Otto Demus

Otto Demus (born November 4, 1902 in Harland near St. Pölten , † November 17, 1990 in Vienna ) was an Austrian art historian .

Life

Otto Demus' father was a doctor and died as a soldier in the First World War. He attended elementary school and high school in St. Pölten and studied art history from 1920 to 1928 at the University of Vienna under Josef Strzygowski . From 1927 he was an assistant at his institute and then turned to monument preservation . From 1929 to 1936 he was the state curator in Carinthia and from 1936 to 1939 he was the state curator at the Central Office for Monument Protection in Vienna. In 1939 he emigrated to England, where he worked as a librarian at the Warburg Institute and gave lectures at the Courtauld Institute of Art at the University of London. In 1946 he was appointed head of the Federal Monuments Office in Vienna, and in 1963 he was appointed full professor of art history at the University of Vienna, where, alongside Otto Pächt, he continued the tradition of the Vienna School of Art History . In 1973 he retired. In 1969 he received the Wilhelm Hartel Prize and in 1975 the Austrian Decoration of Honor for Science and Art . In 1973 he became a corresponding member of the British Academy .

His specialty was medieval and Byzantine art history . However, during his activity in Carinthia he also dealt with modern Austrian painting and was friends with the painter Gerhart Frankl . He was buried in an honorary grave at the Dornbacher Friedhof .

Otto Demus and his wife Erika had two sons: the pianist Jörg Demus and the poet and art historian Klaus Demus .

Fonts (selection)

• Art in Carinthia , 1934.
• New painting in Carinthia. In: Art in Austria , 1934.
• The mosaics of San Marco in Venice , 1939.
• Byzantine Mosaic Decoration , 1948; Reprinted in 1976.
• The Mosaics of Norman Sicily , 1949.
• The Romanesque wall painting , 1968.
• Byzantine Art and the West , 1970.
• The Antiphonary of St. Peter , 1973.
• The Mosaics of San Marco in Venice , 1984.
• The late Gothic altars of Carinthia , 1991.

literature

• In memoriam Otto Demus . In: Kunsthistoriker 7 (special issue), 1990, pp. 5–9.
• Gerhard Schmidt: Obituary for Otto Demus . In: Almanach of the Austrian Academy of Sciences 1991, pp. 359–369.
• Ernst Bacher: In memoriam Otto Demus . In: Carinthia 1, 1991, pp. 501-506.
• Demus, Otto , in: Werner Röder; Herbert A. Strauss (Ed.): International Biographical Dictionary of Central European Emigrés 1933–1945 . Volume 2.1. Munich: Saur, 1983 ISBN 3-598-10089-2 , p. 209
• Ulrike Wendland: Biographical handbook of German-speaking art historians in exile. Life and work of the scientists persecuted and expelled under National Socialism. Part 1: A – K. KG Saur, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-598-11339-0 , pp. 113-121.
• Johannes Feichtinger: Science between cultures. Austrian university professors in emigration 1933–1945 , Frankfurt am Main 2001, pp. 403ff.

Web links

• Literature by and about Otto Demus in the catalog of the German National Library
• Demus, Otto .  Publications in the bibliographic database of the Regesta Imperii .
• Entry on Otto Demus in the Austria Forum  (in the AEIOU Austria Lexicon )

Individual evidence

1. ^ Deceased Fellows. British Academy, accessed May 20, 2020 . 
2. ^ Otto Demus grave site , Vienna, Dornbacher Friedhof, Group 44, Row 4, No. 13.