Dethard von Winterfeld

Dethard von Winterfeld (born August 21, 1938 in Stettin ) is a German art historian with a focus on the history of architecture.

biography

Dethard von Winterfeld comes from a widespread Prussian noble family that provided numerous officers and administrative officials. His father was a district administrator in Szczecin. After 1945 the family moved to Weimar and finally to Darmstadt , where von Winterfeld passed his Abitur. After an industrial internship in Dortmund , he began studying mechanical engineering at the University of Stuttgart in 1958 . He also heard art history from Hans Wentzel , which led to a change of subject after completing his intermediate mechanical engineering diploma. From 1961 von Winterfeld studied art history at the University of Bonn .

He had already been hired as a draftsman when the construction of the Speyer Cathedral began in Stuttgart . This activity, which lasted until 1972, was groundbreaking for his further academic career, during which he focused on sacred buildings from the Middle Ages . In 1969 he received his doctorate from Herbert von Eine in Bonn with a thesis on the architectural history of Bamberg Cathedral . From 1970 to 1980 he was a research assistant, from 1975 academic advisor at the University of Heidelberg . During this time he expanded his dissertation into a monograph. Due to its outstanding quality, this was accepted as a habilitation thesis, although it had already been published and dealt with the same topic as his dissertation. From 1979 to 1980 he was Otto von Simsons' representative at the Free University of Berlin . Even before completing his habilitation process, he was appointed to the University of Kiel for the 1980 summer semester . From there he moved to Mainz University in 1984 . In 2003, von Winterfeld retired after reaching the age limit. However, he continues to hold courses.

Von Winterfeld was an art historical advisor for the renovation of the old town in Speyer and Heidelberg. From 1984 he was a member of the State Advisory Board for Monument Preservation in Rhineland-Palatinate. Since 1995 he has been a member of the scientific advisory board and the board of trustees for the Speyer Cathedral. From 1988 to 1992 he was also chairman of the Association of German Art Historians .

In 1988 von Winterfeld was the initiator of the establishment of the German-Polish working group for art history, which at the time of the Cold War still acknowledged the common cultural heritage of Germany and Poland. In 1998 he was awarded the Polish order Pour le mérite culturel - za zaslugi dla kultury polskiej for this international understanding of his work . In 2011 he was awarded the Cross of Merit 1st Class of the Federal Republic of Germany. He is an external member of the Polish Academy of Sciences .

science

Von Winterfeld mainly deals with religious buildings from the Middle Ages, with a focus on Romanesque architecture . However, he has also published on pre-Romanesque buildings such as the collegiate church Gernrode or St. Michael in Hildesheim . Questions about the Gothic were already touched upon during his work on Bamberg Cathedral . In his research on the Cathedral of Siena , late Gothic issues were also touched upon. His working method was always based on the object and its precise autopsy. Von Winterfeld's second area of ​​activity is the preservation of monuments , where he expresses himself clearly and sometimes critically in favor of the implementation of Georg Dehio's motto “preserve, not restore” in 1905. In 2005 he gave the band Poland with Ernst Badstübner , Dietmar Popp and Andrzej Tomaszewski . Silesia on behalf of the Herder Institute Marburg and the Dehio Association in the series Dehio-Handbuch der Kunstdenkmäler in Polen .

Web links

• Literature by and about Dethard von Winterfeld in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Announcement of awards of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany. In: Federal Gazette . Vol. 64, No. 9, January 17, 2012.