William Heckscher

William Sebastian Heckscher , until 1941 Wilhelm Heckscher, (born December 14, 1904 in Hamburg ; died November 27, 1999 in Princeton ) was a German-American art historian .

Life

William Heckscher was the son of Siegfried Heckscher . After graduating from high school in Hamburg in 1931, after meeting Erwin Panofsky, he began studying art history in Hamburg. As a student he dealt with the symbolic world of humanistic iconology . He was particularly interested in the works of Cesare Ripa . In his dissertation he dealt with the importance of Roman ruins for the culture of Europe. Heckscher was unable to complete his doctorate in 1935 with Panofsky, as Panofsky had fled to the USA from the National Socialists .

As a pacifist and opponent of National Socialism, Heckscher felt threatened and immediately followed Panofsky to the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, after completing his doctorate . Here he completed an academic year and traveled in 1937 to the Warburg Institute in London , for which he worked as a freelancer. During the Second World War , Heckscher was considered an enemy alien . For this reason he was deported to Canada in 1940 and lived there in camp until 1941. During his imprisonment, Heckscher taught fellow prisoners and thereby prepared them for the entrance exams at Canadian universities.

After the end of the war, Heckscher took on a teaching position at Utrecht University from 1955 to 1966 . He then taught from 1966 to 1974 as Benjamin N. Duke Professor at Duke University in Durham and held the post of museum director from 1970 until his retirement in 1940. Heckscher spent his retirement at Princeton, where he researched emblems .

William Heckscher was married to Roxanna Heckscher, they had three daughters and he had five grandchildren at the time of death.

Act

Heckscher was particularly concerned with the iconography founded by Aby Warburg and Erwin Panofsky . He also devoted himself to topics that received little attention at the time. This included the emblematic as an art form of humanism and baroque . Heckscher also dealt with meaning and origin and art collections and exhibitions and the connections between visual art and literature.

The art historian wrote extensive essays that are seen as pioneering achievements in the respective subject areas. On the XXI. International Congress for Art History 1964 he gave a lecture entitled "The Genesis of Iconology", which is considered a particularly important work for the history of art. Heckscher described the historical and cultural conditions under which research methods on iconology were created.

Heckscher had an extensive archive with several card boxes as well as pictures and texts. These, as well as all work materials and correspondence, are stored in an institute named after him in the art history seminar of the University of Hamburg . The works can be viewed by the specialist public in the University's Warburg House .

literature

• Charlotte Schoell-Glass: Heckscher, William . In: Franklin Kopitzsch, Dirk Brietzke (Hrsg.): Hamburgische Biographie . tape 4 . Wallstein, Göttingen 2008, ISBN 978-3-8353-0229-7 , pp. 141-142 .
• Heckscher, William S. , 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, pp. 271–275

Web links

• Literature by and about William Heckscher in the catalog of the German National Library
• Eric Pace: William S. Heckscher, Historian Of Art and Museum Director, 94 obituary, New York Times , February 7, 2000
• Review by Johannes Rößler on: Charlotte Schoell-Glass, Elizabeth Sears: Veretteln als Methode. The humanistic iconologist William S. Heckscher. (= Hamburg research on art history. Studies, theories, sources, 6), Akademie Verlag, Berlin 2008