Ernest Nash

Gravestone of Ernest Nash on the Cimitero acattolico in Rome

Ernest Nash (born Ernst Nathan on September 14, 1898 in Nowawes ; died on May 18, 1974 in Rome ) was an American photographer and archaeologist born in Germany . He became known to a wider public through his visual dictionary on the topography of ancient Rome.

Life

School and study

Ernest Nash was the youngest of four children born to Louis and Betti Nathan. His father was a weaving mill owner and member of the board of directors of the Jewish community of Potsdam , also a member of the building commission for the Teltow Canal and from 1900 community representative in Nowawes. From 1905 Nash attended the pre-school of the Realgymnasium in Nowawes, then the Realgymnasium, in whose new building, built in 1910, the Bertha-von-Suttner-Gymnasium in Berlin is now housed. He passed his Abitur in 1916, studying Jewish religion with the Potsdam rabbi Hermann Schreiber . Before graduating from high school, he anonymously published a small pamphlet entitled "Excavations and inscriptions as explanations of selected passages by Horace" - a study by the senior prime minister, which he dedicated to the director of the secondary school, Willy Scheel (1869–1929).

He began to study law in Berlin, where he also attended the lecture of the historian and epigraphist Hermann Dessau . After the first semester, he signed up as a volunteer for the army. While working on the Italian front, he made his first experiences with the medium of photography. After the end of the First World War , he continued his studies and received his doctorate at the Friedrich Schiller University in Jena . The revocation of the doctorate following pressure from the National Socialists was reversed by the university on November 9, 2016.

Legal years and emigration

Initially employed as a judge in Brandenburg , Nash went into business for himself in 1926 as a lawyer with his own law firm at the representative Wilhelmplatz in Berlin. During this time, he vigorously pursued his interest in photography and documented Potsdam buildings that were influenced by Roman architecture . In 1928 he married Ilse Rubinski, with whom he had two daughters. In 1929, under the influence of his communist ideals, he declared his departure from the Jewish community. Calls for boycotts against Jewish lawyers of the National Socialists after the seizure of power still hit him. In 1934 he traveled to Rome for the first time , where he photographed buildings that had served as models in Potsdam. In 1936, Nash finally fled to Rome, where the family followed him in 1937. He now systematically devoted himself to photography of Roman antiquities and made photography his profession. In this context he also became a portrait photographer of high Vatican dignitaries, such as the Cardinals Eugenio Pacelli, later Pope Pius XII. , and Giovanni Battista Montini, later Pope Paul VI.

Following the enactment of the Italian race laws in 1938 and the associated expulsion, Nash emigrated to the United States in 1939 , where he settled in New York . In 1942 he changed his name to Ernest Nash, by whom he has been known ever since. This was followed by the photographic documentation of Roman-influenced buildings in New York. In 1944 the first illustrated book was published under the title Roman Towns. Photographs and Text by Ernest Nash. He also continued portrait photography in America and photographed musicians such as Béla Bartók and his wife Ditta Pásztory-Bartók , the composer Benjamin Britten , the violinists Bronisław Huberman and Joseph Szigeti , the conductors Sir Thomas Beecham and George Szell, and the jazz musician Benny Goodman .

Return to Europe

Ernest Nash became an American citizen and returned to Europe as such in 1949. During several stays in Rome, he continued his work on the architecture and topography of the ancient city. After divorcing his first wife, he married Irene Lande, a student of Semitic languages , in 1952 . In 1955 he donated his photo collection of 3,135 negatives and 1,500 prints to the Unione internazionale degli istituti di archeologia, storia e storia dell'arte in Roma , an association of most of the foreign and Italian research institutions based in the Italian capital. As director of the foundation, Nash finally moved to Rome. Today the considerably expanded collection is housed in the American Academy in Rome .

On the basis of the increasingly expanded photographic material, his two-volume image lexicon on the topography of ancient Rome, which was published by the German Archaeological Institute in 1961–62 and an English translation, was published in 1968. To this day, the work is a fundamental aid and important document when dealing with the architecture and topography of ancient Rome.

Nash's wife Irene died in 1961 and in 1965 he married the Austrian Berti Kern, who had cared for his wife during her illness. This was followed by further photo surveys in Italy and other places, including in 1966 in Israel . In 1974 Ernest Nash died in Rome, where he was buried on the Cimitero acattolico .

Appreciations and honors

For his services to the topography of Rome, Nash received the Cross of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany. On the occasion of his 75th birthday in 1973, the American Academy organized a symposium on the topography of Rome, in which Richard Krautheimer also took part. On his 100th birthday, another symposium followed in 1998 at the American Academy in Rome in memory of Ernest Nash. In 2000 the exhibition Ernest Nash / Ernst Nathan 1898–1974 took place in Potsdam from August 27 to October 15 . Photography: Potsdam, Rome, New York, Rome instead. It was spread over two exhibition locations: some of the photographs were exhibited in the Roman Baths in Sanssouci Park , and some in the museum building in the Güldenen Arm of the Potsdam Museum .

Publications

• Roman Towns. Photographs and Text by Ernest Nash. JJ Augustin, New York 1944.
• Lexicon of images on the topography of ancient Rome. Published by the German Archaeological Institute. Two volumes. Wasmuth, Tübingen 1961–1962.

literature

• Maria R. Alföldi , Margarita C. Lahusen (eds.): Ernest Nash - Ernst Nathan 1898–1974. Photograph. Potsdam, Rome, New York, Rome. Nicolaische Verlagsbuchhandlung, Berlin 2000.

Web links

• Donation to commemorate November 9, 1938 - on the occasion of the donation of a copy of excavations and inscriptions as explanations of selected passages of Horace to the Potsdam Museum .

Remarks

1. ↑ A symbolic act. With a ceremony on November 9, the University of Jena will rehabilitate scientists who were stripped of their doctorate during the Nazi era. Communication from Friedrich Schiller University Jena dated November 2, 2016 (accessed on January 9, 2018).
2. ↑ Fototeca Unione on the website of the American Academy in Rome (archive page, accessed on January 9, 2018).
3. ↑ Two exhibitions in Potsdam show the photo estate of Ernst Nathan alias Ernest Nash . In: Berliner Zeitung of September 19, 2000 (accessed January 9, 2018).