Peter Brieger

Peter Brieger (born June 30, 1898 in Breslau , † October 17, 1983 in Toronto ) was an art historian .

Life

The father, Prof. Dr. Oskar Brieger was an ENT specialist in Breslau. And he was the grandfather of the historian Fritz Stern . Peter Brieger grew up in a wealthy, cultured family, surrounded by books and furniture designed by Hans Poelzig . He was taught foreign languages ​​by a teacher. In the family's summer house in the Giant Mountains , the father had a small theater built in which his own family plays were performed. Brieger attended the Maria-Magdalenen-Gymnasium in Breslau . After graduating from high school in 1916, he did military service in World War I until 1918. From 1919 to 1924, Brieger studied art history , history , German studies and archeology at the universities in Breslau and Munich . His teachers were Dagobert Frey , Franz Landsberger , Wilhelm Pinder , Heinrich Wölfflin and the art historian August Grisebach (1881–1950), with whom he received his doctorate in 1924 in Breslau . 1921 was Brieger the exam for teaching in secondary schools, from 1922 to 1927 he was Assistant Professor at the Art History Department, University of Wroclaw and from 1927 to 1928, he received a research scholarship for the Bibliotheca Hertziana in Rome . His habilitation thesis (1927) was published in Berlin in 1930 under the title The German History Painting of the 19th Century . Peter Brieger married in 1931. The marriage had two sons who grew up in Canada , where Brieger had lived since 1936 after his emigration .

Services

From 1927 to 1933 Peter Brieger was a private lecturer at the University of Breslau. Until 1930 he was an assistant at Grisebach and then at Frey until 1933. After a few months in Paris in 1933, he worked in 1934 on a series of maps for archaeologists and art historians at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London , where he also gave lectures. In Breslau in 1934 he was dismissed as a “non-Aryan” because of his Jewish origins and in 1935 his venia legendi was revoked. The emigration to England in 1936 was soon followed by the move to Canada. From 1936 to 1969 Peter Brieger was a member of the newly established Department of Art at the University of Toronto , where he taught from 1936 to 1947 as a lecturer and associate professor . During the Second World War it was used to decipher German embassies. From 1947 to 1969 Brieger was Professor and Chairman of the Department of Art at the University of Toronto. In the meantime he was visiting professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and professor at the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies in Toronto. In Germany, his doctoral supervisor Grisebach had certified him in an expert report as early as 1933 that Brieger “thanks to his solid academic background. . . exercised an unusually fruitful teaching activity ”. “In addition to the responsible way of working, the extraordinary pedagogical disposition of Dr. Briegers visible share ”. And in Canada Brieger was recognized as "a pioneer in Art History as an academic discipline in Canada".

swell

• 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. Saur, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-598-11339-0 , pp. 70-72.
• Fritz Stern, family physicians. My German past . The Yale review, Vol. 94, Issue 3, 2006, pp. 1-43

Works

• Art and the courts: France and England from 1259 to 1328 , co-author: Philippe Verdier, Ottawa 1972
• Illuminated manuscripts of the Divine comedy , Princeton NJ 1969
• English art, 1216-1307 , Gloucestershire 1957
• Art and man , Austin TX 1964
• The Trinity College Apocalypse: an introduction and description , London 1967

Web links

• Literature by and about Peter Brieger in the catalog of the German National Library
• Peter Brieger in The Dictionary of Art Historians