Karl Woermann

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Karl Woermann (1895)

Karl Woermann (born July 4, 1844 in Hamburg , † February 4, 1933 in Dresden ) was a German art historian and museum director.

Life

Karl Woermann, the eldest son of the Hamburg merchant and ship owner Carl Woermann, was baptized under his father's first name ("Carl"). He should take over the father's company. However, since he - in contrast to his brother Adolph Woermann - was not interested in retail but in art, his father asked him to change the spelling of his first name to "Karl". The family business went to Adolph; However, Carl continued to promote Karl in his interests. At the age of 16 he went on a study trip to India, Japan and Egypt.

He studied at the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg , the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen and the Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel . In 1867 he became a corps bow bearer of Saxonia Kiel . In December of the same year in Göttingen for Dr. iur. after receiving his doctorate, he settled in Hamburg as a lawyer in 1868. A trip through France , the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and North America piqued his interest in the history of art. He gave up his legal practice, studied classical archeology and art history in Heidelberg in 1870 and received his doctorate there in July 1870. In the summer of 1871 he completed his habilitation in Heidelberg. and became a private lecturer in classical archeology and art history. In the same year Woermann also took part in the congress to settle the Dresden Holbein dispute in Dresden . In 1871 and 1872 Woermann traveled several times to Italy, Greece and Asia Minor. In 1873 he received a professorship at the Düsseldorf Art Academy . In 1878/1879 he made further study trips through many European countries, which he described in a travel diary. With Alfred Woltmann , Woermann published The History of Painting from 1878 . Woermann completed the work after Woltmann's death and wrote the article on painting in antiquity for it.

In 1882 Woermann became gallery director of the Saxon Picture Gallery in Dresden. Their separation into the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister and the Galerie Neue Meister was not completed until 1931. Until 1896 he was also director of the Dresden Kupferstichkabinett . In the years that followed, Woermann made many contributions to the Dresden collections , including through purchases of paintings by Carl Spitzweg and Claude Monet or through numerous acquisitions for the Kupferstichkabinett at the turn of the century . During this time Woermann published several art history books, including the first scientific catalog of the Gemäldegalerie in 1887. His works on general art history were the first to include works by primitive peoples . - Woermann also wrote several series of poems in his life. The “old master of German art history” retired from all his offices in 1910, but continued to devote himself to art history until his death. Woermann was cremated and the urn was buried in the Tolkewitz urn grove in Dresden . His son Ernst Woermann (1888–1979) was a diplomat; he was sentenced to several years' imprisonment in the Wilhelmstrasse trial .

Honors

The Saxon Academy of Sciences accepted Woermann as a full member in 1917. In 1923 he received an honorary doctorate from the Dresden University of Technology .

Publications

Grave in the urn grove Tolkewitz
  • About the scenic sense of nature of the Greeks and Romans. Preparatory studies for an archeology of landscape painting. Ackermann, Munich 1871 ( digitized version ).
  • The ancient Odyssey landscapes from the Equiline Hill in Rome. Munich 1876.
  • The landscape in the art of the ancient peoples. A history of the preliminary stages and beginnings of landscape painting. Munich 1876.
  • with Alfred Woltmann (ed.): The history of painting , 3 vols. Leipzig 1878ff.
  • Art and nature sketches from Northern and Southern Europe. 1880.
  • On the history of the Düsseldorf Art Academy. Outline of their last decade and memorandum for the inauguration of the new building. Düsseldorf 1880 ( digitized ).
  • Catalog of the Royal Picture Gallery. General Directorate of the Royal Collections for Art and Science: Dresden 1887. (Several other editions in later years)
  • What art history teaches us. Some remarks about old, new and newest paintings. Dresden 1894.
  • Hand drawings by old masters in the royal copper engraving cabinet in Dresden. Munich 1896–1898
  • History of art of all times and peoples , 6 vols. Vienna, Leipzig: Bibliographisches Institut 1900–1922.
    Vol. 1: The art of pre-Christian and extra-Christian peoples (1900), ( digitized version )
    Vol. 2: The art of Christian peoples up to the end of the 15th century (1905) ( digitized version ).
  • Memoirs of an eighty-year-old , 2 vols. Leipzig 1924.

literature

  • Obituary in: Meeting reports of the Saxon Academy of Sciences 85, no. 3, pp. 15–24.
  • Eberhard Hempel : Karl Woermann († February 4, 1933). Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 2 (1933), pp. 209–212.
  • Jörg Schilling: Woermann, Carl (Karl, 1844–1933). Hamburgische Biografie, Vol. 2, Christians, Hamburg 2003, pp. 445-446.

Web links

Commons : Karl Woermann  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
Wikisource: Karl Woermann  - Sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Habilitation thesis: About the landscape sense of nature of the Greeks and Romans .
  2. ↑ website www.museum-aktuell.de , accessed on November 14, 2006
  3. ^ Woermann, Karl in the Dictionary of Art Historians , accessed on November 14, 2006
  4. ^ Eberhard Hempel: Karl Woermann († February 4, 1933) In: Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 2, 1933, pp. 209–212.
  5. ^ Entry on the Since the Academy.
  6. ↑ Honorary doctoral students of the TH / TU Dresden. Technical University of Dresden, accessed on January 28, 2015 .
personal data
SURNAME Woermann, Karl
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Woermann, Carl
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German art historian
DATE OF BIRTH 4th July 1844
PLACE OF BIRTH Hamburg
DATE OF DEATH February 4, 1933
Place of death Dresden