Ernst Benkard

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Ernst Benkard (born February 27, 1883 in Frankfurt am Main ; † May 8, 1946 in Freiburg im Breisgau ) was a German art historian .

Life

Ernst Benkard attended the Goethe-Gymnasium in Frankfurt and then studied art history in Leipzig (1901-02), Munich (1902/03), Berlin (1903), Leipzig (1903/04), Berlin (1904-05) and Heidelberg, where he received his doctorate in 1907 under Henry Thode . After that he was a volunteer assistant at the Städelsche Kulturinstitut in Frankfurt until the end of 1912 . He then worked as a correspondent and art critic for the Frankfurter Zeitung . In 1927 he completed his habilitation at the University of Frankfurt and taught there from the winter semester 1927/28 to the winter semester 1937/38 as a private lecturer at the Art History Institute , where he mainly offered exercises on regional art and events on the Italian Renaissance . He is said to have reported on the Great German Art Exhibition in 1937 with “barely concealed irony, distance and rejection”.

Benkard's works include an illustrated book on the death masks of statesmen and artists, which was published in Berlin in 1926 with a foreword by Georg Kolbe . It bears the title The Eternal Face and immediately triggered an objection by Ernst Gundolf regarding a death mask by William Shakespeare . In The Eternal Face , Benkard also presented the unknown woman from the Seine , about whom he wrote poetically that she was “a delicate butterfly for us, which, carefree, fluttered its fine wings before time on the lamp of life Has". Another work of art that was popular at times and allegedly based on a death mask was Luther in effigie in Halle , whom Benkard described as a “mannequin” and “doll”.

After losing his apartment in Frankfurt in an air raid in March 1944, he moved to Freiburg im Breisgau, where he had relatives.

Publications (selection)

  • The eternal face. Frankfurter Verlags-Anstalt, Frankfurt am Main 1929.
  • The Städelschule Art School 1817–1942. A historical outline. City of Frankfurt, Frankfurt am Main 1942.

literature

  • Ernst Benkard †. Commemorative speech at his grave in the Ebnet cemetery on May 10, 1946, given by Benno Reifenberg . In: Die Gegenwart 1, 1945/46, No. 10/11 (May 24, 1946), pp. 25f.
  • Clemens Joos: Between the past and the future. "Spiritual Reconstruction" 1945-1958 using the example of the bi-monthly publication Die Gegenwart. In: Journal of the Breisgau history association "Schau-ins-Land". 119, 2000, pp. 194-195 ( digitized version ).
  • History of the Art History Institute of the Goethe University Frankfurt . Frankfurt 2002, pp. 103-107.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Frankfurt on the page A Documentation on Teaching and Research Activities at University Institutes of Art History in Germany from 1933 to 1945 of the KIT.
  2. ↑ Dagmar Bussiek: Benno Reifenberg (1892-1970). Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 2012, ISBN 978-3-835-32117-5 ( limited preview in Google book search)
  3. ^ Ernst Gundolf: Works. Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 2006, ISBN 978-9-060-34116-2 , p. 27 ( limited preview in the Google book search)
  4. ↑ On the dispute over Shakespeare's death mask, see also the interview with Hildegard Hammerschmidt-Hummel on May 9, 2006 on the occasion of the publication of her book The authentic features of William Shakespeare. The death mask of the poet and portraits from three periods of life on www.hammerschmidt-hummel.de .
  5. ↑ Quoted from Dorle Dracklé , Bilder vom Tod. LIT Verlag, Münster, 2001, ISBN 978-3-825-83895-9 , p. 56 ( limited preview in the Google book search).
  6. ↑ Quoted from Horst Bredekamp , Bodies in Action and Symbolic Forms. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-050-06140-5 , p. 159 ( limited preview in the Google book search).
personal data
SURNAME Benkard, Ernst
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German art historian
DATE OF BIRTH February 27, 1883
PLACE OF BIRTH Frankfurt am Main
DATE OF DEATH May 8, 1946
Place of death Freiburg in Breisgau