Wilhelm Koehler

This article deals with the art historian Wilhelm Koehler; for other people see Wilhelm Köhler .

Wilhelm Koehler , until 1932 Wilhelm Köhler , (born December 17, 1884 in Reval , Russian Empire , † November 3, 1959 in Munich ) was a German art historian .

Life

Wilhelm Köhler was a son of Franz Köhler , director of the cathedral school in Reval. He had six siblings, one brother was the psychologist Wolfgang Köhler . In 1893 his father went to Wolfenbüttel as a teacher and librarian , where Köhler attended the large school . From 1903 to 1907 he studied art history in Strasbourg , Bonn and Vienna . He received his doctorate in 1906 under Max Dvořák in Vienna. 1906-1909 he was an assistant at the University of Vienna with Franz Wickhoff , from 1909 to 1914 he worked for the project Monuments of German art of theGerman Association for Art History and began collecting material on Carolingian book illumination.

After participating in the First World War , most of which he spent in the military administration in Belgium , in 1918 he became director of the newly established State Art Collections in Weimar , where he made contact with the Bauhaus . From 1920 he also taught art history at the University of Jena (1920 private lecturer, 1924 associate professor). In 1920 he married the Bauhaus student Margarete Bittkow . His commitment to modern art brought him into ever greater conflicts with the National Socialists and their Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick , who had been in government in the state of Thuringia since 1930. In 1932 Koehler first went to Harvard University as a visiting professor , then finally emigrated in 1934 and was appointed professor of medieval art history there as the successor to Arthur Kingsley Porter . He changed the spelling of his surname to Koehler. He taught at Harvard until his retirement in 1953. From 1941 to 1944 he also headed the Harvard-affiliated Research Institute for Byzantine Culture Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, DC Since 1946, he was a corresponding member of the British Academy .

The main focus of his scientific activity was the research of Carolingian book illumination , which he presented in the corpus volumes Die Carolingischen Miniatures . He started working on it immediately after completing his dissertation, the first volume was published in 1930. Florentine Mütherich has supported him in it since the 1950s , who was finally able to complete the extensive work in 2013 with the eighth volume.

literature

• Florentine Mütherich :  Köhler, Wilhelm. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 12, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1980, ISBN 3-428-00193-1 , p. 301 f. ( Digitized version ).
• Florentine Mütherich: Wilhelm Koehler and the German Association for Art History. In: Journal of the German Association for Art History. 52/53, 1998/99, pp. 9-15.
• 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. 372-376.
• David H. Wright: Wilhelm Koehler and the Original Plan for Research at Dumbarton Oaks. In: John W. Barker (Ed.): Pioneers of Byzantine Studies in America (= Byzantine Research 27). AM Hakkert, Amsterdam 2002, pp. 134-175.

Web links

• Literature by and about Wilhelm Koehler in the catalog of the German National Library
• Wilhelm Koehler in the "Dictionary of Art Historians"
• Wilhelm Koehler in "Viennese art history spotted"

Individual evidence

1. ^ Deceased Fellows. British Academy, accessed June 20, 2020 .