Ernst Kühnel

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May 3, 1960 Awarded the Charles Lang Freer medal in the Freer Gallery of Art . On the stage (from left to right) Franz Krapf , Ardeschir Zahedi , Ernst Kühnel on the podium

Ernst Kühnel (born October 26, 1882 in Neubrandenburg ; † August 5, 1964 in Berlin ) was a German orientalist , art historian and collector of Islamic art.

Life

Ernst Kühnel - Reconstruction of the Mshatta facade
photo
v. l. To right: Construction workers, restorer Friedrich Bachor, Ernst Kühnel, construction workers, Wolfgang Dudzus (curator), Pergamon Museum, in front of the partially destroyed Mschatta facade, Berlin

Link to the picture
(please note copyrights )

Kühnel was born as the son of the Neubrandenburg high school teacher Paul Kühnel (1848–1924) and his wife Eva-Hedwig, nee. Braun († 1885). In 1901 Kühnel first studied law for a career in the diplomatic service in Paris and in Vienna at the Consular Academy . From 1902 he studied art history and archeology with Karl Voll and Adolf Furtwängler in Munich. He then went to Heidelberg University , where he received his doctorate in 1906 with Henry Thode with a thesis on the painter Francesco Botticini . Fellow students were Rosa Schapire , Edwin Redslob , Walter Kaesbach and Emil Waldmann .

From 1905 to 1909 he undertook study trips to Italy, North Africa, accompanied by his friend Frido Witte (Italy 1905 and Tunisia 1912), and Spain with his first essays on Islamic art in Spain. Popular science books were later created from the collected material. In 1909 Kühnel went to the Kunstgewerbemuseum Berlin under Otto von Falke and worked on exhibition projects, including with Friedrich Sarre at the first major international Islamic exhibition in Munich.

In 1911 he became an employee of the Islamic department of the Berlin museums headed by Sarre, in 1922 curator and from 1931 to 1951 director of the Museum of Islamic Art in Berlin .

In 1912 he accompanied Sarre to the excavations in Samarra . Its first significant publication was the new edition of Wilhelm von Bode 's 1901 book “Vorderasiatische Knüpfteppiche aus Older Time” . In 1915, during the First World War , the Reich government resorted to Kühnel because of his language skills and sent him to Morocco on a special political mission against the French . He stayed there until the end of the war and then for some time in Spain. Since then, the Moorish art of Spain has been a focus of his research and he has given several lectures at Spanish universities. Kühnel had further close ties to Egypt, where he taught as a visiting professor from the 1930s to 1940s. He taught at Berlin University from 1930 to 1954.

He had close ties with scientists in the USA since his participation in the excavations in Ctesiphon in 1928/29 and leading the German-American excavation expedition in 1931/32. From 1952 on he examined and cataloged Islamic fabrics and carpets in the “Textile Museum” in Washington, DC As head of the Islamic department of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin , Kühnel organized the reorganization of this department in the south wing of the Pergamon Museum in 1931/32 according to historical and scientific aspects the collection to an international central office for the research of Islamic art. After the destruction here in World War II , he was busy restoring the collection until 1952. At the beginning of 1952, the “Art History Society of Berlin” in West Berlin was brought back to life by Ernst Kühnel, Friedrich Winkler (1888–1965), director of the Kupferstichkabinett , and Edwin Redslob, Reichskunstwart in the Weimar Republic and co-founder of the Free University .

When the museum holdings were returned to West Berlin in the 1950s after the division of Berlin , Kühnel managed the establishment of the Islamic department in the Museum Center Berlin-Dahlem until 1958 , since 1968 the "Museum of Islamic Art".

Kühnel was first chairman of the German Orient Society and a member of numerous German and international academies and societies. In May 1960 Ernst Kühnel received the " Charles Lang Freer Medal" in Washington.

Ernst Kühnel died in Berlin in 1964 at the age of 81. His grave is in the forest cemetery in Zehlendorf . He rests there next to his wife, the art historian Irene Kühnel-Kunze (1899–1988), whom he married in 1937.

plant

Ernst Kühnel is considered the old master of Islamic art history and archeology. His research covered almost all types of Islamic artifacts and he managed to find many basic dates and localizations. In addition to numerous individual researches, Kühnel had published comprehensive works in which he opened up the basics of Islamic art to wider circles . The first to appear in 1922 was “ Miniature Painting in the Islamic Orient” (French 1924, Turkish 1954). In individual examinations he had determined different painter names, most recently in 1959 in the "Saray albums" of the Berlin State Library. He also edited the relevant key words for numerous encyclopedias. His "Islamic Scripture" is an example of a masterfully short presentation. The ornament and iconographic features had occupied him just as permanently. The last major work he wrote was Volume 7 of the Corpus of Medieval Ivory Sculptures (1972), in which he laid down his view of the origin of the ivory horns and the Saracen boxes as well as the Arab workshops in Spain. Going beyond the mere knowledge of the objects, from the beginning he had always dealt with the question of the relationship between Islamic and European art.

Publications (selection)

  • Francesco Botticini , dissertation Strasbourg 1906
  • Wilhelm von Bode: Near Eastern knotted carpets from older times . With contributions by Ernst Kühnel. Klinkardt & Biermann, Leipzig 1924 (5th edition: Ancient Near Eastern knotted carpets . Klinkhardt & Biermann, Munich 1985, with an afterword by Friedrich Spuhler )
  • Art of the Orient . Academic publishing company Athenaion, Wildpark-Potsdam 1924
  • Moorish art . Bruno Cassirer, Berlin 1924
  • with Hermann Goetz : Indian book paintings from the Jahángîr album of the Berlin State Library . Scarabaeus Verlag, Munich 1924 (English edition London 1926)
  • Islamic cabaret . RC Schmidt & Co., Berlin 1925
  • Islamic fabrics from Egyptian graves in the Islamic Art Department and in the fabric collection of the Palace Museum . E. Wasmuth, Berlin 1927
  • Moorish carpets from Alcaraz , Pantheon, Munich 1930
  • The Indian miniatures of the Otto Sohn-Rethel Collection . In: Pantheon. Monthly for friends and collectors of art , issue 9, September 1931
  • The collection of Turkish and Islamic art in the Tschinili Köschk . de Gruyter, Berlin 1938
  • Islamic calligraphy . Verlag für Briefkunde Heintze u. Blanckertz, Berlin, Leipzig 1942 (reprint of the Academic Printing and Publishing Institute, Graz 1986)
  • The mosque . Verlag Die Moschee, Berlin 1949 (Reprint Verlag für Collectors, Graz 1974)
  • Persian miniature painting . Safari-Verlag, Berlin 1959
  • Islamic cabaret . Klinkhardt & Biermann, Braunschweig 1963, 2., verb. u. presumably ed.
  • The Islamic ivory sculptures (= corpus of medieval ivory sculptures Volume 7). Deutscher Verlag für Kunstwissenschaft, Berlin 1972, ISBN 3-87157-006-0
  • Hunar-i islāmī . Ebne-Sina, Tehran 1976
  • The arabesque . Publishing house for collectors, Graz 1977
  • Art of islam . Bohighar, Chittagong 1978

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Ernst Kühnel . ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: Dictionary of Art Historians . @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / dictionaryofarthistorians.org
  2. ^ Ernst Kühnel: Alhambra problems. Results and goals of the first restoration work, monthly books for art history 1, 1908, p. 192–193, p. 438–439
  3. Friedrich Sarre, Fredrik Robert Martin (ed.): The exhibition of masterpieces of Muslim art in Munich 1910. Munich 1912 (reprint Alexandria Press, London 1985, ISBN 0-946579-01-6 ).
  4. Kunstgeschichtliche Gesellschaft zu Berlin ( Memento of the original from September 13, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.kunstgeschichtliche-gesellschaft-berlin.de
  5. Freer Gallery of Art: Ernst Kühnel, Second presentation of the Charles Lang Freer medal, May 3, 1960 (English)
  6. ^ Hans-Jürgen Mende: Lexicon of Berlin burial places . Pharus-Plan, Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-86514-206-1 , p. 635.