William Cohn (art historian)

William Cohn (born June 22, 1880 in Berlin , † February 26, 1961 in Oxford ) was a German-British art historian and sinologist .

Live and act

Time in Germany

William Cohn was the third son of the businessman Carl Cohn (1838–1910) and his wife Rosa geb. Cloth tape (1853-1933). He attended Friedrichswerder Gymnasium from 1890 and passed his Abitur in 1900 . He then studied art history and archeology in Berlin and Paris. In 1904 he was at the University of Erlangen with the work The attempt to set aside the "I" in some modern philosophers doctorate . From 1907 he published articles on Japanese and Chinese art that appeared in both academic journals and daily newspapers. In 1908 he published the bookStyle analysis as an introduction to Japanese painting , which he had prepared through research trips to Europe. He viewed Japanese works of art in the original or as reproductions, of which he himself owned around 2500. After the book was published, he began traveling to the Far East . In 1909 and 1910 he visited - with his wife Isabella, nee. Nathan Blood (1880–1971) - Japan and China . In 1912 he toured the United States .

When his financial circumstances changed after the death of his father at the end of 1910, he started working as a journalist and publicist . With Otto Kümmel he founded the East Asian magazine in 1912 as a specialist magazine for East Asian art. It was published by Oesterheld-Verlag, which belonged to his younger Siegbert Cohn. He published works on the Nara period and the Heian period in Japan, among others . In 1913 and 1914 he traveled with his wife to British India and Ceylon . In 1916 he was drafted into the military; From a remark by Otto Kümmel one can deduce that he was not deployed at the front.

From 1920 he worked for the Berlin museums , where he was involved in processing the collection of the East Asian Art Department until 1923 . From 1921 he was also a lecturer at the Lessing University in Berlin and became a corresponding member of the "Vereeniging van Vrienden der Aziatische Kunst" in Amsterdam. From 1921 to 1925 he published the eleven-volume book series Die Kunst des Ostens in individual presentations with Otto Kümmel, Curt Glaser , Ernst Grosse , Friedrich Sarre and others, and from 1924 to 1925 the yearbook of Asian art . In 1923 he became a "scientific assistant" at the Berlin museums. From 1924 to 1925 he toured Ceylon, India , Burma , Thailand , Malaysia , Java , China, Japan and the United States. Sites visited included the Yungang Grottoes , the Confucius Temple of Qufu , the sacred Mount Tai Shan and Hangzhou in China, and the Freer Gallery of Art in the United States. He then published From My East Asian Travel Diary in six parts from 1925 to 1927 . In 1929 he was appointed curator at the Berlin Völkerkundemuseum . During his time in Berlin, he met Otto Kümmel and Curt Glaser, the publisher Bruno Cassirer and the art collector Eduard von der Heydt . Leonhard Adam characterized him in the East Asian magazine as a "reserved man ... who was helpful in passing on his knowledge to colleagues".

With the beginning of the National Socialist era , he was no longer allowed to give lectures at Lessing University and was retired on January 1, 1934 as curator of the Völkerkundemuseum without paying a pension , and he also lost his membership in the German-Japanese Society . In 1934, the name of William Cohn on the title page of the East Asian Journal was replaced by the Society for East Asian Art as publisher, and the name was also removed from the imprint in 1936. At the instigation of Otto Kümmel, Cohn became secretary of the Society for East Asian Art with a salary, but in 1938 he had to give up this position as well.

Time in the UK

William Cohn had already dealt with the idea of ​​emigration from Germany from 1934, which he put into practice in 1938. After receiving a scholarship from a scientist, the basis for moving to Great Britain was created. On December 3, 1938, William Cohn and his wife arrived in London. They were able to officially export an important part of their belongings to Great Britain, and other removal goods were blocked in the port of Hamburg. Later, files on the confiscation of household effects, works of art and frozen property were created by German authorities, and in 1941 an application was made for expatriation.

After the start of World War II , William Cohn was an enemy alien and was interned in 1940, first in Bury St Edmunds camp and then on the Isle of Man . Through the efforts of friends, he was released on September 18, 1940. He went to Oxford , where the founder of his scholarship lived. There he was able to quickly integrate into academic life. He was portrayed by Katerina Wilczynski in 1942 for her series Oxford Figures , and in 1943 he became chairman of the Oxford University Anthropological Society.

After the end of the Second World War he was able to work on the reopening of the British Museum in London. From September 17, 1945 to May 31, 1946 he was hired for a limited period as "Assistant Keeper First Class" and helped reorganize the collections. On January 28, 1947, he and his wife Isabella were naturalized in Great Britain .

The further professional path of William Cohn led him back to Oxford. A faculty for East Asian Studies should be established there. He was formally enrolled at New College Oxford and received the title Master of Arts by resolution . At the University of Oxford he was allowed to give lectures on East Asian art and he became an advisor to the Ashmolean Museum . In 1947 he founded the magazine Oriental Art , which he published until 1951. From a neglected collection of Indian art objects, he created the “Oxford Museum of Eastern Art” in 1949.

In 1955, William Cohn retired. On his 75th birthday, George Hill (Günther Hell), the son-in-law of Bruno Cassirer, published a bibliography of the works of William Cohn with 232 entries, in total he probably published about 300 works. On June 4, 1960, the University of Oxford awarded him an honorary doctorate in literature .

William Cohn died on February 26, 1961 in Oxford and was buried in the non-Jewish part of Wolvercote Cemetery . On his grave there is a granite stele by the British sculptor Walter Ritchie .

In 1963, Isabella Cohn founded the “William Cohn Memorial Lecture”, which takes place annually in the Ashmolean Museum. It is financed by compensation payments made by the Federal Republic of Germany to victims of the Nuremberg Race Laws . William Cohn's working library and picture collection have been transferred to the Sackler Library .

Fonts

• The attempt to abolish the "I" in some recent philosophers. Dissertation. University of Erlangen 1904. Pass & Garleb, Berlin 1904.
• Style analysis as an introduction to Japanese painting. Oesterheld, Berlin 1908.
• The ancient Buddhist painting of Japan. EA Seemann, Leipzig 1921.
• Indian plastic. Cassirer, Berlin 1921. 2nd edition 1922.
• East Asian portrait painting. EA Seemann, Leipzig 1923.
• Buddha in the art of the east. Klinkhardt & Biermann, Leipzig 1925.
• From my East Asian travel diary. 6 parts. Cassirer, Berlin, 1925-1927, OCLC 603977292 .
• Preface to Chinese gold objects and textiles owned by Friedrich Perzyński . Cassirer, Berlin 1929.
• Asian plastic. China, Japan, Front, Back India, Java. Cassirer, Berlin 1932.
• Introduction to Indian sculpture from the von der Heydt collection . Special exhibition. Decorative Arts Museum, Zurich 1935.
• (Ed.): Illustrations of Indian art. Marlowe, London 1947.
• Chinese painting. Phaidon, London 1948.
  German: Chinese painting. Phaidon, London 1948.
  French: Peinture chinoise. Phaidon, Paris 1948.

literature

• Werner Röder, Herbert A. Strauss (Eds.): International Biographical Dictionary of Central European Emigrés 1933–1945. Volume 2.1. Saur, Munich 1983, ISBN 3-598-10089-2 , p. 192.
• Cohn, William. In: Lexicon of German-Jewish Authors . Volume 5: Carmo – Donat. Edited by the Bibliographia Judaica archive. Saur, Munich 1997, ISBN 3-598-22685-3 , pp. 250-253.
• Cohn, William. In: Ulrike Wendland: Biographical handbook of German-speaking art historians in exile. Life and work of the scientists persecuted and expelled under National Socialism. Saur, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-598-11339-0 , pp. 98-101 ( limited preview in the Google book search).

Web links

• Literature by and about William Cohn in the catalog of the German National Library
• Wolfgang Klose : Dr. William Cohn. Berlin 1880 - Oxford 1961. Scholarly publicist and advocate of Far Eastern art.