Walter Gernsheim

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Walter Gernsheim (born November 30, 1909 in Munich ; died November 20, 2006 in Florence ) was a German-British art historian .

Life

Walter Gernsheim was the second son of the Munich librarian Karl Theodor Gernsheim and Hermine Scholz. His younger brother Helmut Gernsheim became a photographer and photography historian.

Gernsheim attended the Wilhelmsgymnasium in Munich and studied art history, archeology and Slavic studies at Munich University. He received his doctorate in 1934 with Wilhelm Pinder with a dissertation on book painting in Reichenau . Gernsheim was racially persecuted and emigrated to England with his younger brother. After the outbreak of World War II, Gernsheim was interned as an enemy alien on the Isle of Man for three years.

As an art dealer, he ran a gallery for old master drawings in London . In 1937 Gernsheim created the Gernsheim Corpus of Drawings, also known as Corpus Photographicum of Drawings, which is intended to provide photographic documentation of the mostly unpublished drawings in museums and private collections. To this end, he carried out photo campaigns himself, which his future second wife, the art historian Jutta Lauke Gernsheim (1921–2015), took over from 1954.

In 2002 Walter and Jutta Gernsheim donated the complete Corpus Photographicum of Drawings to the Bibliotheca Hertziana and later also the complete negative archive and the photography rights. In 2013 the collection comprised 195,000 objects from public and private collections around the world.

Fonts

  • The illumination of the Reichenau . Munich: Rischmöller & Meyn, 1934. Dissertation. Munich 1934
  • Hero and Leander . Translation from the ancient Greek of Musaios by Walter Gernsheim. Dettelbach: Röll, 2009

literature

  • Gernsheim, Walter , in: Ulrike Wendland: Biographical Handbook of German-Speaking Art Historians in Exile. Life and work of the scientists persecuted and expelled under National Socialism . Munich: Saur, 1999, p. 189f.
  • Gernsheim, Helmut , 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. 368
  • Christina Riebesell: Mellon Foundation donates 375,000 dollars , in: MaxPlanckForschung , 2 (2003), p. 73
  • Dietmar Polaczeck: Renaissance: Gernsheim gives: Rome's Bibliotheca Hertziana is growing , FAZ, June 2, 2003

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Michael Berkowitz : Lost in the Transnational: Photographic Initiatives of Walter and Helmut Gernsheim in Britain , in: Jay Howard Geller, Leslie Morris (eds.): Three-way street: Jews, Germans, and the transnational . Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2006 ISBN 978-0-472-13012-2 , p. 152
personal data
SURNAME Gernsheim, Walter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-British art historian
DATE OF BIRTH November 30, 1909
PLACE OF BIRTH Munich
DATE OF DEATH November 20, 2006
Place of death Florence