Edgar Wind

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Edgar Wind (born May 14, 1900 in Berlin , † September 12, 1971 in London ) was a German art historian and philosopher.

Life

Wind was Erwin Panofsky's first student at the Warburg School and worked at the Warburg Institute after the Warburg Library moved from Hamburg to London . He still got to know Aby Warburg (1866–1929), who valued the young art historian's analytical mind very much. Like Panofsky, Wind was an iconologist and a specialist in Italian art and philosophy. His main work is dedicated to the Platonic ideas and pagan mysteries of the Renaissance.

His major books are the philosophical Habilitationsschrift The Experiment in Metaphysics (1934), the art-historical work Pagan Mysteries in the Renaissance ( Pagan Mysteries in the Renaissance ) (1958) and the philosophy of art essays art and anarchy ( Art and Anarchy ), the Reith Lectures on the BBC, broadcast in 1960, successfully published in 1963. There are also many art-historical essays, for example on Michelangelo , and pioneering works on English art history. His attempt to trace the ceiling program of the Sistine Chapel back to the Dominican and Hebraist Santi Pagnini was later rejected by himself.

Wind's philosophical teacher was Ernst Cassirer . In Freiburg im Breisgau he had also heard lectures by Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger , but strictly rejected their style of thinking. He considered Husserl to be irrationalist, and in retrospect Heidegger was a genuine National Socialist for him. Two years in North Carolina brought him into contact with American scientific pragmatism , and The Experiment and Metaphysics is shaped by it. Wind's teacher Aby Warburg had already understood his philosophical-psychological notes as pragmatic philosophizing and still admired Hegel .

Wind was dismissed for racist reasons in 1933 and emigrated to England in the same year. He went to the United States in 1939, received US citizenship in 1940, and was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1951. In 1955 Wind came back to England. He became Oxford's first professor of art history. In 1960 he produced the Reith Lectures Art and Anarchy for the BBC . In 1967, Wind retired.

Fonts (selection)

  • The experiment and metaphysics. To resolve the cosmological antinomies (= contributions to philosophy and its history. Vol., ZDB -ID 539410-7 ). Mohr, Tübingen 1934.
  • Pagan Mysteries in the Renaissance. Faber and Faber, London 1958 (In German: Pagan Mysteries in the Renaissance. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1981, ISBN 3-518-07593-4 ).
  • Art and Anarchy. The Reith Lectures 1960 revised and enlarged. Faber and Faber, London 1963 (In German: Kunst und Anarchie. Die Reith lectures 1960. Revised edition with additions from 1968 and later additions. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1979, ISBN 3-518-07522-5 , also: ( = Suhrkamp-Taschenbuch Wissenschaft. 1163). Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1994, ISBN 3-518-28763-X ).
  • The Eloquence of Symbols. Studies in Humanist Art. Edited by Jaynie Anderson. With a biographical memoir by Hugh Lloyd-Jones . Clarendon Press, Oxford 1983, ISBN 0-19-817341-5 (several editions and translations).
  • Hume and the Heroic Portrait. Studies in Eighteenth-Century Imagery. Edited by Jaynie Anderson. Clarendon Press, Oxford 1986, ISBN 0-19-817371-7 .

literature

  • Horst Bredekamp , Bernhard Buschendorf, Freia Hartung, John Krois (eds.): Edgar Wind. Art historian and philosopher. Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1998, ISBN 3-05-003298-7 .
  • Ulrike Wendland: Biographical handbook of German-speaking art historians in exile. Life and work of the scientists persecuted and expelled under National Socialism. Volume 2: L-Z. Saur, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-598-11339-0 , pp. 774-779 (also: Hamburg, Universität, Dissertation, 1996).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Cf. E. Sears: The Pictorial Language of Michelangelo. Edgar Winds interpretation of the Sistine Chapel , in: H. Bredekamp et al. (Hrsg.): Edgar Wind. Art historian and philosopher. Berlin 1998, pp. 49-76.
  2. ↑ Wind essay on Sartre in the Akademie anthology
personal data
SURNAME Wind, Edgar
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German art historian
DATE OF BIRTH May 14, 1900
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH September 12, 1971
Place of death London