Originally published in German, Italian and French these articles have been translated into English for the first time by the author, the former archivist of The Warburg Institute, London. Aby Warburg’s research and writings centred on images, their origins and metamorphoses, and their explanations and interpretations. The articles include discussions of Warburg’s academic work with colleagues such as James Loeb, the American Hellenist and philanthropist, and founder of the Loeb Classical Library, and with Josef Strzygowski, the Polish-Austrian art historian of the Vienna School of Art History. Further articles include notes on Warburg’s Serpent Ritual lecture of 1923; his politico-cultural initiative in 1914–1915; his work on caricature, in particular the Struwwelpeter topic; and discussions on the topic of Judaica.
The Viennese art historian Fritz Saxl became his trusted friend and collaborator helping to gather Warburg’s large collection of books and photographs into the foundation of an academic institution in Hamburg in the 1920s, and then for a second time in London in the 1930s. The Warburg Institute has become one of the world’s leading centres of intellectual history.
Author(s): Dorothea McEwan
Series: Variorum Collected Studies
Publisher: Routledge
Year: 2023
Language: English
Pages: 346
City: London
Cover
Half Title
Series
Title
Copyright
Contents
Preface
Acknowledgements
Bibliographical references to published chapters
List of abbreviations
List of figures
Part I Articles on a selection of Warburg’s main research topics
1 Personal and zodiacal. Warburg’s comments on the Palazzo Schifanoia lecture in 1912
2 ‘IDEA VINCIT’, ‘The victorious, flying Idea’. An artistic commission by Aby Warburg
3 A fight against windmills. On Rivista Illustrata, Warburg’s pro-Italian publishing initiative
4 On the origins of the Serpent Ritual Lecture. Motive and motivation. Healing through remembrance
5 The František Pospíšil – Aby Warburg correspondence in The Warburg Institute
Part II Aby Warburg’s collaboration with James Loeb and Fritz Saxl
6 Facets of a friendship: Aby Warburg and James Loeb. Friends, scholars, relatives, patrons of the arts
7 Fritz Saxl and Aby Warburg: appreciation of a friendship. Evaluating collaboration, tracing contacts to the ‘Vienna School’
Part III Topics which caught Warburg’s interest
8 A trouvaille from The Warburg Institute Archive on Mandaeism and Gnosticism
9 Warburg’s view of Strzygowski as reflected in the Aby Warburg correspondence
10 Bringing light into darkness. Aby Warburg and Fritz Saxl in conversation on Mithras
11 Caricature as war effort: Aby Warburg’s ‘new style in word and image’, 1914–1918
Part IV Judaica
12 ‘. . . probably latent antisemitism’
13 Aby to Gisela Warburg: against the ‘pioneers of this-worldliness’
14 ‘What I can represent as a Jew, I can also represent as a Catholic’. On Alfons Augustinus Barb’s scholarly career and his change of religion
Part V Struwwelpeter and its many parodies
15 Aby Warburg’s interpretation of the Russian translation of Struwwelpeter and the political parodies Struwwelhitler – A Nazi Storybook and Schicklgrüber
Part VI Aby Warburg and Mary Warburg
16 The ‘Palazzo Potetje’: Mary Warburg’s triptych
Part VII Interview with Dorothea McEwan
17 The Kulturwissenschaftliche Bibliothek Warburg as seen through its archive in London and Dorothea McEwan’s other research interests. Interview by Céline Trautmann-Waller with Dorothea McEwan, 2 August 2018
Bibliography
Index
