Wilhelm Pinder

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Wilhelm Pinder

Georg Maximilian Wilhelm Pinder (born June 25, 1878 in Kassel , † May 13, 1947 in Berlin ) was a German art historian .

Pinder was a university professor in Darmstadt , Strasbourg , Breslau , Leipzig , Munich and Berlin . His teaching and research work focused particularly on German art and architecture and their position in European art development. During the time of National Socialism , he represented anti-Semitic and other ideological positions of the regime, which corresponded to the nationalist-tinged art historiography that he had previously represented. For a long time after the war, this hardly affected his reputation as an art historian in the Federal Republic, which was established by numerous art books, including among the general public.

Life before 1933

GM Wilhelm Pinder was born in 1878 in Kassel as the son of Eduard Pinder (1836–1890) and his wife Elisabeth Kunze. The father was director at the Museum Fridericianum (Kassel) . Wilhelm Pinder had the daughters of the painter Johann Friedrich August Tischbein as great-grandmothers. His grandfather Moritz Pinder was a numismatist and librarian at the Royal Library in Berlin .

Wilhelm Pinder went to the Friedrichsgymnasium in Kassel and first studied law (Göttingen 1896/97), then archeology and art history at the universities of Göttingen, Berlin, Munich and Leipzig. In 1896 he became a member of the Alemannia Göttingen fraternity . He received his doctorate in 1903 as Dr. phil. with August Schmarsow in Leipzig with a thesis on Romanesque interiors in Normandy and after his habilitation in 1905 became a private lecturer at the University of Würzburg , after doing his military service and being an assistant in Leipzig for a year.

In 1911 he succeeded Rudolf Kautzsch as professor of art history at the Technical University of Darmstadt . On September 30, 1916 he moved to the University of Wroclaw for a year and in 1918 to the University of Strasbourg for another year , but was a soldier during the First World War. From 1919 he taught again in Breslau. From 1920 to 1927 he headed the Institute for Art History at the University of Leipzig , rejecting offers for professorships in Göttingen and Vienna. This was followed by a chair at the Art History Institute of the University of Munich and, from 1935, at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Berlin (after he had turned down the call to Berlin in 1931).

Act

Pinder's fame was largely based on his talent for rhetoric and his ability to be vivid. The illustrated books that he published in the “Blue Books” series since 1910 (German Dome of the Middle Ages, German Baroque, Rembrandt's Self-Portraits, etc.) made him known far beyond specialist circles. He was co-editor of the "Kritische reports" (1927–38), chairman of the German Association for Art Research (1933–45) and belonged to several academies. Thematically, he dealt almost exclusively with German art and represented a national conception of art history in which the “folk spirit” should manifest itself and which, according to Pinder, should also strengthen national self-confidence. From the mid-1920s he also advocated a biologically inspired generation theory of the coexistence of different artists in an epoch as an expression of the "non-simultaneity of the simultaneity", mediating between biographically oriented art history and the overarching portrayal of epochs . His investigations into medieval sculpture led to a re-evaluation of the art of the 14th century, which influenced Expressionism .

He had numerous important art historians as pupils: his doctoral students included Ernst Kitzinger , Nikolaus Pevsner , Hermann Beenken , Hans Gerhard Evers , Wolfgang Hermann , Elizabeth Gilmore Holt (1905–1987), Hans Vogel , Florentine Mütherich , Bernhard Degenhart , Erhard Göpel , Edith Hoffmann , Alexander Freiherr von Reitzenstein , Josef Adolf Schmoll called Eisenwerth , Carl Lamb and Otto von Simson .

In 1922 he was elected a full member of the Saxon Academy of Sciences and in 1927 of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences , from 1937 he was a corresponding member. The Prussian Academy of Sciences elected him to its member in 1937.

Pinder in the time of National Socialism

During the time of National Socialism , Pinder, who also wrote of “Germanic blood and historical heritage”, immediately made himself the mouthpiece of the ideology of the Nazi regime, to which he enthusiastically paid homage and which in turn was appointed to the most renowned art history chair in Germany at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Berlin, and the admission to the Prussian Academy of Sciences. The fact that he did not become a party member in June 1933 despite applying for membership was due to a coincidence.

On November 11, 1933, Pinder was one of the speakers at the event for the professors' commitment to Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist state at German universities . In this speech he said after nine months of violence politics of National Socialism towards its victims, the Jews, Social Democrats, Communists, members of conservative parties, members of the churches, Freemasons and many others, among other things: "This is politics from morality, this is politics from the Hearts from an almost religious underground ”. He concluded his speech with the sentence: "... every German has to go there, everyone is responsible so that our people do their duty in front of their leader and can stand up to history". He struck similar tones in the preface to his “Art of the German Imperial Era” of 1935, which was aimed at a broad lay public: “German history, including that of art, is currently being rewritten. That is inevitable and only to be desired. "

He saw Eastern Europe as the natural habitat of the German people, who had "often seen undulating European uncharted territory", "never seen a German majority, but also never seen any other culture than the German". He viewed the struggles to "recapture the (in the early Middle Ages" by our Germanic ancestors) abandoned (and taken by Slavs) eastern residences "as a historical German mission on behalf of Europe. They are "still not over today." With this, Pinder, as a humanities and cultural scientist, played his part in helping legitimize the war of destruction and living space against the allegedly cultured Slavic peoples of Central and Eastern Europe. Even the short-term goals of Nazi foreign policy in Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland are already clearly focused.

In a contribution to a commemorative publication on Hitler's 50th birthday, he praised art history as race history. He also wrote in the festschrift: The departure of Jewish art scholars from research and teaching frees them from the danger of overly conceptual thinking, the direction of which - as alien to the essence of our art as that of our science - could hinder the effects of purely German research . In an assessment by the Rosenberg Office on September 11, 1942, it said: “can be used”.

Pinder also did not shy away from directly attacking “Jewish” colleagues. In 1930, in a lecture at the Munich Pinakothek, with completely unfounded allegations, he launched a campaign of agitation and persecution against August Liebmann Mayer , who was defamed as an “art Jew” and with whom he had worked for a long time. In National Socialist Germany this campaign ended for Mayer with the loss of his professional existence, his fortune, the subsequent flight to France and finally in 1944, after further persecution in the German-occupied France, with his deportation and his death in Auschwitz.

Later, however, as a result of public criticism of the National Socialist cultural and scientific policy, Pinder got into conflicts with individual departments of the regime, which culminated in an attack by the SS magazine "Das Schwarze Korps" in 1940. During the Second World War, Pinder was "used" by the Foreign Office for lectures in friendly or occupied countries.

Pinder was a member of the Wednesday Society in Berlin, which also included critics of the regime.

Pinder after 1945

Due to his National Socialist past, he was suspended after the war and no longer received a chair. Shortly before his death he received a research assignment on German art around 1800. In the spring of 1946 he was temporarily in custody with the British because of a mix-up.

In the GDR, Pinder's speeches from the time ( Seemann , Leipzig 1934) were placed on the list of literature to be sorted out.

In the Federal Republic of Germany Pinder's works were reprinted unchanged until well into the 1950s and without any distancing from the publisher. B. from the book association Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft WBG . Its true role during the Nazi era was only viewed more critically with the coming to terms with National Socialist influences and currents in German art history from 1990 onwards. Many incidents did not become known until 2008.

Works

  • 1904: Preliminary research into a rhythm of Romanesque interiors in Normandy , Strasbourg: Heitz & Mindel
  • 1910: German Dome of the Middle Ages ( The Blue Books ), Königstein im Taunus [u. a.]; numerous changed editions up to 1969 (26th edition)
  • 1911: Medieval sculpture of Würzburg: attempt of a local development history from the end of the 13th to the beginning of the 15th century , Würzburg: C. Kabitzsch
  • 1912: German Baroque: The Great Builders of the 18th Century ( The Blue Books ). Königstein am Taunus [u. a.]; 14. u. last edition 1965
  • 1913: German castles and permanent locks ( The Blue Books ). Königstein am Taunus [u. a.]; numerous changed editions until 1968
  • 1914: Civil buildings of the German past ( The Blue Books ), Königstein im Taunus [u. a.]; numerous changed editions until 1957
  • 1922: The Pièta , Leipzig
  • 1924–29: German sculpture from the end of the Middle Ages to the end of the Renaissance. 1.2. Wildpark-Potsdam 1924–1929 (Handbook of Art History)
  • 1925: German sculpture of the fourteenth century. Munich
  • 1925: The German Park. Mostly the 18th century ( The Blue Books ). Königstein am Taunus [u. a.], 3. u. last edition 1938
  • 1925: The Naumburg Cathedral and its sculptures, taken by Walter Hege, described by Wilhelm Pinder . Berlin, 8 editions until 1943, new edition in 1952 under the title The Naumburg Cathedral and the masters of his pictures in the series Deutsche Lande - German Art .
  • 1926: The Generation Problem in European Art History. Berlin: Frankfurter Verlagsanstalt, reprint Cologne 1949
  • 1927: Bamberg Cathedral and its sculptures , Berlin: Deutscher Kunstverlag
  • 1933: Goethe and the fine arts , Munich: Publishing house of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences
  • 1933: What is German about German art? On the writing by KK Eberlein , Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte, Volume 2, 405–407
  • 1933: German baroque sculpture , Königstein im Taunus-Leipzig: Langewiesche
  • 1934: Speeches from the time , Leipzig
  • 1934: On the Vikingism of our culture in the mirror of the more recent German art development. Berlin. In: Researches and Advances. 10. pp. 178-230
  • 1934: German Art History: A Selection of Her Most Beautiful Works (Wolfgang Graf von Rothkirch). With a foreword by Wilhelm Pinder (pp. 5–6)
  • 1934: Cologne Cathedral , Königstein im Taunus-Leipzig: Langewiesche
  • 1935: Architecture as Morality , Dresden. In: Heinrich Wölfflin : Festschrift for the seventieth birthday, pp. 145–151
  • 1935: From the essence and development of German forms , volume 1: The art of the German imperial era to the end of the Hohenstaufen classic , Leipzig
  • 1937: The sculptures of the Naumburg Cathedral . Insel Verlag, Leipzig 1937 ( Insel-Bücherei 505)
  • 1937: Georg Kolbe : Works of the last few years. With reflections on Kolbe's plastic. Berlin 1937.
  • 1937: From the essence and development of German forms , Volume 2: The art of the first civil period up to the middle of the 15th century , Leipzig
  • 1938: Collected articles from the years 1907–1935. Presented to the author on his 60th birthday, June 25, 1938. Edited by Leo Bruhns. Leipzig: sailor
  • 1938: German castles and palaces , Königstein im Taunus-Leipzig: Langewiesche
  • 1939: German art history in Wilhelm Pinder; Alfred Stange Hrsg., German Science: Work and Task. On his 50th birthday, German science gives the Fiihrer and Reich Chancellor an account of its work in the context of the task assigned to it. Leipzig 1939
  • 1939: On the essence and development of German forms , Volume 3: The German art of the Dürer period , Leipzig
  • 1940: German baroque: the great builders of the 18th century , Königstein im Taunus-Leipzig: Langewiesche
  • 1940: German moated castles . Recordings by Albert Renger-Patzsch . ( The blue books ), Königstein im Taunus [u. a.], 8. u. last edition 1968
  • 1940: On the essence and development of German forms , Volume 4: Holbein the Younger and the End of Old German Art , Leipzig
  • 1943: Special achievements in German art: lecture. Berlin, In: Yearbook of the Prussian Academy of Sciences. 1942. pp. 121-133
  • 1943: Rembrandt's self-portraits. ( The blue books ), Königstein im Taunus [u. a.], 3. u. last edition 1956
  • 1944: From the radiation area of ​​German art , Berlin. In: Researches and Advances. 19. pp. 149-115
  • 1944: Special Achievements of German Art , Munich
  • 1948: Of the arts and art. Berlin [u. a.]
  • 1951–57: On the nature and development of German forms: historical considerations. , Volumes 1–4 [various. Ed.]. Frankfurt (reprint)

literature

  • Hans Belting style as redemption. Wilhelm Pinder's Legacy in German Art History , Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, September 2, 1987
  • Magdalena Bushart:  Pinder, Georg Maximilian Wilhelm. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 20, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-428-00201-6 , pp. 448-450 ( digitized version ).
  • Magdalena Bushart: Business trips in times of war. Wilhelm Pinder as cultural ambassador of the German Reich , in: Magdalena Bushart, Agnieszka Gasior, Alena Janatkova (eds.), Art history in the occupied territories 1939–1945, Böhlau 2016, pp. 185–210
  • Heinrich Dilly : German art historian 1933–1945. DKV, Munich / Berlin 1988. ISBN 3-422-06019-7
  • Sabine Fastert: Pluralism instead of unity. The reception of Wilhelm Pinder's generation model after 1945 , in: Nikola Doll, Ruth Heftrig, Olaf Peters , Ulrich Rehm (eds.), Art history after 1945. Continuity and a new beginning in Germany , Cologne 2006, pp. 51–65
  • Sibylle Dürr: On the history of the subject of art history at the University of Munich (writings from the Institute for Art History of the University of Munich, 62), Munich 1993.
  • Christian Fuhrmeister and Susanne Kienlechner: Nice crime scene. Art history between art trade, art theft and art persecution. On the vita of August Liebmann Mayer. In: Ruth Heftrig (ed.): Art history in the "Third Reich". Theories, methods, practices. Berlin 2008, pp. 405-429.
  • Marlite Halbertsma: Wilhelm Pinder and German Art History . Wernersche Verlagsgesellschaft , Worms 1992. ISBN 3-88462-062-2
  • Marlite Halbertsma: Wilhelm Pinder : in: Heinrich Dilly, Old Master of Modern Art History , 2nd edition, Berlin 1999
  • Richard Hamann: Obituary for Wilhelm Pinder . Berlin 1950, in: Yearbook of the German Academy of Sciences in Berlin. 1946-1949. Pp. 213-216
  • Jutta Held: Art history in the "Third Reich": Wilhelm Pinder and Hans Jantzen at the Munich University , in: Jutta Held (ed.), Art history at the universities in National Socialism (Art and Politics, 5), Göttingen 2003, p. 17– 59.
  • Hans Jantzen : Wilhelm Pinder. Obituary . Munich 1948, in: Yearbook of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences. 1944-48. Pp. 178-179
  • Udo Kultermann History of Art History , Prestel Verlag 1996, pp. 198f
  • Klaus-Heinrich Meyer: The German Wilhelm Pinder and art history after 1945. Answer to Robert Suckale “Wilhelm Pinder and German art history after 1945” (Critical Reports 4/1986). In the thicket of methods , Critical Reports, 1987, Issue 1, p. 41
  • Daniela Stöppel: Wilhelm Pinder , in: Ulrich Pfisterer (Ed.), Classics of Art History , Volume 2, Becksche Series 2008, pp. 7–20
  • Wilhelm Pinder speaks about art history - the basics of his methodology and teaching , Institute for Scientific Film, Göttingen 1957
  • Same: Wilhelm Pinder and the German art history after 1945 , critical reports - magazine for art and cultural studies , 1986, issue 4
  • Christa Wolf and Marianne Viefhaus: Directory of professors at TH Darmstadt , Darmstadt 1977, p. 156.

Web links

Wikisource: Wilhelm Pinder  - Sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Ernst Elsheimer (ed.): Directory of the old fraternity members according to the status of the winter semester 1927/28. Frankfurt am Main 1928, p. 388.
  2. ↑ a b c Quote from Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945 . Fischer TB Verlag, Second updated edition, Frankfurt am Main 2005, ISBN 978-3-596-16048-8 , p. 462, text in total in confession of professors at German universities and colleges to Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist state. Presented by Nat .-soz. Teachers' Association Germany / Gau Sachsen, undated (1933) Dresden-A. 1, Zinzendorfstr. 2; 136 pp. With translation in English, Italian, French. u. Spanish language.
  3. ↑ The Art of the German Imperial Era (see literature below) pp. 12–16
  4. ↑ s. Daniela Bohde , cultural- historical and iconographic approaches in art history , p. 191 in Ruth Heftrig, Olaf Peters, Barbara Schellewald (eds.): Art history in the Third Reich. Theories, methods, practices. Berlin 2008, ISBN 3-05-004448-9 .
  5. ↑ http://www.polunbi.de/bibliothek/1948-nslit-p.html
  6. ↑ see also the anthology Art History in the “Third Reich”: Theories, Methods, Practices. Edited by Ruth Heftrig, Olaf Peters, Barbara Schellewald, Akademie, Berlin 2008, ISBN 3-05-004448-9
personal data
SURNAME Pinder, Wilhelm
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German art historian
DATE OF BIRTH June 25, 1878
PLACE OF BIRTH kassel
DATE OF DEATH May 13, 1947
Place of death Berlin