Rudolf Kautzsch

Rudolf Kautzsch (born December 5, 1868 in Leipzig , † April 26, 1945 in Berlin ) was a German art historian and was "one of the leading historians of German architecture in the Middle Ages in the first half of the 20th century" . The focus of his work was the book art of the Middle Ages , publications on the imperial domes on the Rhine and with his work Capital Studies (1936) a contribution to the art history of late antiquity .

In his work, Rudolf Kautzsch attached great importance to the form-analytical and stylistic view of the external shape of a building and understood a change of style as a transition process. The mental attitude of an artist was mentioned only in passing.

biography

His father was the Protestant theologian Emil Kautzsch (1841-1910), his brother the later art historian Paul Kautzsch (1882-1958). Rudolf Kautzsch studied German philology , classical archeology and art history in Halle , Freiburg im Breisgau and Berlin . Most recently, he studied in Leipzig where he in 1894 with his thesis Preliminary discussions on the history of the German manuscript illustration in the late Middle Ages to the Dr. phil. received his doctorate .

At the Leipzig Art History Institute, he worked as an assistant by the year 1896, in which he with his work, on May 4 in Halle The woodcuts of the Cologne Bible of 1479 habilitated . From that year he taught in Halle as a private lecturer and in 1903 was appointed the first associate professor for art history. After Julius Schmidt's death , from January 1 to November 30, 1898, he was in charge of the Provinzialmuseum Halle (today's State Museum of Prehistory ). From December 1, 1898 to 1903, he was the director of the German Book Trade Museum in Leipzig.

In 1903 he was appointed full professor at the Technical University of Darmstadt . In 1907 he was one of the signatories of the memorandum of the Deutscher Werkbund . He taught in Darmstadt until 1911, when he moved to the University of Breslau . At the suggestion of the art historian Aby Warburg , Rudolf Kautzsch chaired the international art historians' congress in Rome in 1912.

From 1915 he held the chair for art history at the Art History Institute of the University of Frankfurt am Main and taught there until his retirement in 1930.

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In 1909 Rudolf Kautzsch hosted the 9th International Art History Congress. He stressed that the history of art must be viewed in a universal context and called on the participants to international activities. Among other things, he pointed out to the participants that medieval book illumination is a treasure waiting to be explored. The well-attended congress led to increased occupation with the book art of the Middle Ages and also made it scientifically attractive.

Rudolf Kautzsch offered a new approach to the description of medieval architecture in his work The Mainz Cathedral and its Monuments from 1925: He linked the most important stages in the building history of the Mainz Cathedral with the general history of art in his description of the predecessor building of the cathedral from Ottonian and the new building from Salic times. At the same time he dealt with the Mainz sculpture using selected examples in its most important trends from the Carolingian era to classicism . He recognized the stylistic influences of the cathedrals of Bamberg and Naumburg and the cathedral of Reims in the sculptures of the western lettuce and the two western portals of the cathedral . He found influences from Northern Italy in the building ornamentation and in certain structural elements.

After traveling through Greece , Asia Minor , Syria , Egypt and Italy , he published a kind of manual on the Corinthian capital with the Capital Studies , in which he arranged and described the capital forms of late antiquity according to the landscapes in which they appeared. From a morphological point of view, he described the younger types of capitals and arranged them in evolutionary series, recognizing relationships between the individual types and attributing this to a constant exchange between the workshops. Kautzsch attributed the change from organic-plastic forms to the simpler combatant capital to static considerations, but also assumed a change in artistic perception. “In resolute opposition to traditional Rom-centrism” , Kautzsch took the view that the capitals built in Rome were hardly artistic work, but rather had models in tradition or in Byzantium , imported from the East or brought from immigrant workshops. As early as the 4th century, building decoration in Rome began to decline, possibly due to the fact that the ancient legacy of architecture in Rome prevented early Christian architects from finding new artistic ways.

Publications (selection)

See Guido Schoenenberger: Bibliography of the scientific publications by Rudolf Kautzsch . Bibliophile Society, Frankfurt am Main 1928.

• Introductory discussions on a history of German manuscript illustration in the later Middle Ages (= Studies on German Art History Volume 1, Issue 3), Strasbourg 1894
• Diebolt Lauber and his workshop in Haguenau . In: Central Journal for Libraries Volume 12, 1895,
• The woodcuts of the Cologne Bible from 1479 (= studies on German art history 7th issue), Strasbourg 1896, reprint: Baden-Baden 1971
• The new book art: studies at home and abroad , ed. by Rudolf Kautzsch, (= publication of the Society of Bibliophiles; Volume 4), Weimar 1902
• The woodcuts to the knight from the turn (Basel 1493) (= studies on German art history; Volume 44), Strasbourg 1903
• The German illustration , (= From Nature and Spiritual World; Volume 44), Leipzig 1904
• The fine arts and the afterlife , Jena [u. a.]: Diederichs 1905
• The art monuments in Wimpfen am Neckar , Wimpfen am Neckar 1907
• The concept of development in art history: Speech at the Kaiser birthday celebration on January 27, 1917 , (= Frankfurter Universitätsreden; Volume 7), Frankfurt am Main 1917
• with Ernst Neeb : The art monuments of the city and the district of Mainz. 2: The ecclesiastical art monuments of the city of Mainz , part 1: Text (= The art monuments in the Free State of Hesse; Volume 8), Darmstadt 1919
• The visual art of the present and the art of the sinking antiquity (= Frankfurter Universitätsreden; Volume 10), Frankfurt am Main 1920
• The origin of the Fraktur script (= annual report of the Gutenberg Society. Volume 20: Supplements ). Mainz 1922.
• The Romanesque Dome on the Rhine (= Library of Art History ; Volume 44), JJ Weber, Leipzig 1922
• The Mainz Cathedral and its monuments , Frankfurt am Main 1925
• France and the Rhine. Contributions to the history and intellectual culture of the Rhineland . Frankfurt am Main 1925
• Romanesque churches in Alsace. A contribution to the history of Upper Rhine architecture in the 12th century . Freiburg im Breisgau 1927
• Changes in writing and in art. Speech given at the jubilee of the Association of German Font Foundries on Saturday, December 1, 1928 in Frankfurt aM , (= Small Print of the Gutenberg Society. Volume 10), Mainz 1929.
• Capital studies. Contributions to a history of the late antique capital in the east from the fourth to the seventh century (= studies on late antique art history, volume 9). Berlin 1936
• in connection with Gustav Behrens : Der Dom zu Worms , Volume 1: Text, Volume 2: Tafeln, (= monuments of German art), Berlin 1938
• The Romanesque church building in Alsace . Freiburg im Breisgau 1944

literature

• Paul Clemen : Rudolf Kautzsch. For the 70th birthday . In: Frankfurter Zeitung , December 6, 1938.
• Dieter Kaufmann : The directors of the State Museum for Prehistory Halle (Saale). In: Annual journal for Central German Prehistory. Volume 67, 1984, pp. 42-45 ( online ).
• Kautzsch, Rudolf . In: German biographical encyclopedia . Edited by Walther Killy with the assistance of Dietrich von Engelhardt…. Saur, Munich a. a. 1997, ISBN 3-598-23165-2 (Volume 5).
• Kautzsch, Rudolf . In: Peter Betthausen , Peter H. Feist , Christiane Fork: Metzler-Kunsthistoriker-Lexikon . Metzler, Stuttgart 1999, ISBN 3-476-01535-1 , pp. 210–212 ( with catalog raisonné and evidence of reviews of Kautzsch's books ).
• Brigitte Rüster : History of the museum from 1884 to 1912. In: Annual journal for Middle German Prehistory. Volume 67, 1984, pp. 72-86 ( online ).

Remarks

1. ↑ ^{a b} Peter Betthausen, Peter H. Feist, Christiane Fork: Metzler-Kunsthistoriker-Lexikon . Metzler, Stuttgart 1999, article: Rudolf Kautzsch .
2. ^ Susanne Wacker: Ottonik reception , dissertation University of Hamburg 2001; PDF

Web links

• Literature by and about Rudolf Kautzsch in the catalog of the German National Library
• Entry on Rudolf Kautzsch in the Catalogus Professorum Halensis
• Overview of Rudolf Kautzsch's courses at the University of Leipzig (summer semester 1899 to winter semester 1902)
• Dictionary of Art Historians