Friedrich Möbius (art historian)

Friedrich Otto Karl Möbius (born May 24, 1928 in Dresden ) is a German architecture and art historian . From 1976 to 1991 he held the full professorship for art history at the Friedrich Schiller University in Jena .

Career

Friedrich Möbius studied art history and history at the University of Leipzig from 1948 to 1953 , where he was mainly influenced by Heinz Ladendorf . Möbius earned his living as a theater reviewer and columnist for the local press. In 1953 he became a doctoral student with Lottlisa Behling at the University of Jena and, despite Behling's move to the Federal Republic of Germany, was able to do his dissertation in 1958 “The city ​​church of St. Michael zu Jena. Defend a medieval monument as a historical figure ”with the predicate“ summa cum laude ”.

In addition to monographic works on individual medieval churches, Möbius turned, going beyond the interpretation of architectural forms of construction and decoration, to aspects of architectural history that spanned time and epochs and made the semiotics and iconology of medieval architecture the focus of his research. He taught as an assistant at the Art History Institute in Jena and received his habilitation in 1967 with the thesis "Westwerk Studies" at the Philosophical Faculty.

After being appointed to a professorship for cultural theory in 1971, he was reappointed to the chair of art history at Jena University (which had been vacant since 1958). In 1977 Möbius became a full member of the Saxon Academy of Sciences in Leipzig (which he left in 1992). In 1978 he initiated the interdisciplinary “Jena Working Group for Iconography and Iconology”, which until 1990 held seven internationally oriented conferences. The GDR authorities denied him the opportunity to hold a visiting professorship at the Philipps University of Marburg .

Möbius' most creative period ended abruptly when the publication of ready-to-print manuscripts, which were supposed to take stock of his research, failed in the crisis years after the revolutionary upheaval of 1989/90 and he was dismissed from Jena university service in 1991. After teaching in Hamburg and Karlsruhe from 1992 to 1995, he wrote his memoirs, in which he aggressively dealt with his contacts with the GDR Ministry for State Security .

Friedrich Möbius, who is recognized as an “important researcher personality”, continued to publish biographical as well as scientific and essayistic works. Some of his works can be counted among the fundamental writings of German art historiography in the second half of the 20th century. In addition to the work “Westwerkstudien” (1968), most recently honored by the Dutch architectural historian Lex Bosmann, z. For example, the introductory essay written by Möbius of the anthology “Style and Society” (1984) was included in the text collection “New Paths in Research”, but the entire essay collection edited by Möbius is recommended as a reference work. His extensive studies on the village church in the Middle Ages, which were reflected in the text "The Village Church in the Age of the Cathedral" (1988) and in a separate chapter in the "History of German Art" (1989), were published in 2001 by Wolfgang Schenkluhn as highlighted an "exception" in architectural historiography.

Friedrich Möbius, who has been married to the art historian Helga Möbius-Sciurie (born March 6, 1940 in Jena) in 1978, lives in Rothenstein near Jena. He is the brother of the physicist Peter Paul Möbius (born June 6, 1930 in Meißen).

Fonts (selection)

• Westwork studies, Jena 1968
• Romanesque art, Union / Schroll, Berlin / Vienna / Munich 1969
• Ecclesia ornata. Ornament on medieval church building, Union, Berlin 1974 (with Helga Möbius)
• Medieval architecture. Function and shape, ed. v. Friedrich Möbius u. Ernst Schubert , Böhlaus successor, Weimar 1983
• Symbolic values ​​of medieval art, Seemann, Leipzig 1984 (with Helga Sciurie)
• Style and society. An outline of the problem, ed. v. Friedrich Möbius (Fundus books 89/90), Verlag der Kunst, Dresden 1984
• Buticum in Centula. With an introduction to the importance of medieval architecture (treatises of the Saxon Academy of Sciences in Leipzig, Phil.-hist. Class, Vol. 71, Issue 1), Leipzig 1985
• Sculpture of the Middle Ages. Function and shape, ed. v. Friedrich Möbius u. Ernst Schubert, Böhlaus successor, Weimar 1987, ISBN 3-7400-0053-8
• The village church in the cathedral era (13th century). Plea for a structural-historical deepening of the concept of style (Treatises of the Saxon Academy of Sciences in Leipzig, Phil.-hist. Class, Vol. 128, Issue 3), Leipzig 1988, ISBN 3-05-000586-6
• Style and epoch. Periodization questions, ed. v. Friedrich Möbius u. Helga Sciurie (Fundus-Bücher 118/119), Verlag der Kunst, Dresden 1989, ISBN 3-364-00166-9
• History of German Art 1200–1350, ed. v. Friedrich Möbius u. Helga Sciurie, Seemann, Leipzig 1989, ISBN 3-363-00407-9
• The sky above the earth. Cosmos Symbolism in Medieval Art, ed. v. Friedrich Möbius, Evangelical Publishing House, Leipzig 1995, ISBN 3-374-01567-0
• Apartment, temple, place of worship. Observations on the anthropology of religious behavior, Schnell and Steiner, Regensburg 2008, ISBN 978-3-86583-670-0
• The Carolingian imperial monastery church Centula (Saint-Riquier) and its reliquary. A case study on the everyday understanding of early medieval religiosity, Universitätsverlag, Leipzig 2013, ISBN 978-3-86583-767-7

Web links

• Literature by and about Friedrich Möbius in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ^ Friedrich Möbius, Between Lecture Hall, Church and Theater. Student existence in the early GDR (Leipzig 1948–1952), Leipzig 2012.
2. ↑ According to Heinrich Klotz , in: Gestalt, Function, Meaning. Festschrift for Friedrich Möbius on the occasion of his 70th birthday, ed. v. Franz Jäger u. Helga Sciurie, Jena 1999, p. 13.
3. ^ Friedrich Möbius, Reality, Art, Life. Memories of an art historian, Jena 2001.
4. ↑ Christian Nille, Interpreting Medieval Sacral Architecture. An introduction, Darmstadt 2013, p. 11.
5. ↑ A complete list of his writings and reviews published until 1998 in: Gestalt, Funktion, Meaning. Festschrift for Friedrich Möbius on the occasion of his 70th birthday, ed. v. Franz Jäger u. Helga Sciurie, Jena 1999, pp. 243-247.
6. ^ Architecture as a quote. Forms, motifs and strategies of visualization, ed. v. Heiko Brandl, Andreas Ranft u. Andreas Waschbüsch (More Romano 4), Regensburg 2014, p. 12.
7. ^ "Style as a Category of Art Historiography", in: Style in Art History. New ways of research, ed. v. Caecilie Weissert, Darmstadt 2009, pp. 123–141.
8. ↑ History of Art. An introduction, ed. v. Hans Belting , Heinrich Dilly , Wolfgang Kemp et al., 7. revised a. extended edition, Berlin 2008, pp. 174, 294.
9. ↑ The medieval village church in the new federal states. Research status - research perspectives - problems of use (Hallesche's contributions to art history 3), Halle (Saale) 2001, p. 5.