of the Vienna School of Art History and Josef Strzygowski's unorthodox, interdisciplinary system . Julius von Schlosser and, above all, Max Dvořák's approach to the humanities were of fundamental importance for Frey. In addition, in the sense of Strzygowski's comparative art research, there was an intensive examination of the neighboring disciplines, an interest in natural science and the supraregional consideration of especially Eastern European art landscapes. Subsequently, Frey intended to unite these various components to create a comprehensive art philosophy.

His son Gerhard Frey (1915–2002) was a well-known philosophy professor in Innsbruck. He published his father's preparatory work for the planned philosophy of art after his death, which, apart from the two works Art and History (1949/50) and Art and Symbol (1942/45), had already appeared in print. In the foreword he confesses a relationship to the thinking of his father; He was "aware for a long time that especially my studies in the philosophy of language and the philosophy of consciousness with their draft of a linguistic theory of reflection without thoughts such as the reality character of the work of art would not have been conceivable for me."

Quotes

For Dagobert Frey, art was primarily the creation of meaning:

“Art is symbolic design. As a vivid, formal design, it also gives meaning. It does not give shape to meaning, but creates meaning through and in the shape. The sense is only given in the form. A meaning can be assumed primarily for which a symbol is set; this is the case in allegory; But this sense too must again be given in a form for which a different form is set in the work of art. But insofar as the pictorial form is art, it still means more, a meaning is included in it that extends beyond what is primarily given, and this more, this other, in turn, is only contained in the artistic design itself.

Insofar as art is the giving of meaning, it is also cognition, not in the rational-conceptual sense, but in direct perception, in grasping the appearance as a holistic form, and in grasping the form as the expression of the essence, the existential "real". "

- art and history. In: Building Blocks for a Philosophy of Art. P. 8

For him, art history is the attempt to make this sense of art accessible to the awareness of human existence:

“What art history can give in a comprehensive sense from its own problematic is the attempt, through historical interpretation, to grasp the work of art as a form-like expression of the human spirit, as a revelation and self-representation of man, as a historically determined possibility of his spiritual development.

In this way it could fulfill the highest task of historical knowledge: illuminating and deepening the awareness of our own historical existence. "

- art and history. In: Building Blocks for a Philosophy of Art. P. 34

For him, art is necessarily subjective, just like art criticism:

“Just as the work of art is personal expression, so is criticism too. The subjectivity of art vis-à-vis the super-subjective and therefore binding of science is essentially based on its function. If the work that is put out, with which the human environment is addressed, is a commitment, then it is the position on the work in the same way. By approving the work or rejecting it, by interpreting it and giving it meaning, I take a personal point of view towards it.

However, this statement is not only an evaluative one. The special meaning of the work of art is given by its creative, intuitive character; Croce rightly saw this as the decisive factor. Understanding a work of art therefore means something fundamentally different from understanding a rationally formulated scientific knowledge. I understand a mathematical proposition or I do not understand it: the understanding is clear. Understanding can lead to further thinking, but this is already a new creative act that transcends understanding. The understanding of the work of art remains fundamentally indeterminate and therefore inexhaustible because it is conditioned by the subjective opinion, which in itself is infinitely changeable. What the work of art tells me, what it answers me, depends on how I address it, how I stand by it. You can observe this in yourself, how the same work of art addresses you differently in different moods or life situations, says something different, as can be deduced from the changing subjective attitude of different possibilities of interpretation. "

- To the interpretation of the work of art. In: Building Blocks for a Philosophy of Art. Pp. 110, 111

Works (selection)

• Bramante's St. Peter design and its apocrypha . Anton Schroll, Vienna 1915. Dissertation.
• Michelangelo studies . Anton Schroll, Vienna 1920
• Max Dvorák's position in art history . In: Yearbook for Art History , Volume 1, 1922, pp. 1–21.
• Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach. A study of its position in the development of the Viennese palace facade . Austrian publishing company Eduard Hölzel, Vienna 1923.
• Gothic and Renaissance as the basis of the modern worldview . B. Filser, Augsburg 1929
• The German art - The German achievement in East Central Europe . Confederation of the German East, Berlin 1938.
• Krakow. Recorded by Edgar Titzenthaler ( Deutsche Lande - Deutsche Kunst ). German Art Publishing House, Berlin 1941.
• English essence in the fine arts . Kohlhammer, Stuttgart, Berlin 1942.
• Basic questions of art history. Prolegomena to an art philosophy . [Margarethe von] Rohrer, Vienna 1946; ² Darmstadt 1972
• Foundation of a comparative art history. Space and time in the art of the African-Eurasian high cultures . [Margarete von] Rohrer, Vienna 1949; New Dr. Darmstadt 1970
• Dagobert Frey (autobiography) , in: Austrian History of the Present in Self-Representations, 2, Innsbruck 1951
• Demony of the look . Academy of Sciences and Literature, Mainz 1953 (= treatises of the humanities and social sciences class , born 1952, no. 6).
• Mannerism as a European stylistic phenomenon. Studies on the art of the 16th and 17th centuries . Gerhard Frey (editor). W. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 1964
• Gerhard Frey (editor, foreword), Walter Frodl ( foreword) : Building blocks for a philosophy of art . Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt, 1976, ISBN 3-534-06897-1 .

Festschrift for Frey:

• Hans Tintelnot (Ed.): Art history studies. Dagobert Frey on April 23, 1943. From his colleagues, co-workers and others. Students. Gauverl. NS Silesia, Breslau 1943.

literature

• Art history studies. Dagobert Frey on April 23, 1943 from his colleagues, co-workers and students , Breslau 1943
• Journal for East Research. Countries and peoples in Eastern Central Europe , II / 4 (Dagobert Frey on his 70th birthday), Marburg / Lahn 1953
• Otto Demus : Obituary for Dagobert Frey , in: Almanach of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Volume 112, Vienna 1962, p. 383 ff.
• Dagobert Frey. List of his works , in: Österreichische Zeitschrift für Kunst und Denkmalpflege, 16, 1962
• Dagobert Frey, 1883–1962. A reminder . Art History Institute of the University of Kiel, Kiel 1962
• Hans Sedlmayr: Obituary for Dagobert Frey , in: Yearbook of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences, Munich 1963
• Ulrike Gensbaur-Bendler: Dagobert Frey. Philosophical foundations of his art theory , in: Wiener Jahrbuch für Kunstgeschichte, 42, 1989
• I. Schulze: The abuse of art history by the imperialist German Ostpolitik , Leipzig 1970 (on Frey's role in the "Third Reich").
• S. Lorentz: The double face of Dr. D. Frey , in: Information bulletin of the Zachodnia Agencia Prasowa 8, 1960, pp. 6-10

Web links

• Literature by and about Dagobert Frey in the catalog of the German National Library
• Dictionary of Art Historians (English)

Individual evidence

1. ^ LH Nicolas: Der Raub der Europa , Munich 1995, p. 104
2. ↑ Sabine Arend: Studies on German art-historical "Ostforschung" under National Socialism. The art history institutes at the (imperial) universities of Wroclaw and Poznan and their protagonists in the field of tension between science and politics. Dissertation Berlin 2009 [1] as an e-book.
3. ^ Dagobert Frey obituary by Hans Sedlmayr at the Bavarian Academy of Sciences (PDF file)
4. ↑ Holger Krahnke: The members of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen 1751-2001 (= Treatises of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Philological-Historical Class. Volume 3, Vol. 246 = Treatises of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Mathematical-Physical Class. Episode 3, vol. 50). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2001, ISBN 3-525-82516-1 , p. 85.
5. ^ Gerhard Frey: Estate
6. ↑ In the case of art, this results in a serious objection to the Wikipedia principle of no theory .