Henry Thode

For Canadian physicist, see Harry Thode.

File:Jacob Hilsdorf - Henry Thode 1906.jpg

Henry Thode; photograph by Jacob Hilsdorf

Henry Thode (13 January 1857 – 19 November 1920) was a German art historian.

Biography

He was born in Dresden into a distinguished North German family, the son of Robert Thode (1825–1898), a banker and Adolfine née Dzondi (1822–1900) He attended the Gymnasium in Görlitz and studied law in Leipzig from 1876. Later he changed his field and studied art history in Vienna, Berlin and Munich. In 1880, he received his doctorate under Moritz Thausing at the University of Vienna. In 1884, he and Hugo von Tschudi began editing the prestigeous art-history journal Repertorium für Kunstwissenschaft. In 1886, he habilitated at the University of Bonn as a private lecturer in art history.

On a study trip through Italy, he met Richard Wagner in Venice and also met his stepdaughter there. In 1886, he married Daniela von Bülow, the eldest daughter of Cosima Wagner from her first marriage to Hans von Bülow.

In 1889, he became director of the Städel in Frankfurt am Main for two years. There he also met the painter Hans Thoma, with whom he had a long-standing friendship. In 1893 Thode became extraordinarius professor at Heidelberg University and in 1896 full professor. He declined a call to Berlin in 1901. Incited by the nationalist agitation during the first Moroccan crisis, he unleashed a newspaper war against the patrons of modern art in Berlin in 1905, championing Arnold Böcklin and Thoma.

Thode was made associate member of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences in 1909 and a foreign member after 1911.

In 1910 he acquired the Villa Cargnacco in Gardone on Lake Garda in the Kingdom of Italy. In the same year he met his second wife, the Danish violinist Hertha Tegner (1884–1946), whom he married in 1914 after divorcing Daniela von Bülow. After Italy entered the war, the villa was confiscated and later donated by the Italian state to Gabriele D'Annunzio, who created the monumental complex "Il Vittoriale degli Italiani".

As a result of the expropriation, Thode also lost his extensive library, art collection and also unpublished manuscripts to D'Annunzio. The couple went back to Germany and then to Copenhagen, where Thode died of complications of a gastric operation.

His students included Wilhelm Valentiner, Rosa Schapire, Hermann Voss and Eberhard von Bodenhausen. The two focal points of his art historical work are the Italian Renaissance and German art around 1900. For him, Richard Wagner and Hans Thoma stood for the German ideal of art. Because of his racial ideological approaches, which were instrumentalized by the National Socialists, Thode's scholarly work is little appreciated in the present.

Works

• Franz von Assisi und die Anfänge der Kunst der Renaissance in Italien (1885)
• Die Malerschule von Nürnberg im XIV. und XV. Jahrhundert in ihrer Entwicklung bis auf Dürer (1891)
• Hans Thoma. Gesellschaft für Vervielfältigende Kunst (1891)
• Federspiele. Mit Zeichnungen von Hans Thoma (1892)
• Der Ring des Frangipani. Ein Erlebnis. Mit Zierleisten und Schlussvignetten von Hans Thoma (1895)
• Andrea Mantegna (1897)
• Correggio (1898)
• Giotto (1899)
• Tintoretto (1901)
• Hans Thomas. Gemälde (1900–1910; 6 volumes)
• Michelangelo und das Ende der Renaissance (1902–1903; 3 volumes in 4)
• Böcklin und Thoma. Acht Vorträge über neudeutsche Malerei (1905)
• Kunst und Sittlichkeit (1906)
• Michelangelos Gedichte (1914; translator)
• Luther und die deutsche Kultur (1914)
• Das Wesen der deutschen bildenden Kunst (1918)
• Paul Thiem seine Kunst. Ein Beitrag zur Deutung des Problems: Deutsche Phantastik und deutscher Naturalismus (1921)

References

• Clinefelter, J.L. (2005), Artists for the Reich, New York: Berg Press.
• Hilmes, Oliver (2009). Cosimas Kinder. Triumph und Tragödie der Wagner-Dynastie. München: Siedler.
• Szylin, Anna Maria (1993). Henry Thode (1857-1920): Leben und Werk. Frankfurt am Main/New York: P. Lang.

External links

• Works by Henry Thode at German National Library