Source Description
This source is an obituary first published by the art
historian
Erwin Panofsky in the
Hamburger
Fremdenblatt on 28.10.1929
following his elder colleague Aby
Warburg’s death on 26.10.1929.
However, it is more than the record of an art historian’s life. Born in
Hannover in
1892, and educated in Berlin, Freiburg, and
Munich,
Panofsky was hired
by the University of
Hamburg in 1920, and he quickly climbed
the ranks to become an Ordinarius professor in 1928 and a
leading figure of the still nascent field of art history. Panofsky and Warburg were engaged, like
many art historians of their day, in identifying whether art was an expression
of its time period, a national characteristic, or artistic genius. Panofsky’s obituary reveals
the intellectual partnership between the two and the wider urban community of
scholars that congregated around the Kulturwissenschaftliche Bibliothek
Warburg (KBW) in Hamburg during the 1920s. Though the Hamburger Fremdenblatt was a
daily newspaper with a wide audience, the intimate and detailed nature of the
obituary was—like much of the activity of the KBW—presented with an insider
audience in the mind. As a celebration of this partnership, Panofsky’s obituary of
Warburg offers a
window into this distinct Hamburgian sub-culture of Weimar-era intellectual life
in which German-Jewish scholars were able to play such an
active role.
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Recommended Citation
Obituary for Aby Warburg in the Hamburger Fremdenblatt, October 28, 1929 (translated by Insa Kummer), edited in: Key Documents of German-Jewish History,
<https://dx.doi.org/10.23691/jgo:source-24.en.v1> [November 08, 2024].