Nikolaus Pevsner

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Sir Nikolaus Bernhard Leon Pevsner , CBE (born January 30, 1902 in Leipzig ; died August 18, 1983 in London ; pseudonym Peter FR Donner ) was a German-British art historian who devoted himself particularly to the history of architecture .

Life

Nikolaus Pevsner was born as the son of the Russian- Jewish immigrant and fur merchant Hugo Pevsner and his wife Anna in Leipzig. His father died in 1940, his mother committed suicide in 1941 in view of the threat of deportation to an extermination camp . He grew up in a middle-class family, and the family lived in a 27-room apartment in Leipzig. After graduating from the Thomas School in Leipzig in 1921, he studied art history with Heinrich Wölfflin at the University of Munich , with Adolph Goldschmidt at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-University in Berlin and with Rudolf Kautzsch at the University of Frankfurt a. M. and obtained his doctorate in 1924 under Wilhelm Pinder at the University of Leipzig with a dissertation on Leipzig Baroque architecture. phil. In 1940 he dedicated his book on art academies to his doctoral supervisor and friend.

After completing his studies, he worked from 1924 to 1928 as an assistant at the Dresden Gemäldegalerie and in the Dresden Kupferstichkabinett . He then completed his habilitation with Georg Vitzthum von Eckstädt on the subject of "Italian painting from the end of the Renaissance to the end of the Rococo". From 1929 to 1933 he taught art and architecture history with Wolfgang Stechow as a private lecturer at the University of Göttingen . This was followed by study trips to the United Kingdom, so he did research in 1935 at the University of Birmingham . After the Nazis came to power in Germany in 1933, he emigrated to England in 1934, where he acquired British citizenship in 1946.

He initially worked as a buyer and consultant for the furniture and arts and crafts company Gordon Russell. In 1939, as a man of German origin, he was placed in the Huyton civilian internment camp . From 1943 to 1946 he worked alongside Hubert de Cronin Hastings as co-editor of the Architectural Review in London. Pevsner was from 1959 to 1969 professor at Birkbeck College of the University of London . From 1949 to 1955 he worked at the "Slade Professorship of Fine Art" at the University of Cambridge and from 1968 to 1969 at the University of Oxford . He was also a fellow at St John's College , Cambridge from 1950 to 1955 and a Reith Lecturer at the BBC in 1955 .

"Blue plaque" in Hampstead

His elevation to the British nobility in 1969 is to be regarded as remarkable, since otherwise only Ernst Gombrich was bestowed this honor on immigrant art historians . He also received honorary doctorates from the University of Leicester , the University of York , the University of Leeds , the University of Oxford, the University of Zagreb and the University of Edinburgh .

Pevsner became world-famous through his 46-volume work The Buildings of England (from 1951 with Cornwall to 1974 with Staffordshire ) at Penguin-Verlag von Allen Lane . Several of these volumes were reissued in revised and modified form. From 1953 he gave the Pelican History of Art series. These manuals were inspired by similar series by Georg Dehio and Fritz Burger in Germany. Pevsner wrote numerous studies on the history of art and, in particular, the history of architecture, which are counted among the classics of the subject. In 1941, after the death of Elizabeth Senior, he took over the editing of the King Penguin Books series, which ran from 1939 to 1959 .

Pevsner did a great job of saving Victorian architecture and contributed to the rediscovery of the forgotten designer Christopher Dresser , who pioneered Art Nouveau and functionalism .

He was married to Karola "Lola" Kurlbaum, daughter of the lawyer at the Reichsgericht Alfred Kurlbaum, since 1923 and had three children with her: Helga married Hodgson, Thomas (Tom) and Dietrich (Dieter). Pevsner died in 1983 in the London borough of Hampstead . He is buried in the graveyard of St Peter Church in Clyffe Pypard , Wiltshire .

Awards

Works

  • Leipzig Baroque. The architecture of the baroque period in Leipzig. Jess, Dresden 1928 (Unchanged reprint. With an afterword by Ernst Ullmann. Seemann, Leipzig 1990, ISBN 3-363-00457-5 ).
  • Baroque painting in the Romanesque countries (= handbook of art history ). Volume 1: Italian painting from the end of the Renaissance to the end of the Rococo. Athenaion, Potsdam 1928.
  • Academies of Art. Past and Present. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1940 (In German: The history of the art academies. Translated from the English by Roland Floerke. Mäander, Munich 1986, ISBN 3-88219-285-2 ).
  • An Outline of European Architecture (= Pelican Books A 109). Penguin Books, Harmondsworth 1942 (In German: European architecture. From the beginnings to the present. With a contribution to architecture since 1960 by Winfried Nerdinger . 8th, expanded and redesigned edition. Prestel, Munich et al. 1997, ISBN 3-7913- 1376-2 ).
  • Pioneers of Modern Design. From William Morris to Walter Gropius. Museum of Modern Art, New York NY 1949 (In German: Trailblazer for modern design. From Morris to Gropius. With an afterword by Wolfgang Pehnt . DuMont, Cologne 2002, ISBN 3-8321-7234-3 ).
  • as editor: The Buildings of England. 46 volumes. Penguin Books, Harmondsworth 1951-1974.
  • The Englishness of English Art. An expanded and annotated Version of the Reith Lectures Broadcast in October and November 1955. Architectural Press, London 1956 (In German: Das Englische in der Englische Kunst. Prestel, Munich 1974, ISBN 3-7913-0057 -1 ).
  • The Sources of Modern Architecture and Design. Praeger, New York NY 1968 (In German: The beginning of modern architecture and design. New edition. DuMont, Cologne 1978, ISBN 3-7701-0540-0 ).
  • Some Architectural Writers of the Nineteenth Century. Clarendon Press, Oxford 1972, ISBN 0-19-817315-6 .
  • A History of Building Types (= AW Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts 19 = Bollingen Series 35, 19). Princeton University Press, Princeton NJ 1976, ISBN 0-691-01829-4 (In German: Function and Form. The History of Buildings in the West. With an afterword by Karen Michels. Rogner & Bernhard bei Zweiausendeins, Hamburg 1998, ISBN 3 -8077-0189-3 ).
  • with John Fleming and Hugh Honor: The Penguin Dictionary of Architecture. Penguin Books, Harmondsworth et al. 1966 (In German: Lexikon der Weltarchitektur (= digital library. Vol. 37). Electronic edition of the 3rd, updated and expanded edition 1999. Directmedia, Berlin 2004, ISBN 3-89853-437-5 ) .
  • Visual Planning and the Picturesque. Edited by Mathew Aitchison. Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles CA 2010, ISBN 978-1-60606-001-8 .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Gottlieb Tesmer, Walther Müller: Honor roll of the Thomas School in Leipzig. The teachers and high school graduates of the Thomas School in Leipzig 1912–1932. Commissioned by the Thomanerbund, self-published, Leipzig 1934, p. 39.
  2. ↑ Nikolaus Pevsner , entry in the NDB , accessed on January 31, 2015
  3. ↑ Holger Krahnke: The members of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen 1751-2001 (= Treatises of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Philological-Historical Class. Volume 3, Vol. 246 = Treatises of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Mathematical-Physical Class. Episode 3, vol. 50). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2001, ISBN 3-525-82516-1 , p. 188.
personal data
SURNAME Pevsner, Nicholas
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Pevsner, Nikolaus Bernhard Leon (full name); Donner, Peter FR (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-British art historian
DATE OF BIRTH January 30, 1902
PLACE OF BIRTH Leipzig
DATE OF DEATH August 18, 1983
Place of death London