Karl M. Swoboda

Karl Maria Swoboda (born January 21, 1889 in Prague , † July 11, 1977 in Rekawinkel ) was an Austrian art historian and from 1934 to 1945 university professor at the German Charles University in Prague and from 1946 to 1962 at the University of Vienna .

biography

Karl Maria Swoboda was born in Prague on January 21, 1889 as the eldest son of the Austrian civil servant Karl Swoboda and his wife Berta. On the father's side, the family was of Czech origin. His great-grandfather was the Prague high school professor Frantisek Svoboda, his grandfather the Leitmeritz doctor Vaclav Svoboda. While both were considered Czech patriots , the father Karl had a reputation for being a German national .

Swoboda graduated from the German state high school on the Lesser Town in Prague . The father was transferred to Graz in 1909 , where Karl Maria continued the studies that had begun in Prague as a minor. There he met Josef Strzygowski, one of the leading personalities of the Vienna Art History School , who soon after went to Vienna and held the first chair in art history. Then Swoboda also studied in Vienna at the II. Art History Institute with Julius von Schlosser and especially with Max Dvořák , with whom he received his doctorate in 1913 with a dissertation on the Florentine Baptistery . In the same year he passed the state examination at the Institute for Austrian Historical Research.

In that year he also married Kamilla Rabl, who came from South Bohemia and ran a hat maker atelier in Vienna . In 1916 their son Michael was born.

Swoboda had become friends with Oskar Kokoschka , who created a chalk portrait of him around 1912. In addition, Kokoschka drew over twenty portraits of Kamilla as she was listening to her husband's piano playing at house concerts. A series of these portraits appeared in 1921 under the title “Variations on a Theme”, to which Max Dvořák wrote a foreword that points the way for art history.

In February 1914 he became an assistant to Dvořák and worked in this position until his untimely death in 1921. In 1916 he completed his habilitation under Julius von Schlosser on the subject of “Roman and Romanesque Palaces”, a font that is considered to be his main work. In 1930 he was awarded the title of associate professor. In 1934 he was called to Prague. The decisive factor for this was certainly that he had Czech ancestors and spoke German and Czech equally well . At the beginning of the winter semester, he gave his inaugural lecture entitled “New Tasks in Art History ”, which is his most important methodological text.

Svoboda's life situation in Prague changed in the year of his appointment. His marriage was divorced in 1934, Kamilla Swoboda initially stayed in Vienna and moved to Prague in the summer of 1938, they stayed in contact. Swoboda married the Austrian Hermine Hein in 1940 , who tried in vain to persuade Kamilla to emigrate after her son Michael was already safe abroad. In May 1942 Kamilla was deported to Theresienstadt and shortly afterwards transferred to Lublin on a death transport ; there is no further trace of it.

In May 1945, a few days before the German surrender, Svoboda's teaching career in Prague ended. Shortly before that, he sent his employees home on a business trip, but stayed and was arrested. On the initiative of his wife, his Czech colleagues took him out of prison. They attested that during his ordinariate in Prague he was considered an opponent of National Socialism , that he made no secret of his convictions and that, through his personal relationships, he had campaigned for the pardon of those sentenced to death of Czech nationality. Until the spring of 1946 Swoboda stayed with his wife in Prague. At the end of June 1946 he was appointed full professor at the University of Vienna. He was the successor to Hans Sedlmayr , who had been given early retirement in 1945.

Swoboda died in July 1977 in Rekawinkel near Vienna.

Early work

The problems raised in his dissertation on the Florentine Baptistery resulted in his occupation with late antique palace construction, which was decisive for his main work, Roman and Romanesque Palaces . This is a history of the development of Roman villa construction, which shows its importance and continuity up to the Middle Ages .

The influence of the Vienna School is clearly noticeable. After the individual work of art has been precisely recorded, it is classified into larger historical contexts, taking into account religion , society and economy .

In his dissertation from 1918 (the first adaptation of the Florentine Baptistery) the comparative stylistic method - based on Giovanni Morelli , who exerted influence on the Vienna Art History School - is used where the historical information is insufficient. Swoboda is one of the first to consistently apply this method to works of architecture.

Activity during National Socialism and writings from this time

The more recent research on Swoboda focuses on his work during National Socialism and his Prague professorship. The question of Svoboda's political and ideological attitude arises.

He distanced himself from the basic objectives of National Socialism, but made concessions, which prompted his friend Oskar Kokoschka to put him in a row with other “art-historical equals” and “compromisers” in letters from 1934.

Swoboda is also counted in a study of the “Volksdeutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft” among the art historians who promoted the “aesthetic staging of power” through exhibitions and their publications under National Socialism. He was a member of the committee of the “Südostdeutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft” (Vienna) that advised the board. He did not join the NSDAP.

An idea of ​​his political thinking - even before the Second World War - is provided by the unpublished essay The present situation of man , dated 1932. On the one hand, this essay is simply and undefined by research as a sharp analysis of the characteristics of National Socialism (such as the Example: "Abolition of personal freedoms in order to be able to keep the masses in check", "the dominant emergence of male societies with bellicose features"), at the starting point of which he places "a failure of the ideas that support our culture".

On the other hand, this essay also gave cause to characterize Swoboda as a nihilistic right-wing intellectual who sees the unstoppable self-destruction of the European cultural system coming and then awaits a new Middle Ages with a “more radical humanity”, in which new “religious communities” the “metaphysical homelessness” of the masses will satisfy. Although he distances himself from the "unchristian means" of Nazi racism and hopes for the "consensus of all those affected", at the same time he fantasizes about eugenic genius breeding, "racial purity" for the masses and "racial mixture" for the production of elites. In addition, there is the conviction that a “historical rhythm of the Middle Ages and modern times” will always produce “fresh basis for new genius breeding”.

In his publications from 1938 to 1945, Swoboda assumed national-specific form constants that shape artistic landscapes and span epochs. On the part of the Czech Republic, this has brought him, probably justifiably, the accusation of a nationalist- oriented method of interpretation.

In contrast to Swoboda, Sedlmayr had only seldom contributed to the art-historical legitimation of German Germanization policy in the sense of the “cultural soil” ideology. Swoboda's writings such as On the German Part of the Art of the Sudetenland, however, are related to the “people's political” strategy of the “Volksdeutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft”.

In the unpublished essay Old Europe - Europe from 1944/45 he also traces the historical "driving forces and forms of life" back to the prehistoric constants of race, body and character types and gender polarity. In addition, he explains the historical dynamics of high cultures through the crossover between city dwellers and the “still unmixed and unspent population”, from which “not only the ephemeral chaff of the under-valued, but also the brilliant personality” emerges.

In his published writings, Swoboda expressed himself more cautiously and took a positivist attitude. It is instructive to follow chronologically the topics and contents of his published essays from this period. A complete list of his publications up to 1967 appeared in the collection of essays, Art and History, edited by his students with his help .

In the inaugural Prague lecture of the same name from 1934, published in the anthology New Tasks of Art History , Swoboda defended the thesis that one must deal with the local, geographical dimension beyond the stylistic order and the dating of works of art and ask the question of which of the "equals lasting character of the art of a people, a landscape, a city ”. In this essay, Swoboda calls for the development of new procedures and new theory of the observation of art in view of the changing goals and tasks of science. The main focus should be on the systematic research of the art historical constants. These constants mean the constant character of the art of a region despite changes over time.

In his later essay Art and Nation , this constant research is tied to concepts such as race and nationality and is shaped by the writings of the art historian Wilhelm Pinder and the psychiatrist Ernst Kretschmer . Kretschmer tried "to trace back artistic basic attitudes and art-historical phenomena to the different human races present in Europe, insofar as they can be reconciled with his 'temperament and body shape types'".

Art and Nation was published in 1936 in Nation und Staat . German magazine for the European minority problem . The essay begins with the observation that, apart from the historical development and style criticism, art history has not yet worked out any procedures to capture local differences in works of art. The process of art history is to blame for the fact that it has not previously dealt with the questions of the national, landscape characters, with the task of a real art geography. Further on in the text, he calls on art history to ask itself whether it is not so much the nation but the race that produces the artistic constants, and he refers to Kretschmer.

In addition to race, artistic constants can also be related to folk (common language, common customs) and national peoples (politically united groups). These three components permeate one another, with shifts in political power influencing the great styles most decisively, and race the artistic constants. The investigation of the constants could not be an end in itself, but only the "basis for a structure of actual art history that is more appropriate to the actual circumstances".

This is followed by contributions to the art of the Sudeten region in the chronological series of his works . 1937 appeared for the first time on the German part in the art of the Sudetenland .

The essays, which were written in Svoboda's time in Prague during National Socialism, deal primarily with Bohemian and Moravian art in the Gothic and Baroque periods . However, this art is not viewed independently, but is placed in relation to German art. The titles of these works appear programmatic: German fine arts as a creative force in the Bohemian-Moravian region 1939, Creative forces of two peoples 1939, A thousand years of German architecture in Bohemia and Moravia in 1939, The art of German high baroque in Bohemia and Moravia in 1941, German artistic achievements in Bohemia and Moravia 1943 (field post letters for students of the humanities), Moravia’s contribution to German art in 1941. He also published studies on Peter Parler in 1940.

German art was created in Slovakia in 1944 . This was followed by a two-year publication break - in 1945 and 1946 Swoboda published nothing. During this time, only the unpublished essay Europe - Old Europe , which is in the archive of the Institute for Art History in Vienna, was written.

After 1945

The first work published after 1944 is the short essay Rubens and Europe from 1947. It is a denunciation of northern Europe with a preference for the natural sciences , technical inventions, skepticism in religious matters, belief in material power and in a purposeful arrangement Course of the world in which the human being is meaningfully integrated.

Swoboda now sees this classicist world and the baroque as opposed to one another. He sees the Baroque as embodied in Rubens as in no other painter of this time. The time the text was written - after the Second World War - is clearly noticeable. In the following years he worked out the ideas of these alternating world views, tracing them back to their origins at the beginning of humanity. This approach finds its written expression in the essays Gotik und Vorzeit from 1949 and Kunst und Religion from 1950. The content of these two essays is almost identical, the later one builds on the earlier one, is only more comprehensive.

For the cultures and styles of the past, he draws from the Ethnology by Fritz Grabner introduced "Kulturkreislehre" and his book The world view of primitive approach of the 1924th From the basic religious attitudes empirically discovered and described by ethnology, he picks out three and assigns them characteristics, examines their interrelationship with artistic design and follows their characteristics and further development in the course of history. A distinction is made between primordial cultures with magical behavior, animistic and totemic cultures. He also refers to Josef Strzygowski's Die Europäische Kunst from 1924.

His Viennese lectures after 1946 were also shaped by ethnological schemata without reflecting on the political consequences of such concepts, and the conviction that historical forms can primarily be traced back to prehistoric constants is still held.

Publications (selection)

• Art and history. Lectures and approaches . Böhlau, Vienna 1969.

literature

• Otto Benesch, Otto Demus, Renate Wagner Rieger, Gerhardt Schmidt (eds.): Festschrift Karl Maria Swoboda on January 28, 1959 , Vienna 1959.
• Reinhold Graf Bethusy-Huc (Ed.): Oskar Kokoschka. The concert. Variations on a theme. Homage to Kamilla Swoboda , Salzburg 1988.
• Sigrid Canz: Karl Maria Swoboda (1889-1977) Art historian: Scientist between Vienna and Prague , in: Monika Gettler, Alena Miskova (ed.): Prager Professoren 1938-1948 . Essen 2001, pp. 175-195.
• Hans H. Aurenhammer: Caesura or Continuity ?, The Vienna Art History Institute in the Estates State and National Socialism , in: Wiener Jahrbuch für Kunstgeschichte 2004, pp. 11–54.
• Hans H. Aurenhammer: The Vienna Art History Institute after 1945 , in: Margarete Grandner (Ed.): Future with Altlasten, The University of Vienna 1945 to 1955 , 2005, pp. 174–188.

Individual evidence

1. ^ ^{A b} Sigrid Canz: Karl Maria Swoboda (1889–1977) Art historian: Scientist between Vienna and Prague , in: Monika Gettler, Alena Miskova (Ed.): Prager Professoren 1938–1948 . Essen 2001, pp. 175-195.
2. ↑ Michael Fahlbusch: Science in the Service of National Socialist Politics? The “Volksdeutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft” from 1931–1945 . Nomos, Baden-Baden 1999, ISBN 3-7890-5770-3 , p.
3. ↑ ^{a b} Hans H. Aurenhammer: Caesura or Continuity? The Vienna Art History Institute in the corporate state and under National Socialism , in: Wiener Jahrbuch für Kunstgeschichte 2004, pp. 11–54.
4. ^ Karl Maria Swoboda: New Tasks in Art History , 1935.
5. ↑ Karl Maria Swoboda: Art and Nation , in: Nation und Staat. German journal for the European minority problem 9, 1936, p. 437 ff.
6. ^ Karl M. Swoboda: Rubens and Europe , in: ders., Art and History , 1969, pp. 208-212.
7. ↑ Hans H. Aurenhammer: The Vienna Art History Institute after 1945 , in: Margarete Grandner (Ed.): Future with Altlasten, The University of Vienna 1945 to 1955 , 2005, pp. 174–188.

Web links

• Entry on Karl M. Swoboda in the Austria Forum  (in the AEIOU Austria Lexicon )
• Literature by and about Karl M. Swoboda in the catalog of the German National Library