Wilhelm Stein (art historian)

Wilhelm Stein (born August 26, 1886 in Zurich , † September 28, 1970 in Bern ) was a Swiss art historian .

Life

Wilhelm Stein was born on August 6, 1886 as the son of the philosopher Ludwig Stein (1859–1930) and Auguste Ehrlich, daughter of the merchant Adolf Ehrlich, in Zurich. He grew up with three brothers and two sisters in the "Villa Schönburg" in Bern. There he attended first the Schmidschule (1892-1894), then the Aeschbacherschule (until 1896) and finally the municipal Progymnasium and the Gymnasium, which he graduated in 1904 with the literature matura . Stein then studied from 1904 to 1906 in Munich, in 1906 for one semester each in Bern and at the Sorbonne in Paris, after which he enrolled at the University of Freiburg im Breisgau .

From 1908 Stein took a break in his studies and turned to agriculture. First he went to Dohrn'sche "Gut Wilhelmshof" near Prenzlau in the Uckermark, then to the manor Koppinitz in Upper Silesia . In 1910 Stein acquired the “Obere Klus” estate near Pfeffingen in Basel-Land. However, Stein's interest in agriculture soon waned.

As late as 1910 he began studying again and enrolled at the University of Basel , where he - after a stay at the Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin - 1916 with a dissertation on the renewal of the heroic landscape after 1800 with magna cum laude doctorate. From 1925 Wilhelm Stein was a private lecturer and from 1946 honorary professor for art history at the University of Bern .

In 1910 Wilhelm Stein married Helene Böhm in Breslau. The marriage was dissolved again after three years. The contact between Stein and Helene, who later married Franz Rapp and emigrated to the USA, remained lifelong, as the extensive correspondence in his estate shows. Stein also had intensive correspondence with the Swiss painter Viktor Surbek , the journalist Hermann Böschenstein , the literary scholar Bernhard Böschenstein , the sculptor Max Fueter and the glass painter Paul Zehnder . His friendship with Stefan George , to whose inner circle of followers he belonged, testifies to Stein's diverse literary interests .

His estate is in the Bern Burger Library .

Works

• The renewal of the heroic landscape after 1800. Dissertation. Heizt, Strasbourg 1917.
• Raffael. G. Bondi, Berlin 1923.
• Nietzsche and the fine arts. Carl Heymann, Berlin 1925.
• Holbein. J. Bard, Berlin 1929.

literature

• Stein, Wilhelm. In: Lexicon of German-Jewish Authors . Volume 19: Sand – Stri. Edited by the Bibliographia Judaica archive. De Gruyter, Berlin a. a. 2012, ISBN 978-3-598-22699-1 , pp. 442-444.
• Ernst Osterkamp : Wilhelm Stein (1886–1970). In: Bernhard Böschenstein u. a. (Ed.): Scientists in the George Circle. The world of the poet and the profession of science. De Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2005, ISBN 978-3-11-018304-7 [also as an online edition, ISBN 978-3-11-092429-9 ], pp. 225-238.
• Michael Landmann : Figures around Stefan George. Second volume. Castrum Peregrini, Amsterdam / Bonn 1988, ISBN 90-6034-067-1 , pp. 67-73.
• Biographical introduction by Michael Stettler . In: Wilhelm Stein: Artists and Works. Edited by Hugo Wagner. Eicher, Bern 1974.
• Stein, Wilhelm (1886–1970) on the Bernensia website

Web links

• Literature by and about Wilhelm Stein in the catalog of the German National Library

Remarks

1. ^ Stein, Wilhelm: artists and works . Ed .: Hugo Wagner. Eicher, Bern 1974, p. I .
2. ↑ ^{a b c} estate of Wilhelm Stein in the catalog of the Burgerbibliothek Bern
3. ↑ Part of Wilhelm Stein's crypto estate in the Württemberg State Library in Stuttgart. Retrieved May 28, 2020 .