Loss of center

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Loss of the Middle is a book on cultural philosophy by the art historian Hans Sedlmayr (1896–1984), first published in 1948 . The conservative cultural criticism expressed therein made Sedlmayr known to the public.

intention

Sedlmayr attempts as the subtitle notes ( Visual art of the 19th and 20th centuries as a symptom and symbol of the time ), structure analysis to interpret the visual arts as a sign of the times and through their analysis, the prevailing intellectual and cultural and social paradigms to open up.

Sedlmayr, scientifically primarily concerned with architecture (he had written his dissertation on the baroque architect Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach (1656–1723)), also analyzed the prevailing worldview in the loss of the center, primarily by looking at the mastery of building tasks . He highlighted the buildings and architects who best suited the modernist zeitgeist.

content

The work is divided into three sections, each of which is divided into several chapters.

Part one: symptoms

In this part, a fundamental change in building tasks in the modern age is asserted, which first became symptomatic around 1760 with the emergence of the English garden. In the fundamental years of upheaval before the French Revolution , building as an art changed radically. Whereas in the past the church and palace-castle were de facto considered to be the only architectural works of art , at the end of the 18th century architecture took on new leading tasks , in chronological order these were the landscape garden , the architectural monument , museum , utility building and residential building , theater , exhibition and the “house of the machine” (garages, factories, train stations, hangars).

Sedlmayr describes the development since the end of the 18th century as a process of autonomization compared to the traditional "leading tasks" which, according to Sedlmayr, lay in the design of the church and palace-palace, and the differentiation of art into individual "pure" art genres. This is also shown using the development of modern painting .

Francisco de Goya , as a forerunner of modernism, is an “all-smashing element” of painting, similar to B. Immanuel Kant in philosophy. Although active as a court painter, his individual, subjective approach to painting undermined the “public sphere” by placing dreams and delusions at the center of many pictures. In addition to Goya, u. a. also in the art of Caspar David Friedrich , Honoré Daumier and Paul Cézanne, symptoms of the - in Sedlmayer's opinion - “pathological” development of modern society are analyzed. According to Sedlmayr's interpretation, Caspar David Friedrich elevates the abandonment of humans in nature to the essence of humans. In Cézanne's painting, “pure seeing” is said to have been purified from all “previously known” intellectual and emotional elements.

All in all, he paints a gloomy picture of the upheaval in which he sees the subordination of the various arts under a common idea, that of the sacred total work of art, lost. A style chaos is the effect of the French Revolution, which brought about an end to the history of style .

Second part: diagnosis and course

In the second part, Sedlmayr becomes more specific with regard to his opinion on the upheaval and criticizes it diagnostically as a “loss of the center”, that is, the loss of the right measure, which goes back to Blaise Pascal's words “Leaving the center means leaving humanity” synonymous with that "Loss of humanism " is. The modern, "autonomous" person has a disorder in relation to everything. He has a disturbed relationship with God because he no longer serves him in his art ( temple , church , idol ); to himself as he regards himself with suspicion, fear and despair; to his fellow men, since in art man is pushed down to the level of the other visible things; and to nature, since he no longer rises above her as the crown of creation, but declares his solidarity with her.

Third part: For the prognosis and decision

In the third part Sedlmayr is a forecast , in which it the Modern gives the chance later than closed - - embossed to be its chaos, its distance from God, its overall functions of art and his new conception of art age to be considered.

reception

Sedlmayr's book achieved very high print runs and was discussed in the media and in specialist science. Conservative circles valued his criticism of modernity and modern art and called for people to return to old values ​​and forms of expression; progressive readers, such as Willi Baumeister or Werner Haftmann , criticized Sedlmayr for his negative assessment of the upheaval. In some cases - as for example by the art historian Hilde Zaloscer or the writer Rolf Schneider - parallels to the National Socialists' concept of degenerate art were pointed out. Hans Aurenhammer points out that Sedlmayr was a member of the NSDAP as early as 1930 and in 1939, in his book Die Kugel als Gebäude, or: Das Bodenlose “with anti-Semitic mockery of modernity”, “anticipated” “core ideas” of the loss of the middle (1948) . Daniela Bohde confirms this finding on the basis of both writings. Sedlmayr was forced to retire as a member of the NSDAP in 1945, but taught as a full professor in Munich from 1951 to 1964. A renewed appointment to Vienna in 1962 because of Sedlmayr's activities at the Vienna Institute before 1945 met with such strong resistance that Sedlmayr refused. The thesis that the loss of the center was shaped by the National Socialist view of Degenerate Art or justified it was vehemently contradicted by other sources - for example by the conservative journalist Alexander Gauland .

Despite Sedlmayr's out-of-date ideology and his political involvement during the Nazi era, interest in him remained unbroken or even revived two decades after his death. For serious art historians there is no getting around him. By Horst Bredenkamp was noted that Sedlmayr analysis over distances almost seamlessly into the social theory Niklas Luhmann would put (1927-1998). However, the differentiation of the arts and the disintegration of a religious, political or culturally determined “center” is not rated negatively by Luhmann. Rather, Luhmann's “suggestion that the disintegration harbors 'sufficient surplus of possibilities' and allows initially unlikely-looking, new system formations” leaves Sedlmayr's anti-modern art and social criticism in vain.

Opponents and supporters can now agree that the publication of the book stimulated general interest in modern art like no other work. Cardinal Joachim Meisner was a proponent of Sedlmayr's theses .

plant

  • Hans Sedlmayr : loss of the middle. The fine arts of the 19th and 20th centuries as a symptom and symbol of the times , Otto Müller Verlag, Salzburg-Vienna 1948. 11th unchanged edition 1998, ISBN 3-7013-0537-4 . The book was also published by Bertelsmann (1983) and as a paperback in at least 17 editions by Ullstein (from 1955).

literature

See also the general literature on Sedlmayr .
  • Hans H. Aurenhammer: Hans Sedlmayr and the history of art at the University of Vienna 1938-1945 . In: Jutta Held , Martin Papenbrock (Hrsg.): Art history at the universities in National Socialism , art and politics. Yearbook of the Guernica Society . Volume 5, Göttingen 2002, pp. 161-194.
  • Umberto Eco : From the Cogito interruptus . In: About God and the World. Essays and glosses . Munich-Vienna 1985. ("Professor Sedlmayr, you are a blender.")
  • Peter Haiko: "Loss of the Middle" by Hans Sedlmayr as a critical form in the sense of Hans Sedlmayr's theory . In: Compliant Science. The University of Vienna 1938–1945 . Vienna 1989, p. 77 ff.
  • Werner Hofmann : Under the spell of the abyss: the “loss of the center” and the exorcism of modernity . About the art historian Hans Sedlmayr, in: Gerda Breuer (ed.): The taming of the avant-garde: On the reception of modernity in the 1950s . Basel-Frankfurt 1997, pp. 43-54.
  • Werner Hofmann: Thinker of the downside (epilogue). In: H. Sedlmayr: Loss of the middle: The fine arts of the 19th and 20th centuries as a symptom and expression of the time, classics of modern thought . Gütersloh 2004, pp. 296–308.
  • Hans Körner : "Dangers of Modern Art"? Hans Sedlmayr as a critic of modernity . In: Christian Drude, Hubertus Kohlen (editor): 200 years of art history in Munich. Positions - Perspectives - Polemics 1780–1980. Munich-Berlin 2003, pp. 209-222.
  • Willibald Sauerländer : Hans Sedlmayr's “Loss of the Middle” . In: Merkur 47/531 (1993), pp. 536-542.
  • Norbert Schneider: Critique of the Revolution and Critique of Modernity in Hans Sedlmayr . In: XXVIIe congrès internat. D'histoire de l'art (1989) . Strasbourg 1992, pp. 85-91.
  • Martin Warnke : Apologist in the middle . In: Ders .: Artists, art historians, museums. Contributions to a critical history of art. Luzern-Frankfurt 1979, pp. 74-76.
  • Beat Wyss : Mourning the completion. For the birth of cultural criticism. , Cologne 1997, pp. 282-295.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hilde Zaloscer: Art History and National Socialism . In: Friedrich Stadler (ed.): Continuity and break. 1938-1945-1955 . LIT Verlag, Berlin-Hamburg-Münster 2004, pp. 283-298, here p. 296, online at Google Books .
  2. ^ In: The artist's work , Volume 1, 1939.
  3. ↑ Hans Aurenhammer: Online review of “150 years of art history at the University of Vienna” ( Memento of the original from July 14, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / kunstgeschichte.univie.ac.at archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Vienna 2002.
  4. ^ Daniela Bohde: Art history as physiognomic science. Critique of a figure of thought from the 1920s to 1940s . Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-05-005558-9 , pp. 140-141 .
  5. ^ Friedrich Stadler: The Emigration and Exile of Austrian Intellectuals . In: Friedrich Stadler and Peter Weibel (eds.): The Cultural Exodus from Austria . Springer, New York 1995, pp. 14-26.
  6. ↑ See also article Hans Sedlmayr in Dictionary of Art Historians
  7. ↑ Alexander Gauland: As the modernity sold God , in: Welt Online from March 20, 2008.
  8. ^ Thomas Zaunschirm: Sedlmayr + Bredekamp , in: Ders .: Kunstwissenschaft. Kind of a textbook. Series of publications by the Institute for Art and Design Studies (IKUD) at the University of Essen, Volume 7. Klartextverlag Essen 2002, pp. 123-133 [1] .
  9. ↑ H. Bredekamp: The art of paradox . Legal History Journal 1998, pp. 415, 416 ff.
  10. ↑ Eckhart Gillen: Gerhard Richter: A believing doubter. In: Zeit Online. March 30, 2015, accessed April 9, 2015 .