Oskar Pollak

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Oskar Pollak

Oskar Pollak (born September 5, 1883 in Prague ; † June 11, 1915 ) was an Austrian art historian .

Life

Pollak was Franz Kafka's classmate at the Old Town German Gymnasium. After graduating from high school , he first studied chemistry, later philosophy and archeology, and finally art history at the University of Prague .

At the beginning of his studies, like Kafka, whose closest friend he was at the time, he entered the 'reading and speech hall of German students'. In the summer semester of 1903 he was appointed art reporter for the literary section. In this function, Kafka took over his successor when Pollak temporarily accepted a position as private tutor at Schloss Oberstudenetz near Zdiretz in autumn 1903 .

Pollak received his doctorate in 1907 on the baroque sculptors Johann Brokoff and Ferdinand Maximilian Brokoff . In the same year he married Hedwig Eisner in Prague . He was probably still in contact with Kafka at this time, even though the last letter he received to his friend was from 1904 and Pollak is not mentioned in Kafka's diary once during his lifetime.

Pollak wrote numerous studies on art history, especially the Renaissance and Baroque . From 1910 to 1913 he worked initially as an assistant, after his habilitation as a private lecturer in art history at the University of Vienna . When he was offered the position of art historical secretary at the Austrian Historical Institute in Rome , Pollak left Vienna and went to Italy with his wife.

At the beginning of World War I , he volunteered. He died on June 11, 1915 on the Austro-Italian front on the Isonzo .

Oskar Pollak left an extensive scientific legacy, some of which was published at the end of the 1920s.

Publications (selection)

  • Johann and Ferdinand Maximilian Brokoff. A contribution to the history of Austrian baroque sculpture . Calve, Prague 1910.
  • Studies on the history of the architecture of Prague 1520-1600 . In: Yearbook of the Art History Collections of the Highest Imperial House, Vol. 29, 1910, pp. 86–170 ( digitized version ).
  • Art activity under Urban VIII. Edited from the estate by Dagobert Frey . 2 volumes. Filser, Augsburg 1928–31.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Franz Kafka to Oskar Pollak , Prague, November 8, 1903
  2. ^ Franz Kafka to Oskar Pollak , Prague, January 27, 1904
  3. ↑ Ex Libris Oskar Pollak ( Memento from May 4, 2016 in the web archive archive.today ) La vetrina virtuale del Reale Istituto Neerlandese a Roma, September 28, 2010, accessed on May 4, 2016

Web links

Commons : Oskar Pollak  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Pollak, Oskar
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian art historian
DATE OF BIRTH September 5, 1883
PLACE OF BIRTH Prague
DATE OF DEATH June 11, 1915