Max Raphael

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Max Raphael ( pseudonym M. R. Schönlank (e) ; born August 27, 1889 in Schönlanke , Province of Posen ; died July 14, 1952 in New York ) was an art historian and philosopher as well as the founder of empirical art studies .

Life

After his mother's death in 1900, Max Raphael moved to live with his grandparents in Berlin and graduated from high school there. From 1907 he studied law and economics, later in Munich, Berlin and from 1911 in Paris philosophy with Georg Simmel and Henri Bergson as well as art history a . a. with Heinrich Wölfflin . In 1911 he met Pablo Picasso in Paris and studied the works of the Impressionists as well as those of Cézanne , Matisse and Rodin . In 1913 Wölfflin did not accept the dissertation “From Monet to Picasso” because the topic was too contemporary for him. Nevertheless, it made Raphael's name known. From 1914 to 1915 he lived in Bodman on Lake Constance as a freelance writer. He served in World War I from 1915, but deserted to Switzerland from German military service in 1917. From there he was expelled in 1920 and went to Berlin and studied a. a. Mathematics and physics to transfer principles of rigorous science to art history. From 1924 to 1932 Raphael taught art history and philosophy at the Berlin Adult Education Center. He clearly sympathized with Marxism . He traveled to Italy, France and Germany and worked on a wide variety of topics, on a sociology of art and an art theory of dialectical materialism .

In 1932 Raphael resigned from the adult education center and left Germany after the management had discontinued his course on The Scientific Foundations of “Capital” . From 1932 to 1940 he lived on the verge of subsistence in Paris, developed an “empirical art history” and published: Proudhon Marx Picasso (1933) and On the Epistemology of Concrete Dialectics (1934). In 1940 he was interned in Gurs camp and in 1941 in Les Milles . He fled to the USA via Barcelona and Lisbon; his wife Emma Dietz (married since 1941) could not follow until 1945.

For a long time, life in New York until 1952 was characterized by great poverty. He worked on the “Germany Book”, the “History of German Industrial Capital” and “The Economy” and did research on topics of Egyptian and prehistoric art. As the sum of his encounters and art experiences as well as theoretical interests in philosophy, art history, archeology and architecture, he further developed “empirical art studies”. He also included cave painting in his theory. Further studies of Egyptian, pre- and early Christian art served to check his method. The historical development and social significance of art should be recognizable from the aesthetic signs and forms alone.

In 1952 Max Raphael took his own life. For the Times Literary Supplement he is "perhaps the greatest art philosopher" of the 20th century.

Fonts

Work edition

Work edition in eleven volumes , ed. by Klaus Binder and Hans-Jürgen Heinrichs , Suhrkamp Verlag , Frankfurt am Main 1989, (series Suhrkamp Taschenbuchwissenschaft 831–841).

  • Volume 1: Marx Picasso. The renaissance of myth in civil society , ed. by Klaus Binder.
  • Volume 2: From Monet to Picasso. Fundamentals of an Aesthetics and Development of Modern Painting , ed. by Klaus Binder.
  • Volume 3: Departure into the present. Encounters with art and the artists of the 20th century , ed. by Hans-Jürgen Heinrichs.
  • Volume 4: Interior design. The beginning of modern art in cubism and in the work of Georges Braque , ed. by Hans-Jürgen Heinrichs.
  • Volume 5: The Color Black. On the material constitution of form , ed. by Klaus Binder.
  • Volume 6: How should a work of art be seen? (The Demands of Art) , ed. by Klaus Binder.
  • Volume 7: Picture Description. Nature, Space and History in Art , ed. by Hans-Jürgen Heinrichs.
  • Volume 8: Temples, Churches and Figures. Studies in art history, aesthetics and archeology , ed. by Hans-Jürgen Heinrichs.
  • Volume 9: The divine eye in man. On the aesthetics of the Romanesque churches in France , ed. by Hans-Jürgen Heinrichs.
  • Volume 10: Nature - Culture. Studies in Philosophy and Literature , ed. by Hans-Jürgen Heinrichs.
  • Volume 11: Life memories. Letters, diaries, sketches, essays , ed. by Hans-Jürgen Heinrichs.

Further editions

  • Workers, art and artists , Verlag der Kunst, Dresden 1978, ( Fundus series 58/59/60).
  • Rebirth in the Paleolithic. On the history of religion and religious symbols , ed. by Shirley Chesney and Ilse Hirschfeld, Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1979.
  • Prehistoric cave painting , ed. v. Werner E. Drewes, Bruckner & Thünker, Cologne 1993.
  • The hand on the wall , ed. by Gernot Grube, diaphanes Verlag, Zurich, Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-03734-422-4 .

literature

  • Tanja Frank: Max Raphael's conception of a Marxist art history. Dissertation. Humboldt University Berlin, Berlin 1980, DNB 810451174 .
  • Hans-Jürgen Heinrichs (Ed.): "We won't let the world break ..." Max Raphael's work under discussion. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1989.
  • Wulf Köpke : Max Raphael. In: John M. Spalek , Konrad Feilchenfeldt , Sandra H. Hawrylchak (eds.): German-language exile literature since 1933. Volume 3. USA. Supplement 1. de Gruyter, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-11-024056-6 , pp. 249-264.
  • Raphael, Max , in: Ulrike Wendland: Biographical Handbook of German-Speaking Art Historians in Exile. Life and work of the scientists persecuted and expelled under National Socialism . Munich: Saur, 1999, ISBN 3-598-11339-0 , pp. 529-534

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Quoted from Max Raphael: Temples, Churches and Figures. Studies in art history, aesthetics and archeology . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1989 (stw 838), p. 2.
personal data
SURNAME Raphael, Max
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Schönlank, MR (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German art historian
DATE OF BIRTH August 27, 1889
PLACE OF BIRTH Schönlanke , Province of Poznan
DATE OF DEATH July 14, 1952
Place of death new York