Rudolf Meyer Riefstahl

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Rudolf Meyer Riefstahl (born August 9, 1880 in Munich ; † December 31, 1936 ) was a German-American art historian , specialist in Islamic art and professor at New York University .

life and work

Rudolf Meyer-Riefstahl was born as the son of medievalist Wilhelm Meyer and Pauline Riefstahl. He changed his name to Meyer-Riefstahl to avoid confusion with his father. He studied at the University of Göttingen , where his father had taught, and at the University of Strasbourg , where he in 1903 with magna cum laude to the Dr. phil. received his doctorate.

He then went to Paris and taught German as a lecturer at the Sorbonne until 1911 . The gallery owner Heinrich Thannhauser used his knowledge of contemporary art in Paris, who , with Meyer's help, put together a well-known opening exhibition for Munich with works by Degas, Manet, Monet, Pissarro, Renoir and Sisley. At the Manet and the Post-Impressionists exhibition in the Grafton Galleries in London, which began in November 1910, he was part of the exhibition management alongside Roger Fry .

In 1910 he was appointed general secretary of an exhibition of Islamic art in Munich, which determined his future career. After the war began , he went to the United States via England in 1915, where he curated an exhibition of historical textiles for the National Silk Convention in Paterson , New Jersey. He gave his first lecture in the fall semester of 1916 at the University of California . After changing positions in the United States, in 1924 he joined the newly established faculty of the Institute of Fine Arts , the graduate school of art history at New York University , to which he was a member until his death. In 1924 he married Elisabeth Titzel in Chicago, the couple had a daughter and a son.

From 1924 to 1936, Rudolf Meyer and Elisabeth Riefstahl undertook numerous research trips to Turkey, Egypt, Syria, Palestine, Jordan and Italy as a scientific team and sometimes with their children. In the summer of 1925 they made their first trip to Constantinople and Anatolia and visited Egypt. On a second trip in 1926, they concentrated on Anatolia and collected material on Seljuk architecture . In 1924 and 1927 Meyer donated Islamic textiles to the Brooklyn Museum . Between 1927 and 1929 they lived firmly in Constantinople. In addition to his research activities, Meyer taught at Robert College in Constantinople. The family lived temporarily in Rome when Meyer was appointed a member of the Research Institute of the College Art Association there. In 1932 they returned to New York , but in the summer of 1934 Meyer undertook a research trip to Italy as a scholarship holder of the Guggenheim Foundation in order to investigate the oriental influence on decorative art in southern Italy.

Meyer Riefstahl died of pneumonia in 1936. His wife Elisabeth Titzel Riefstahl continued the joint research.

Fonts (selection)

  • with Martin Birnbaum: Catalog of an exhibition of Muhammadan miniature painting. The De Vinne Press, New York 1914
  • The Parish-Watson collection of Mohammedan potteries. E. Weyhe, New York 1922
  • Persian and Indian textiles from the late sixteenth to the early nineteenth century. E. Weyhe, New York 1923
  • Turkish architecture in southwestern Anatolia. Harvard University Press, Cambridge 1931

literature

  • Who was who in America: with world notables: Volume VI, 1974-1976. Marquis Who's Who, Chicago 1976, p. 344.
  • Daniel Esterman (Ed.): Meyer Schapiro Abroad: Letters to Lillian and Travel Notebooks. Getty Publications, Los Angeles 2009, ISBN 978-0-89236-893-8 , pp. 82 ff.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Dissertation: French songs from the Florentine manuscript Strozzi-Magliabecchiana CL.VII.1040: attempt at a critical edition , Tübingen 1907.
  2. ^ Günter Herzog: Documents of the Thannhauser Galleries: From the Central Archive 27 . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of June 17, 2005
  3. ↑ Title: Masterpieces of Muslim art on the Munich exhibition grounds (today's Theresienhöhe)
  4. ^ Internet site of the Brown University Department of Egyptology
personal data
SURNAME Meyer Riefstahl, Rudolf
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Riefstahl, Rudolf Meyer; Riefstahl, Rudolf M .; Meyer, Rudolf (birth name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-American art historian
DATE OF BIRTH August 9, 1880
PLACE OF BIRTH Munich
DATE OF DEATH December 31, 1936