RIEGL, STRZYGOWSKI AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF ART

The viennese art historian Josef Strzygowski (1862-1941) has recently attracted conspicuous scholarly attention. (Fig. 1.) This is remarkable given that, until recently, his reputation has been that of a thinker blinded by ideology, a crude and at times openly racist ideologue, and a willing servant of the National Socialist regime.1 For this reason, it would be all too easy to renounce any consideration of this thinker, and to relegate his work to where it belongs, in the dark corridors of a dusty archive, never to see the light of day.2

For a few years, however, there have been more and more voices calling for a fresh appraisal of Strzygowski. Strzygowski's writings, these voices insist, should not be rejected in their totality, particularly given the considerable farsightedness of his early work. Suzanne L. Marchand's 1994 "Case" of Strzygowski is but one of many examples of works in which the Viennese scholar has been treated with at least cautious respect.3 Since then there has been an attempt at the university level to reappraise his work; a proposed master's thesis on Strzygowski was recently approved at the University of Vienna, and there is another thesis as well as a dissertation underway there. And at the University of Frankfurt am Main, a research project on near Asian art, in which Strzygowski plays a prominent role, has been established. Moreover there have been many papers dealing with the Austrian scholar's influence on the international level.4 Finally, the high point of these endeavors to date took place in 2005 in Budapest, at a conference in which the sphere of influence of the hitherto ostracized scholar was subjected to comprehensive discussion.5

Two factors can be cited to explain the recent interest in Strzygowski. First, it must be stressed that his thinking shattered geographical boundaries. Today, in an era of increasingly global cultural awareness, Strzygowski's restless explorations of the frontiers of art history, including his travels to remote areas and his exploration of works largely unknown outside of Europe, must be regarded as progressive. In this respect he is cited in many recent studies as a pioneer of "global art history," as for example an explorer who stressed the limitations of Europe's eurocentric views on art and science.6

Secondly, the critical revision of his work can also be attributed to an academic stance in which the historiography of art has emerged as an increasingly serious sub-discipline within the field of art history. A strikingly intensive involvement with the founding fathers of art historiography has lately given rise to conferences and publications, all of which seek to remind us of the early masters of our discipline and their often forgotten achievements.7 The foremost goal in that connection is the attempt to contextualize academic traditions. The question regarding the conditions under which the history of art was pursued around 1900, matters of cultural politics, institutional strategies underlying art scholarship, and more precisely, which inclusionary and exclusionary procedures were developed - these and related questions have led to a series of detailed analyses, which have sought not only to deepen our knowledge about individual scholars, but also to scrutinize the institutions at which they were active.

Strzygowski's colleague in Vienna, Alois Riegl, can be pointed to as a leading subject of such an approach. (Fig. 2). Certainly the enormous international interest in Riegl mainly concerns his work in the field of art history, and above all his considerable influence on art-historical scholarship in the 20th century.8 But at the same time this exploration of his milieu has yielded a clear and deep knowledge of the professional and institutional difficulties he faced as a contributor to the decisive, watershed issues of Austrian cultural politics. Thanks to Diana Reynolds Cordileone's works on Riegl's activities at the Austrian Museum for Art and Industry ("MAK"), we now know how much he suffered under the bureaucratic limitations of the late Habsburg Empire. In many of his writings he stood up against the prevailing opinions in Vienna, championing the cause of intellectual freedom and deploring its subordination to political ends. Particularly in his early texts he did not hesitate to hold a "state-controlled" circle responsible for the failure of a conclusive art and cultural politics.9 In this respect Riegl was perceived not only as a prudent scholar, but also as an active participant in the intellectual life of the Viennese fin de siècle, and was given credit for his unshakable conviction that an art historian can and should speak out about the social and political problems of his time. Thus, what interests scholars of early 20th century art history only secondarily concerns respect for one's elders. It is primarily a question of analyzing writings, studying the origin and their impact in context, and keeping that impact in mind. It concerns the search for the theoretical foundations underlying the scholarly work, the question of which intellectual tradition it belonged to, against whom or what it was directed against, which social and political implications it expressed, and how the disciplinary and historical principles from which scholars derived their theories were developed.

The following text attempts to settle some of these principles. Above all it attempts to subject Strzygowski's early work, the work that is awakening so much interest today, to a critical analysis. Riegl's work may be viewed as nothing less than an obsession for Strzygowski, for, as will be shown, Strzygowski concerned himself for decades with his colleague and, despite his assertions to the contrary, could never free himself from his persistent engagement with Riegl.10

Riegl vs . Strzygowsk i: Opponents on Common Ground

Reviewing the relevant literature assessing Strzygowski's intellectual contribution to the Vienna School of art history, one quickly finds oneself at a loss. In his still worthwhile article entitled Die Wiener Schule der Kunstgeschichte. Rückblick auf ein Säkulum deutscher Gelehrtenarbeit in Österreich Julius von Schlosser certainly mentions his colleague, but the tone of his remarks on that subject is exclusively negative.11 Strzygowski, we are told, has nothing to do with the tradition of art-historical scholarship in Vienna. Schlosser contends that his entire academic orientation has been the counterpart, even the antithesis, of the Vienna School; his "particular goals and aims [have] scarcely anything in common with the Vienna School; indeed they often run deliberately to the contrary."12

Schlosser's refusal even to discuss Strzygowski's achievements is doubtless grounded on the deep grudge that he nursed against his colleague.13 At the same time we must consider the date when the piece was written. Schlosser's history of the Vienna School appeared in 1934, the year of the Austrian Civil War, and the date that marks the beginning of Austrofascism; at that point the country had skidded into a deep political, economic and, not least, academic crisis. The previous years had already been marked by persistent struggles in higher educational circles. With this article Schlosser at last had his final reckoning with his adversary. He aimed to portray Strzygowski's teaching as defectively developed and hardly worthy of note, and thus to "completely eliminate" him from the annals of Vienna School art history.14 In counterpoint, he had to portray his own research, which was linked back to Eitelberger, Wickhoff and Riegl, in the most flattering light possible, to please the new political leaders. Schlosser accordingly described the Vienna School as a richly traditional, self-contained institution, which in its intellectual homogeneity was a guarantor of native study. Discordant or ambiguous views, which Strzygowski regularly produced, were not desired.

It seems needless to say at this point that the respectful portrait that Schlosser painted of the Vienna School in no way accorded with the facts. Given the irreconcilable polarity that he stressed between Riegl and Strzygowski, his study cannot withstand critical examination. In fact, it is truly astonishing how similar the foundations of their academic interests actually were. A comparison of their writings clearly reveals that Riegl and Strzygowski steered the same course, and that in terms of the content of their work they marched in lockstep. The two were both in Rome as young men, where they increased their devotion to Baroque art, specifically to the question of its emergence.15 At the same time they researched the art of the Middle Ages.16 A few years later their first expansive studies on the Late Antique appeared, almost simultaneously.17 The art of Rembrandt seemed to fascinate them in similar ways. While Riegl lectured many times at the University of Vienna between 1896 and 1900 on Dutch painting generally and on Rembrandt in particular, Strzygowski published an appendix on Rembrandt's work in his book on Baroque art. Riegl's essay on the Dutch group portrait was published in 1902; in the same year Strzygowski published an article on "The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Tulp." The two had other interests in common, including oriental textile art, Dalmatian monuments, the golden treasure of Nagyszentmiklós, and the theme of folk art in general.

In addition to this substantive common ground between Riegl and Strzygowski, there were also a great many methodological similarities between the two art historians. Like Riegl, Strzygowski insisted that the art historian's attention be directed primarily to the appearance of form. For that reason both privileged style as a subject of scholarly research. Both took pains to repress the influence of philology on art history. And both explicitly privileged the role of the observer in art.18

Late Ant iquity and Mode rn Times

This wealth of similarities between the two scholars begs the question where their disagreements lay. Before a satisfactory answer may be given, it must be recalled that even in their student days, when they were enrolled together in courses with Mortiz Thausing, a strong personal animosity existed between Riegl and Strzygowski. We do not know the reason, but in any case the mutual mistrust was so deep that Riegl accused his rival of falsifying documents.19 Their rivalry continued into 1887, when Riegl reviewed Strzygowski's study on Cimabue and reproached him for intellectual shortcomings: "[...] the evidence that the author cites as crystal clear support for his argument [...] in fact could as easily support the opposite proposition."20 When Strzygowski applied in 1892 for a post at the University of Graz, the two once again got in each other's way, so to speak: Riegl applied for the same place, but he was given a subordinate position, while Stryzgowski received the first ranked professorship.

A high point of their mutual mistrust, which quickly deepened into venomous hostility, occurred in 1902, when Strzygowski published a review of Riegl's Spätrömische Kunstindustrie in a supplement to the highly regarded Allgemeine Zeitung (Munich). Not only does this article enhance our understanding of Strzygowski's views on art, but it also establishes a particularly deep insight into his world view. It is well-known that Riegl's approach to Late Antique art is based on the conviction that, far from a sign of decadence, it is on the contrary a profoundly innovative art. For Riegl the Late Antique tendency for example towards spatial shading and distorted proportions, is obviously not a sign of incompetence, but rather an expression of a specific will to form ("Kunstwollen"), that is, of an alternative aesthetic principle that paved the road to modernism.21 The purpose of art history should be to accept this significant difference, and to value it as a positive quality on its own terms.

Josef Strzygowski was not willing to accept this line of argument. For him the art of the Late Antique was an unequivocal sign of decadence - "the decay is unmistakably there and unstoppable"22 - and he dismissed Riegl's remark to the effect that space itself was an arthistorical category: "I cannot agree with the principal content of Rieglian books, the chief characteristic of his so-called Late Antique art. I fault his focus to the development of a spatial sense, which completely overlooks the case of Mesopotamia." 23

Already in 1902, as in his later works, Strzygowski emphasized the need to study Middle Eastern art and to take it into art-historical consideration. This was a valid critique of grave deficits in academic research; his argument, that European art could not be properly understood without the contribution of the "Orient," is perfectly justifiable. The problem that Strzygowski's texts pose for today's reader concerns not his claim of this purported contribution, but rather the way in which this contribution was described. For Strzygowski the relationship between Europe and Asia was characterized throughout as one of rivalry, war, and violence. To emphasize his stance as pointedly as possible, he constructed an image of a peaceful ancient Greece ("the beautiful child"), who was beset by her neighbors, seduced, disgraced, and finally crushed. Responsible for this were, so we are told, the Jews.

"I see the pure, gossamer Psyche of Hellas, from the start circled by her native enemies, who greedily stretch out their arms to surround her, to crush her. As long as this beautiful child is bursting with strength and growing up in happy oblivion in her own land, these lurking evils have no strength. They wait, and as soon as they seek Hellas in their own land, they gain first influence, then power, and finally victory. The tenacious nature of the Orient cannot be overcome; it appears in the image of the eternal Jew. What we call Byzantine art is the old Orient, that is the victory of the old Ahasverus over the beauty of Hellas and the imposing greatness of Rome."24

Greek art, Strzygowski continues, originated in the North, but when it came into contact with Semitic people, her fate took its course.

"In an attempt [...] to portray the fate of classical Greek art, I would make a series of illustrations whose first leaf showed how its ancestors migrated from the north, while the child of an oriental muse lay flourishing in their arms. I would then paint a spring picture in the style of Böcklin or Puvis de Chavannes, showing mankind going forth in breathtaking beauty and grace, in the flowering and prosperity of its own existence; a Psyche, admired, cultivated, and adored by all her fellow men and those to come. In the third picture I would show the mature beauty, in her sense of power and possession, sold by an old Semite; she is the most prized of the treasures of his harem. Splendid celebrations will be held, at which Hellas sets the tone; there is the Semitic tribe, decked out in silk, gold and precious jewels. And finally I would show how this tribe inherits the very legacy and comes into the splendor of the entire Roman empire, after the death of Psyche of Hellas."25

Having given what he thinks is a plausible explanation for the fall of Greek art, Strzygowski once again composes his history painting to stress the consequences of any "oriental" influence:

"Art tumbles from its high pedestal, upon which the Greeks have raised it; it is the oriental tribe that betrays its beauty. Schwind's Melusine here represents a symbolic illustration. In the place of the high-born lady, full of noble self-determination, the slave returns, offering herself around [...] and so becomes a whore."26

There is no need to go any further into Strzygowski's anti-Semitic attacks. Margaret Olin has already done justice to the cited passages. 27 It is nevertheless interesting as a matter of intellectual history that Strzygowski's academic essays, in which he viewed Europe as the victim of Jewish greed, are by no means unique. The Danish art historian Julius Henrik Lange (1838-1896) for instance, who incidentally was also esteemed by Julius von Schlosser,28 wrote at the same time of the "hatred and brutality" of the "Semitic people[s]," whose "monotheistic and polemical religion [...] gradually conquered Europe and the Near East."29 And certainly it is no accident that Strzygowski used the motif of the "eternal Jew" in his text. In those years, at the end of the 19th century, the medieval legend of Ahasverus had returned as a subject of increased discussion. In Vienna, the Wiesbaden-born Orientalist Adolf Wahrmund in particular spread the legend and crafted the image of the parasitic Jew.30 In any case the 1903 Munich article is compelling evidence that those writers who discern a racist tendency only in Strzygowski's later writings are plainly wrong.31 Josef Strzygowski was an aggressive anti-Semite. He was so from the beginning, and he remained so until his death.

Riegl did not immediately react to Strzygowski's 1902 review. It was not until nine weeks later that an extensive report appeared in the same journal, in which he clearly established that he himself was not prepared to argue on this level. Strzygowski's critique was so malicious in itself, and was above all so muddled in its content, that Riegl suggested that the author's health must be questioned: "Strzygowski appraises the Late Antique [...] as an art of decadence: his comparison of the classical Hellenic virgin with a whore must be excused as a kind of madness brought on by overwork ["Schreibtischfieber"].32 Riegl nevertheless took up the gauntlet in his report: he responded to Strzygowski's attack point by point, lucidly setting forth his views and arguing that "the problem of the Late Antique [...] in my opinion [is] the most important and decisive one in the entire history of humanity to date."33

This sentence may astonish us now; it must be remembered, however, that the great meaning that Riegl attached to the Late Antique also had a subtext of cultural and educational policy. The Austrian government expressly demanded that the little known native evidence of Late Antique art be subjected to large scale research projects. The decision to do this was made in 1893, when an international conference of German philologists and scholars was held in Vienna.34 This conference, in which more than one thousand scholars took part, made those in Austria with responsibility for culture aware that, in comparison with Germany, Austria had fallen behind in the analysis of antique and late antique culture. In order to correct this, a five volume survey was proposed, on which the leading Austrian authorities were to collaborate. Alois Riegl's Spätrömische Kunstindustrie represented the first volume of this project. The investigation of the Late Antique, which towards 1900 became "the general theme of the first Vienna School"35 must be understood as a project of national art competition, particularly with Germany; thanks to the well-established philhellenism of its scholars, Germany's interest in the Antique was incomparably higher than that of Austria.36

Yet another factor contributed to the revival of academic interest in the Late Antique, which can partly explain the vehemence with which it was discussed. Once Riegl and Strzgowski's concept was applied to a modern context - as a subtext, in other words, of the act of historical analysis - it became clear that it reflected the contemporary European situation. Indeed, the central issues within the argument could easily be applied to the fin de siècle: it revolved above all around the question, revived in the wake of Jacob Burckhardt's study on the Emperor Constantine (1853), of when and under what circumstances a great empire could fall, which symptoms political decline entailed, and the fundamental meaning of decadence; the phenomenon of migration was also in the foreground, i.e. answers were being sought to the question how cultural influences manifested themselves outwardly.37 In that connection the problem of historical continuity was also touched on; basic ideas about cultural hegemony, which were particularly apt in the ethnically diverse Habsburg Empire, resonate in the discourse on the Late Antique, as well as in the debate over cultural legacy. Finally there was the question of modernism as such, namely on the relationship between a dominant high culture and a more autonomous often conflicting popular culture.

The close relationship between these utterances and contemporary political events is shown particularly clearly in the case of Strzygowsky, who allowed his openly political views with respect to the world at large to invade his scholarly texts. His approval seeking anti-Semitism found cheap ideological support in the turbulent Austrian political landscape, above all in the circle of Georg Ritter von Schönerer, who designated anti-Semitism as the "cornerstone of national politics."38 With his radical All-German Party Schönerer received enormous political support; in the 1901 election, 21 of his fellow members were voted into the chamber of deputies.39 A central element of his politics comprised his "ideological negativism (anti-Socialist, anticapitalist, anti- Catholic, antiliberal, anti-Habsburg)."40 Strzygowski was particularly interested in Schönerer's "Free from Rome" movement, which in its typically aggressive manner beat the drum against, specifically, any Roman influence on Austrian culture and politics.41 A more direct and, for the then readers of the Allgemeine Zeitung, recognizable allusion to Schönerer may also be found in Hellas in des Orients Umarmung, in which Strzygowski fired off a broadside against Romanism: "They don't know the Orient. Both Wickhoff and Riegl have Rome in their blood; as much as Riegl in particular may exert himself to proclaim the opposite, they are both knee-deep in what one might call an ultramontane direction, the conviction that all roads lead to Rome [...]."42

Strzygowski's critique was directed here not only against Riegl and Wickhoff, but above all against the Institut für Österreichische Geschichtsforschung, which had traditionally cultivated good contacts with Roman scholarship. 43 His reproach of the blindly loyal Romanists was so serious that it could only have been borrowed from Schönerer's dreadful, offhandedly combative rhetoric. In a next step he further augmented his negation of Rome and flatly classified the entire development of European art, insofar as it led back to the late Roman period, as an error and a "plague," that stood in the way of the free unfolding of Germanic art:

"Our modern art developed from the decorative style of the nomadic Germans or Slavo-celto-germans [...] the dignified blossoms of the Gothic, the joy in the natural landscape that, counter to the anthropomorphism of the antique, was heralded by the colorful interior of its cathedrals and their exterior sculptural ornament. It achieved incomparable greatness in the draperies of the statues, then attained its great flowering in Netherlandish landscape painting, and now in Böcklin. What is forever standing in its way is the Antique. In Renaissance Italy [...] the Gothic was propagated from its sturdy Germanic stem; that offspring thrived and blossomed splendidly in Italian soil, but when planted across the Alps became a mannered, lifeless thing which still plagues us with its affectations." 44

Strzygowski's historical constructions would be scarcely worth mention, were they not so seamlessly integrated into a scholarly discourse in which - arising in the channels of Arthur Comte de Gobineau's turgid theories and brought back to Germany and Austria by people like Ludwig Woltmann - the polarity between the Italian and the German Renaissance flared up in a racist direction.45 As a consequence of this polarity works were written in which aspects of early post-Medieval culture, specifically humanism, were flatly rejected. For decades Strzygowski himself tirelessly identified the character of the Italian Renaissance as the source of repression. "One never forgets that 'Medieval' blood was our blood, and that the 'Renaissance' was an invasion of the south into the native ground of the North."46 Such a view was also spread outside of Strzygowski's faculty. A random example may be taken from Franz Zachs's influential study Christlich-germanisches Kulturideal. Österreich auf dem rechten Weg (1923), in which the author emphasized that "our modern humanistic education. . . [injects] the young with a deliberately distorted portrayal of the development of our culture," for that reason we demand to do "away with the false educational ideal of the Renaissance! We must first clear away the rubble!"47

What particularly disturbed Riegl about Strzygowski was his habit of seeing cultural transformations exclusively from this point of view. For Strzygowski insisted that the decline of antique art was a clumsy act of Jewish aggression, introduced through the influx of Semitic masses into the West and North. Riegl fiercely protested:

"Strzygowski's hypothesis would be barely worth discussing if Mediterranean people of Indo-germanic origin had been utterly eradicated from the start of the Roman Empire, and replaced by oriental nomads. But this was not the case, and his faulty and exaggerated argument, based upon the immigration of aliens to the Roman empire in the form of mercenary soldiers, fails because the intellectual conversion process was already far advanced; any attempt to find an actual explanation must proceed from the change that was evident since Constantine the Great, emerging [...] directly, as a necessary product of the immediately preceding developmental phase [...]. Evolution, not revolution."48

Mutu al Fus ion and the Fear of Mixing

Evolution - the central paradigm of all Rieglian art theory. Just as in his Stilfragen (1893) Riegl made use of that "model for diachronic ornamental transformation"49so he insisted on the idea of a progressive development of art in his studies on the Late Antique. It is highly significant that even between these competitors - at least at first glance - there was unity on this point. Like Riegl, Strzygowski also stressed that the representation of artistic development should be a scholarly priority.50 Both were clear that the history of art, if it were to become a modern field of academic research, could not release itself from scholarly paradigms of development and progress.51 This is not surprising, as outstanding humanists of the time - Comte, Marx, Darwin - had already adopted this thought in their studies. Furthermore, although this line of generally progressive optimism was already fractured at the turn of the 20th century, and was completely shattered with the First World War, the idea of historical progress nevertheless persisted. It can even be said that the question of developmental progress - whether it exists and how it occurred - was still growing in the field of art history. In those years, in addition to Julius Meier-Graefe's internationally successful Entwicklungsgeschichte der modernen Kunst (1904), a great many treatises appeared that took up this theme. In Vienna in 1904 Max Dvorák published his monumental study on the art of the Van Eyck brothers - and was promptly criticized by Strzygowski for the developmental concepts that he outlined in it.52 A few years before Burckhardt's disciple Heinrich Alfred Schmid, then active in Berlin, had already likewise discussed how for him development existed principally in the increasing ability to represent space and inner life.53

According to Georg Iggers the core of historicism as a movement of thought lies in the assumption that humanity - and culture as well - is changeable: "The world of man is in a state of incessant flux, although within it there are centers of stability (personalities, institutions, nations, epochs), each possessing an inner structure, a character, and each in constant metamorphosis in accord with its own internal principle of development. History thus becomes the only guide to an understanding of things human. There is no constant human nature; rather the character of each man reveals itself only in his development. "54

It was precisely this thought that Strzygowski found insupportable. Certainly he was completely prepared to recognize the fact of historic development, yet he could not bring himself to accept the possibility of artistic change. Nevertheless he obviously had considerable trouble with the idea that a change demanded by development (whether in individual form, or in overall artistic orientation) from the original meaning - in Strzygowski's terminology, the essence - of an art work conceals it or makes it unrecognizable. His entire work was consequently aimed at uncovering the pure heart of a work or of an epoch. As if driven he pursued the genuine, undisturbed artistic vision, the quintessential, primitive form of art. Accordingly in Strzygowski's writing he speaks of "sprouts," of "origins" and "beginnings."

Riegl and particularly Wickhoff, who was likewise the subject of Strzygowski's attacks, dismissed this ever more obsessively driven search for roots as a pointless exercise: "In most cases [...] it is not so important when a motif appears for the first time. Art is as wasteful with her motives as nature is with her seeds."55

If we sum up the differences in interpretation of the concept of development in Riegl and Wickhoff on the one hand and Strzygowski on the other, we can conclude that Strzygowski always looked backwards - to actual or supposed beginnings - whereas his Viennese counterparts studied development in the opposite direction. In particular, they focused on the moments in which a form visibly changes and takes on a new character.

The fundamental difference in their interpretations of developmental concepts may also be grasped in their approach to folk art, commonly viewed as being particularly resistant to change. In his study Volkskunst, Hausfleiβ und Hausindustrie Riegl, who has much to say about this point, clearly refuses to interpret folk art as the source of purity or the locus of national self-discovery, despite all attempts to do so. Like every other art form, folk art necessarily enters a state of transformation when exposed to external influences. This, as Riegl says, is not at all deplorable, but on the contrary is the principle of every further change: once a stranger comes into close, lasting contact with another stranger, the process of further education is launched.56 Riegl formulated this in a similar fashion in his answer to Strzygowki in which he says: "In the life of art there is no death, but only a continually progressive, reciprocal fusion of everything that ever was, in a continuous, endlessly wavering line."57

This approach, which explained this continual, mutual fusion, i.e. the incessant influencing and blending, as the epitome of artistic principle, Strzygowski flatly rejected. In his analysis of an embroidered piece from Czernowitz, which was acquired as a gift by the Austrian Museum of Folk Life and Folk Art in 1898, Strzygowski gives a detailed description that immediately reverts to his typical view: he insists that "the artistic values of the above piece are not pure"; that one "can always detect the influx of elements that disturb its artistic effect"; that the goal of the examination must be to "uncover the spirit of the whole in its original appearance and meaning"; in order to grasp the "developmental historical position" of this 17th century piece, one must look at the "beginnings of Christian art and the prior Syrian- Persian procession" for there one would find that the "pre-conditions of the individual motif," originating in "Persia [...] thence to Syria and Armenia, and on to the artistic territory of the Mediterranean and Northern Europe" are at work there.58

Despite an inferior methodology,59 Strzygowski undertook a perfectly interesting experiment in this analysis: to apply the criteria of art history to an anonymous work of folk art; but the way that he analyzed the embroidery was significant: again he sees impure elements, an alien influx, that disturbs the artistic impression; the focus of the research calls for the divorce of native from foreign influences, in order to search for the origins of the relevant motives.

This is not the place to evaluate Strzygowski's psychic profile; it suffices to point out, however, that the quest for purity and the fear of mixing was described as the most distinctive feature of the "soldierly man" (Klaus Theweleit): the man who searches for an original state, the authentic, and who perceives any cultural or physical hybridization as a threat.60

The remarks of a disparaging and equally anguished Strzygowski regarding changes or, to be precise, departures from an originally clear and manageable artistic appearance, riddle his observations on the history of ornament. In clear allusion to Riegl's Stilfragen (1893), in which the latter traced the border-crossing transformative process of an ornamental motif through centuries, Strzygowski in Hellas in des Orients Umarmung now presents his view of the matter. For him there was absolutely no doubt that the forms of the tendril motif bore witness to clear artistic origins. However, once the motif fell under oriental influence, it became for him play with lines, began to proliferate and finally ended in orgies of the arabesque:

"The intimate, quiet relationship that Greek artists had with nature and which was first [...] expressed in the introduction of the tendril and the acanthus [...] whether a Hellenistic or early oriental spirit [...] predominates, became a crude naturalizing [...] or is mangled into a play of line with vegetable and animal motives, in particular in an annexation of old Mesopotamian cane work bands and the endless proliferation of lattice and network motives. The emphasis upon spatial boundaries inherent in the new style, i.e. upon broad, completely filled-in expanses, had in a short time led to the proliferation of new, un-Greek elements, allied in spirit to old oriental art, that then celebrated their orgy in arabesques."61

It is not hard to guess the origin of the rhetoric here: once more Strzygowski writes about his anxiety regarding an oriental, i.e. Jewish, culture, a culture that knows no boundaries, occupies spaces, starts to proliferate, and celebrates orgies.

Strzygowski structured his thought along racial categories; implicitly even early on, and explicitly in his works around 1914, he organized his thought according to geography; in time this approach hardened into a rigid value system. Increasingly one reads, as in his book Altai-Iran und Völkerwanderung (1917), of an "inborn peculiarity,"62 of the "German people's body"63 or that "the Gothic is much more racially pure than the Greek was."64 In the advancement of such thought he was, as is well known, not alone; the overall trend toward geography as a determinant of style, in which members of Strzygowski's department eagerly collaborated, tended in precisely this direction. 65 Just how authoritative developmental history would be for a race- and easily even racist-based art and art history is the subject of a concluding, cursory glance at the further history of the concept.

The Development of Art: a Discou rse of Nation alism

In the midst of the First World War, while the department was already showing symptoms of a crisis,66 Rudolf Kautzsch, Professor of Art History at the University of Frankfurt am Main, gave a speech on the occasion of the birthday of the German Kaiser entitled "The Concept of Development in Art History."67 Kautzsch, who was a member of the faculty specializing in Late Antique and Early Medieval Art, and who was naturally acquainted with the "Orient vs. Rome Debate,"68 summarized the achievements of recent art historians; he praised Viennese research in particular for its description of "artistic production as a component in a compelling causal chain of the developmental orders."

"I do not wish to say here that this view was a necessary reaction to old fallacies, or that it had a very salutary pedagogical effect, though it must be said: I hope it did [...] But when our assessment of problems of formal representation in a comprehensive context proceeds so gradually, is that really enough? Is it not so, that in this direction we are certainly very experienced, as everything came, but not really, why it happened so and not in some other way [...] From where does this direction originate? [...] Must we really abstain from asking the reason for the development?"69

With astonishing clarity Kautzsch aimed in his speech at the boundary that stood between Riegl and Strzygowski. A paradigm of the Vienna School - the representation of artistic existence in and of itself - was in Kautzsch's view certainly important, yet in the end he dismissed it as an anachronistic undertaking, for it did not seek the roots of a national art. In contrast to Riegl, Strzygowski approached this challenge willingly. Kautzsch's question about the "why of development" completely legitimized Strzygowski's quest for the beginnings of art. Somewhere, the thinking ran, northern art and northern "nature" must have a point of departure. To uncover this - what in Strzygowski's case we must simply refer to as "Aryan" - beginning offered not only the chance to be freed from Rome-centrism with its unfortunate humanism, but also the possibility of shoring up German national feeling, which had been beaten down first in the Habsburg monarchy and then in the First World War. That Strzygowski, who by 1907 spoke of his "legitimate partiality for the German nation,"70 came almost inevitably to adopt nationalistic language hardly needs mentioning; and his use of linguistics and ideology as the starting point for an attack, directed in an increasingly aggressive manner against the Jewish people, is well known; "it is not difficult to see where all this was leading."71

With his jingoistic attempts, Strzygowski volunteered his observations on the germanic creation myth, not only in clear opposition to Riegl, but also to people like Michael Haberlandt, the first director of the Austrian Museum of Folk Life and Folk Art Haberlandt was himself clear on the subversive power of a nationalistically-inflected scholarship, and for that reason he called for moderation, recalling that in scholarship there was "a deeper developmental principle than nationality."72

In the event, however, the notion of a national sense of intellectual and artistic development remained a central area of academic analysis under National Socialism. In 1939, in his broadly aimed study of the meaning of the concept, Christian Töwe listed eleven art-historical approaches that all concerned the concept of development.73 "Kunsthistorie als Rassenkulturhistorie" ["Art History as Race-Cultural History"] encompassed a broad sphere in which the proponents of this approach, among them Wilhelm Pinder, Kurt Gerstenberg, Dagobert Frey und Alfred Stange, were cited. Although Josef Strzygowski is notably absent from this list, it would be interesting as an intellectual matter to discover why the Viennese fell into the disfavor of the National Socialists. The fact is that, despite his sympathetic statements about Adolf Hitler,74 the Nazis evidently had little sympathy for Strzygowski. Around 1942 Hans Jantzen was obviously constrained to draw a line between Strzygowski's ideas and those of the National Socialists: "In the last years of his life Josef Strzygowski stressed that the 'North' brings its own creative powers and ideas to the unfolding of European art, a remark that admittedly lacks any regard for 'history.' Also, his idea of the 'North' must not be confused with what we are accustomed to term nordic-germanic." 75

Late Roman Art Industry : The Edict of Tole rance

Given all of this, to return to the questions posed at the beginning of this essay, is there any real justification to view Strzygowski in a positive light, to describe him as a pioneer of global art history, and to make a distinction between the "early," supposedly interesting Strzygowski, and the "later," openly racist scholar? In every respect the answer is emphatically "no!" Strzygowski was a scholar who, despite his many innovative approaches, had a life-long attachment to his prejudices. A deep-seated anti- Semitism, coupled with an irrational fear of mixed, hybridized cultural forms, hindered his serious engagement with the complex unfolding of European and non-European culture. His views on Coptic art for example - in Maria Cramer's words the "mixed art" par excellence76 - are useless and, as Lászlo Török stressed, of absolutely no scholarly value.77 One may conditionally accept that Strzygowski's occupation with Armenian architecture was an expression of sympathy for the modern-day genocide committed against the Armenian people. But this argument is not convincing. For with this term Strzygowski all too likely implied "Aryan," and not "Armenian" as such.78 To the very end, there pours from every line of his work a profoundly hostile contempt for humanity, a devotion to an ideology of Blood and Soil, and never the slightest trace of empathy or compassion. The aggressiveness, with which he attacked Riegl, Wickhoff, Schlosser, Dvorák, and Tietze, betrays much about the position from which he wrote about art. Strzygowski needed enemies, with whom he could do battle.79

Alois Riegl had his hands full fending off Strzygowski's attacks. At the high point of their conflict Riegl apparently wrote a letter to his opponent, in which he set forth his views once again, and openly called for a truce.80 In vain: even after this, Strzygowski never missed an opportunity to discredit Riegl.

What most characterized Strzygowski was his intolerance. Ultimately it was a question of the struggle between the two scholars. Whereas Strzygowski in his preoccupation with the Late Antique celebrated a cult of the strong, the powerful, and the white, ("the high-born lady, full of noble self-possession"), Riegl insisted not only on prizing "victory, beauty, and nobility," but also on respecting the "weak, base, ignominious, and ugly."81 Perhaps no one has more clearly perceived this undeniable, fundamental tendency in Riegl's work than Otto Pächt. Toward the end of the course he taught in Vienna in the winter semester of 1970-71 entitled "Methods of Art Historical Praxis," Pächt spoke of his own opinion about what stood behind Riegl's intense engagement with the Late Antique:

"When we say today that a work of another culture is based on premises that are not our own, and that it can be understood only by first finding the right approach, then we are subscribing to priorities and methods that have entered the purview of scholarship only since Riegl first called for the relativization of aesthetic values. His Late Roman Art Industry [...] was the Edict of Tolerance for the whole discipline of art history."82

Translated by Margaret Schwartz

Sidebar

A German version of this article has been published in ARS - Journal of the Institute of Art History of SAS 2008/01

Footnote

Notes

1 Zaloscer, Hilde, Kunstgeschichte und Nationalsozialismus. In Kontinuität und Bruch 1938-1945-1955. Beiträge zur österreichischen Kultur- und Wissenschaftsgeschichte. Ed. by Friedrich Stadler. Wien 1988, 283-298.

2 A few years ago there was a discussion at the Viennese Institute of Art History at the University of Vienna about how Strzygowski's legacy might be handled. At that time the then managers of the library planned to put his writings into storage so as to protect students from their negative influence.

3 Marchand, L. Suzanne, The Rhetoric of artifacts and the decline of classical humanism: the case of Josef Strzygowski. In Proof and Persuasion in History (History and Theory. Studies in the Philosophy of History. Theme Issue 33). Ed. by Anthony Grafton and Suzanne L. Marchand. Wesleyan University Press 1994, 106-130.

4 B erggren, Lars, Josef Strzygowski - en främmende fägel I Finland. In The Shaping of Art History in Finland (Taidehistoriallisia Tutkimuksia/Konstistoriska Studier 36). Ed. Renja Suominen-Kokkonen. Helsinki/ Helsingfors 2007, 84-98; Wood, Christopher S., Strzygowski und Riegl in den Vereinigten Staaten. In Wiener Schule. Erinnerungen und Perspektiven (=Wiener Jahrbuch fur Kunstgeschichte, 53/2004). Wien 2005, 217-233; Maranci, Christina, The Historiography of Armenian Architecture: Josef Strzygowski, Austria, and Armenia In Revue des études arméniennes, 2001-02, 287-308; Goss, Vladimir P., Josef Strzygowski and Early Medieval Art in Croatia. In Acta Historiae Artium XLVII/2006, 335-343.

5 The conference, entitled "Universal and/or particular values in art history: universal vs. migration - The work of Josef Strzgowski" was held from Sept. 9-11, 2005 at the Budapest Collegium; see http://www.colbud. hu/mult_ant/Getty-Workshops/Universal.htm.

6 Früchtl, Andreas, Strzygowski als Wegbereiter einer vergleichenden Weltkunstgeschichte? Untersuchung zur Genese der Strzygowskischen kunstwissenschäftlichen Methode von 1885-1889. Univ. Dipl.- Arbeit Wien 2006; Frodl-Kraft, Eva, Ein Aporie und der Versuch ihrer Deutung. Josef Strzygowski - Julius von Schlosser. In Wiener Jahrbuch für Kunstgeschichte 42/1989, 7-52; Scholz, Piotr O., Wanderer zwischen den Welten. Josef Strzygowski und seine immer noch aktuelle Frage: Orient oder Rom. In: Kunstgeschichete an der Universität Graz Eds. Walter Höflechner & Götz Pochat, Graz 1992, 243-265

7 Altmeister moderner Kunstgeschichte, ed. by Heinrich Dilly. Berlin 1999; Klassiker der Kunstgeschichte, ed. by Ulrich Pfisterer. München 2007. See also in this connection the conference on "German Art Historiography," held in Glasgow from Oct. 2-4, 2008.

8 Symposia were held in Rome, Vienna, and Milan expressly to mark the occasion of the one hundredth anniversary of Riegl's death in 2005. As was emphatically noted at those meetings, they were concerned with a scholar who forged completely new paths in his discipline, opening many new pages in the field, and whose reflections even now have an astonishing currency. The conference journals are still in press. Within the framework of the Vienna conference Margaret Olin, the doyenne of Riegl studies, analyzed the extent to which Alois Riegl anticipated the field of "Visual Studies," and how progressive his reflections on the haptic, or physically apprehended perceptions, were. Regine Prange presented a related view, in which she drew a line connecting Riegl to Max Imdahl, Clement Greenberg, and Rosalind Krauss.

9 R iegl, Alois, Volkskunst, Hausfleiβ und Hausindustrie. Berlin 1894, 59. Reynolds, Diana, Die österreichische Synthese. Metropolen, Peripherie und die kunstgewerblichen Fachschulen des Museums. In Kunst und Industrie. Die Anfänge des Museums für Angewandte Kunst in Wien. Ed. Peter Noever, Ostfildern 2000, 203-218. See further Vasold, Georg, Alois Riegl und die Kunstgeschichte als Kulturgeschichte. Uberlegungen zum Frühwerk des Wiener Gelehrte. Freiburg im Breisgau 2004.

10 The relationship between the two scholars has for years been a theme in the work of Margaret Olin. For that reason my version, needless to say, simply serves as a supplementary footnote to Olin's exemplary analysis. Cf. Olin, Margaret, Art History and Ideology: Alois Riegl and Josef Strzygowski. In Cultural Visions. Essays in the History of Culture. Eds. Penny S. Gold & Benjamin C. Sax. Amsterdam 2000, 151-170; Olin, Margaret, The Nation without Art. Examining Modern Discourses on Jewish Art. Nebraska U.P. 2001.

11 Schlosser, von Julius, Die Wiener Schule der Kunstgeschichte. Rückblick auf ein Säkulum deutscher Gelehrtenarbeit in Österreich.In Mitteilungen des Österreichisches Instituts für Geschichtsforschung, Ergänzungs-Band XIII, 1934, no. 2, 141-228. As evidence of the continued usefulness of Schlosser's text, it is shortly become available, at least in excerpts, in an English translation, cf. Framing Formalism: Riegl's Work. ed. by Richard Woodfield, Amsterdam 2001, 33-47. An Italian translation has been available since 1936; in 1999 the text was translated into Croatian; and it appeared in Japanese in 2000.

12 I bid., 195.

13 Frodl-Kraft 1989, 10.

14 Schlosser 1934, 195.

15 I n 1894-95 Riegl gave a three hour lecture at the University of Vienna on Baroque art. In 1898 Stryzgowski published his book Das Werden des Barock bei Raphael und Correggio, Strassburg 1898. Strzygowski's stay in Rome dated from 1885 to 1889; Riegl was there in 1884 and returned in 1887, cf. Olin, Margaret, Forms of Representation in Alois Riegl's Theory of Art. University Park, PA, 193, n. 30.

16 A s a recognized expert on the Middle Ages (his dissertation concerned the High Roman Schottenkirche in Regensburg), Riegl took on a project on the representation of late Antique and early Medieval excavations in Austro-Hungary. In the same year, 1893, Strzygowski published a work on the Austrian Middle Ages, cf. Strzygowski, Josef, Das frühe und das hohe Mittelalter. In Kunstgeschichtlichte Charakterbilder aus Österreich-Ungarn. Ed. by Albert Ilg. Prag, Wien & Leipzig 1893, 51-89.

17 Strzygowski's Orient oder Rom appeared in 1901, thus in the same year as Riegl's Spätrömische Kunstindustrie.

18 Whereas in his Holländischen Gruppenporträt Riegl analyzed the function of the viewer, Strzygowski had for years tried to construct his own branch of research, which he called "Beschauerforschung" (viewer studies), see Die Kunstwissenschaft der Gegenwart in Selbstdarstellungen. Ed. by Johannes Jahn. Leipzig 1924, 166-169.

19 Cf. Olin 2000, 163, n. 72.

20 R iegl, Alois, Josef Strzygowski: Cimabue und Rom. In Kunstchronik. Wochenschrift fürKunst und Kunstgewerbe, 23/1887-88, No. 20 (Feb. 2, 1888), 317.

21 R iegl argues that particularly in monuments of the 4th Century there lurks an "absolutely radical anticipation of modern concepts," cf. Riegl, Alois, Spätrömische Kunstindustrie. Berlin 2000 (revised ed.), 22.

22 Strzygowski, Josef, Hellas in des Orients Umarmung. In Beilage zur Allgemeinen Zeitung (Munich), 1902, No. 40 (February 18), 314.

23 I bid.

24 I bid., 315

25 I bid., 314-315.

26 I bid., 326.

27 Olin 2000, 164-170; Olin 2001, 18-21.

28 Schlosser was so taken with Lange that he even (though unsuccessfully) began to learn Danish, cf. Lange, Julius, Vom Kunstwert. Mit einem Geleitwort von Julius Schlosser. Zürich 1925, VII-XV.

29 Lange, Julius, Die menschliche Gestalt in der Geschichte der Kunst. Von der zweiten Blütezeit der griechischen Kunst bis zum 19. Jahrhundert. Strassburg 1903,144-45.

30 Mosse, Georg L. , Toward the final solution. A history of European racism. New York 1978 ,115-116.

31 See among others Frodl-Kraft 1989, 38.

32 R iegl, Alois, Spätrömisch oder orientalisch? In Beilage zur Allgemeinen Zeitung (Munich), 1902, No. 93 (April 23), 154.

33 I bid., 153.

34 Cf. Vasold, Georg, Der Blick in den tragischen Spiegel. Zur kunsthistorischen Erforschung der Spätantike in Wien um 1900. In The Nineteenth-Century Process of "Musealization" in Hungary and Europe. Ed. by Erno Marosi and Gabor Klaniczay. Budapest 2006, 91-112.

35 Frodl-Kraft 1989, 35.

36 Marchand, Suzanne L., Down from Olympus. Archaeology and Philhellenism in Germany 1750-1970. Princeton 1996.

37 Spätrömische Kunstindustrie (1901) was to have had as a second volume an account of the art of the migratory period. Riegl's early death hindered the publication, and it was published only in 1923, under another title and with the aid of Riegl's notes, cf. Zimmermann, Heinrich E., Kunstgewerbe des frühen Mittelalters. Auf Grundlage des nachgelassenen Materials Alois Riegls. Wien 1923. In the meantime Strzygowski also devoted himself to the theme of the migration, cf. particularly Strzygowski, Josef, Altai-Iran und Völkerwanderung. Ziergeschichtliche Untersuchungen über den Eintritt der Wander- und Nordvölker in die Treibhäuser geistigen Lebens. Leipzig 1917.

38 Cited in Rumpler, Helmut, Eine Chance für Mitteleuropa. Bürgerliche Emanzipation und Staatsverfall in der Habsburgermonarchie. Wien 1997, 502.

39 Cf. Fuchs, Albert, Geistige Strömungen in Österreich 1868-1918. Wien 1996, 183-184. Schönerer's popularity soon dropped precipitously when it became known that his wife had Jewish roots.

40 R abinbach, Anson. The crisis of Austrian Socialism. From Red Vienna to civil war. Chicago & London 1983, 12.

41 Trauner, Karl Reinhart, Die Los-von-Rom-Bewegung. Gesellschaftspolitische und kirchliche Strömung in der ausgehenden Habsburgermonarchie. Szentendre 1999.

42 Strzygowski, Hellas in des Orients Umarmung, 313.

43 Theodor Sickel, the director of the Institut für Österreichische Geschichtsforschung in Vienna from 1869 to 1891, was significantly involved with the founding of the Österreichisches Historisches Instituts in Rom (1881), and led it from 1891 until 1901. A direct cause for the increased scholarly change of direction toward Rome was the opening of the Vatican Archives under Pope Leo XIII in 1879, cf. Lhotsky, Alphons, Geschichte des Instituts für Österreichische Geschichtsforschung 1854-1954. Graz 1954, 162. On Strzygowski's contempt by colleagues of the Institut für Österreichische Geschichtsforschung see Marchand 1994, 118-119.

44 Strzygowski, Hellas in des Orients Umarmung, 314.

45 Mosse 1978, 51-62. The theories of the German anthropologist Woltmann were broadly received by academics, cf. for example: Schulz, Alwin, Die Germanen und die Renaissance in Italien. In Monatshefte der kunstwissenschaftlichen Literatur, 1906, No. 1, 8-9.

46 Strzygowski, Josef, Die Baukunst der Armenier und Europa. Wien 1918, 713.

47 Zach, Franz, Christlich-germanisches Kulturideal. Österreich auf dem rechten Weg. Klagenfurt 1936 (4th ed.), 370-371.

48 R iegl, Spätrömisch oder Orientalisch?, 154.

49 Elsner, Jas, The Birth of Late Antiquity: Riegl and Strzygowski in 1901. In Art History, 25/2002, 359.

50 Strzygowski, Josef, Kunde, Wesen, Entwicklung. Eine Einführung. Wien 1922. By 1903, when Strzygowski undertook a first attempt at systematizing the department, he demanded that "new developmental groups and names" be coined, cf. Strzygowski, Josef, Die Zukunft der Kunstwissenschaft, München 1903, 8.

51 On the progressive thought formulated in antiquity and its turbulent subsequent history in art see Ernst Gombrich's still pioneering study The ideas of Progress and their Impact on Art. New York 1971.

52 Strzygowski 1922, 88.

53 Schmid, Heinrich Alfred. Was ist Kunstentwicklung? (1898). In Heinrich Alfred Schmid, Gesammelte kunsthistorische Schriften. Leipzig 1933, 1-9.

54 I ggers, G. Georg, The German conception of history. The national tradition of historical thought from Herder to present. Wesleyan University Press 1969, 5.

55 Wickhoff, Franz, Römische Kunst (Die Wiener Genesis) (=Franz Wickhoff's Writings, Vol. 3). Berlin 1912, 26. At nearly the same time as Wickhoff Ludwig von Sybel expressed the same idea. Of him Edmund Weigand reported in 1923, "In terms of priority the discussion of matters of origin, whose various solutions are only a matter of heuristic hypotheses, seem to him practical preliminary work, above all the chronology of historic monuments, which was his principal work." Cf. Weigand, Edmund, Die Orient- oder-Rom-Frage in der frühchristlichen Kunst. In Zeitschrift für die Neutestamentliche Wissenschaft und die Kunde der älteren Kirchen, 22/1923, 240.

56 R iegl 1894, 34.

57 R iegl, Spätrömisch oder orientalisch?, 154.

58 Strzygowski, Josef, Ein Werk der Volkskunst im Lichte der Kunstforschung. In Werke der Volkskunst mit besonderer Berücksichtigung Österreichs. Organ des K.K. Museums für österreichische Volkskunde in Wien, 1/1913, no. 1, 8-9.

59 Strzygowski took individual motives at random from Sassanian stone reliefs from Taq-e Bostan (western Iran, 4th or early 7th century) and related them in all seriousness to this 17th century embroidery from Bukovina.

60 Theweleit, Klaus, Male fantasies. University of Minnesota Press 1987.

61 Strzygowski, Hellas in des Orients Umarmung, 326.

62 Strzygowski 1917, 190.

63 I bid.

64 I bid., 301.

65 Da Costa Kaufmann, Thomas, Toward a Geography of Art. Chicago University Press 2004. Da Costa Kaufmann's study is in many respects overly superficial. His portrayal of Alois Riegl as a proponent of a nationalistic art historiography in particular, stands the true facts on their head. We must thank Jan Bakos for putting things right, cf. Bakos, Jan, Alois Riegl - otec umeleckohistorického nacionalizmu? [Alois Riegl - Father of Art Historical Nationalism?] In Regnum Bohemiae et sacrum Romanum Imperium. (Sborník k poct Jirího Kuthana) Praha 2005, 339-408. Cf. also Bakos, Jan, Vienna School Disciples and 'The new tasks' of art history. In Ars 40/2007, No. 2, 145-154.

66 R ichard Hamann spoke in 1916, on the occasion of a review of Hans Tietze's Die Methode der Kunstgeschichte (1913), of a "Crisis, in which art history found itself at the time," cited in Halbertsma, Marlite, Wilhelm Pinder und die Deutsche Kunstgeschichte. Worms 1992, 90. Tietze came to the same conclusion a few years later, cf. Tietze, Hans, Lebendige Kunstwissenschaft. Zur Krisis der Kunst und der Kunstwissenschaft. Wien 1925. Two years earlier the institutional crisis had already appeared as a theme in Strzygowski's writing, cf. Strzygowski, Josef, Die Krisis der Geisteswissenschaften vorgeführt am Beispiele der Forschung über bildende Kunst. Wien 1923.

67 Kautzsch, Rudolf, Der Begriff der Entwicklung in der Kunstgeschichte. Rede zur Geburtstagsfeier am 27. Januar 1917 (Frankfurter Universitätsreden VII). Frankfurt am Main 1917.

68 Kautzsch was by and large on Strzygowski's side, cf. Metzlers Kunsthistoriker Lexikon. Ed. by Peter Betthausen, Peter H. Feist & Christiane Fork. Stuttgart & Weimar 1999, 210.

69 Kautzsch 1917, 6-7.

70 Strzygowski, Josef, Die bildende Kunst der Gegenwart. Leipzig 1907, IX-X.

71 Elsner 2002, 372.

72 Haberlandt, Michael, Zum Beginn (1896), as cited in Beitl, Klaus, 90 Jahre Österreichisches Museum für Volkskunde. In Österreichische Zeitschrift für Volkskunde, Neue Serie vol. XXXIX [88]/ 1985, 232.

73 Töwe, Christain, Die Formen der entwickelnden Kunstgeschichtsschreibung. Zugleich ein Beitrag zur Deutung des Entwicklungsbegriff. Berlin 1939.

74 Cf. Zaloscer 1988, 290, n. 17.

75 Jantzen, Hans, Deutsche Kunstgeschichtswissenschaft 1933 bis 1942. In Forschungen und Fortschritte 18/1942, no. 35/36, 342, n. 5.

76 Cf. Zaloscer, Hilde, Zur Genese der koptischen Kunst. Wien 1991, 93-117

77 Török, Lászlo, Strzygowski's Coptic Art. In Acta Historiae Artium, XLVII/2006, 310: "As a conclusion, I should like to repeat what I said in the introduction: even if Strzygowski's views on Coptic art may deserve the attention of the historian of the Irrwege of early twentieth-century European thinking, for the historian of Coptic art they remain completely irrelevant."

78 Strzygowski explained his interest in Armenia this way: "This is a case of evidence of a great religious art, which moves us that much more, as its emergence owed to the earliest attempt of an Aryan people to erect a nation-state on the soil of Christendom.", see Strzygowski 1918, V.

79 I n the foreword to Altai-Iran und Völkerwanderung (1917) Strzygowski wrote, alluding to Riegl: "The struggle once [. . . ] commenced thus continues [. . .]," cf. Strzygowski 1917, IX.

80 I bid., 224.

81 R iegl, Spätrömisch oder orientalisch?, 154.

82 Pächt, Otto, The Practice of Art History. Reflections on Method. London 1999, 128-129 (originally published as Methodisches zur kunsthistorischen Praxis. Ausgewählte Schriften. München 1986 (2nd ed.), 292.