Wolfgang Fritz Volbach

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Wolfgang Fritz Volbach (born August 28, 1892 in Mainz ; died December 23, 1988 there ) was a German art historian .

family

Wolfgang Fritz Volbach was a son of the musician and musicologist Fritz Volbach (1861–1940). His mother Käthe Dernburg was a sister of the publicist Friedrich Dernburg . His brother Walther R. Volbach (1897–1996) became an operetta director and in 1936 had to emigrate. In 1929 Volbach married Marie-Louise Adelung, daughter of the SPD politician Bernhard Adelung , who died in 1936; they had their son Fritz Bernhard Volbach, born in 1930. In his second marriage, he was married to the writer Vivyan Leonora Eyles (1909–1984), pseudonym Lydia Holland, daughter of the writer Leonora Eyles and first wife of the writer Mario Praz , from 1948 , they had the son Julian Gilbert Volbach (1942–1951) . In his third marriage, he was married to the archaeologist Dorothee Renner (-Volbach) (1925–2009) since 1987 .

Life

Volbach studied art history, classical archeology and medieval history in Tübingen, Munich, Berlin and Gießen and received his doctorate in 1915 under Christian Rauch in Gießen. During his studies in 1912 he already worked as a volunteer at the Roman-Germanic Central Museum in Mainz, where he got his first position in 1916 and compiled a catalog of early Christian ivory works. In the same year he moved to the Nassau State Museum in Wiesbaden. From 1917 he worked in the department for early Christian and Byzantine art of the Kaiser-Friedrich-Museum in Berlin under Wilhelm von Bode and Oskar Wulff . In 1929 he was appointed custodian, in 1930 head of the early Christian department and the collection of Italian medieval sculptures, in 1933 he was given the title of professor. Until 1933, he rearranged the exhibition collection according to the then modern aesthetic and scientific criteria.

After the handover of power to the National Socialists , Volbach was dismissed with the law to restore the civil service on December 1, 1933, because his mother was of Jewish origin. Volbach emigrated to Italy and from 1934 worked as a research assistant on the collections of the Bibliotheca Apostolica Vaticana . He compiled inventory catalogs and taught at the Pontificio Istituto di Archeologia Cristiana . Since the end of 1942 he belonged with Ludwig Muckermann and Willi Nix to a conservative resistance group against National Socialism in Rome, whose role has not yet been clarified.

After the Second World War he returned to Germany. First he worked in the provincial administration of Hesse-Palatinate in Neustadt an der Haardt from summer 1946 as head of the public education department and from 1947 in the Rhineland-Palatinate Ministry of Culture in Koblenz as a consultant for monument preservation, museums and libraries. In 1950 he came to the Römisch-Germanisches Zentralmuseum in Mainz as deputy director, and in 1953 succeeded director Gustav Behrens . In 1958 he retired and continued his busy publishing activity.

Fonts (selection)

See Hans Bott: Bibliography WF Volbach . In: Yearbook of the Roman-Germanic Central Museum Mainz 8, 1958, pp. XIV – XX and Richard Hamann-McLean: Directory of the writings of Wolfgang Fritz Volbach . In: Yearbook of the Roman-Germanic Central Museum Mainz 19, 1972, pp. XVII – XXVIII .

  • The depiction of Saint George on horseback in German medieval art . Strasbourg 1917 (= dissertation, partial print ).
  • Ivory work from late antiquity and the early Middle Ages (= Roman-Germanic Central Museum. Catalogs of prehistoric antiquities 7). Mainz 1916; 2nd expanded edition 1952; 3rd, completely revised edition, von Zabern, Mainz 1976.
  • The ivory sculptures (= The sculptures of the Deutsches Museum, National Museums in Berlin 1). De Gruyter, Berlin 1923 ( digitized ).
  • with Oskar Wulff: The early Christian and medieval Byzantine and Italian sculptures (= description of the sculptures of the Christian epochs 3). De Gruyter, Berlin 1923 ( digitized version )
  • with Georges Duthuit , Georges Salles : Art byzantine. 100 planches reproductive un grand nombre de pièces choisies parmi les plus représentatives des diverse tendances . A. Lévy, Paris 1933.
  • Early Christian art . Hirmer, Munich 1958.
  • with Jaqueline Lafontaine-Dosogne: Byzantium (= Propylaea art history , volume 3). Propylaea, Frankfurt am Main 1968.
  • with Jean Hubert , Jean Porcher : Early Middle Ages. From the Great Migration to the threshold of the Carolingian era . CH Beck, Munich 1968.
  • with Jean Hubert, Jean Porcher: The Art of the Carolingians. From Charlemagne to the end of the 9th century . CH Beck, Munich 1969.

literature

  • Julius Baum : Wolfgang Fritz Volbach , in: Yearbook of the Römisch-Germanisches Zentralmuseum Mainz 8, 1958, pp. IX – XIII.
  • Kurt Böhner : Wolfgang Fritz Volbach on his 80th birthday on August 28, 1972 . In: Yearbook of the Römisch-Germanisches Zentralmuseum Mainz 19, 1972, pp. XI – XVI.
  • Ulrike Wendland: Biographical handbook of German-speaking art historians in exile. Life and work of the scientists persecuted and expelled under National Socialism . KG Saur, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-598-11339-0 , pp. 716-723.
  • Peter H. Feist: Volbach, Wolfgang Fritz , in: Metzler-Kunsthistoriker-Lexikon . 2nd extended edition, Metzler, Stuttgart 2007, ISBN 978-3-476-02183-0 , pp. 459-461.
  • Wolfram Kinzig : Volbach, Wolfgang Fritz . In: Stefan Heid, Martin Dennert (Hrsg.): Personal Lexicon for Christian Archeology . Researchers and personalities from the 16th to the 21st century . Schnell & Steiner, Regensburg 2012, ISBN 978-3-7954-2620-0 , Vol. 2, pp. 1296-1298.
  • Volbach, Wolfgang Fritz in: Colum P. Hourihane (Ed.): The Grove Encyclopedia of Medieval Art and Architecture . Oxford University Press, New York 2012, Volume 6, pp. 330-331.
  • Wolfram Kinzig: Wolfgang Fritz Volbach . In: Pictures of Life. Classical Archaeologists and National Socialism Volume 1. Verlag Marie Leidorf, Rahden, Westf. 2012 ISBN 978-3-86757-382-5 , pp. 141–157 ( digitized version ).
  • Elisabeth Ehler, Cäcilia Fluck, Gabriele Mietke: Science and Turbulence. Wolfgang Fritz Volbach, a scientist between the two world wars . Reichert, Wiesbaden 2017, ISBN 978-3-95490-273-6 .

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Volbach, Wolfgang Fritz
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Volbach, Wolfgang Friedrich (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German art historian
DATE OF BIRTH August 28, 1892
PLACE OF BIRTH Mainz
DATE OF DEATH December 23, 1988
Place of death Mainz