Burger, Fritz

Date born: 1877

Place born: Munich, Germany

Date died: 1916

Place died: Verdun, France

Artist, architect and professor of art history at the Universities of Heidelberg, Strasbourg, Munich; exponent of 20th-century art and founder of the modern art-historical encyclopedias. Burger was the son of a banker. He started architectural studies in 1896 in Berlin, but cut them short for enrollment in the military the following year. From 1900 onward, he studied art history in Heidelberg. The new art styles of Darmstadt became the subject of his first publication in 1902. In 1903 he attained his doctorate under Henry Thode (q.v). Burger incorporated the social and cultural observations in his book Geschichte des Florentiner Grabmals von den ältesten Zeiten bis Michelangelo (1904). Together with Wilhelm von Bode (q.v) he did intensive research on the Italian Renaissance art and also German art of the 16^th Century. After his time in Freiburg, Burger moved to Florence (1904-1906) studying and traveling throughout Italy. His Italian experience allowed him to complete1906 Vitruv und die Renaissance, 1906. He wrote his habilitationsschrift in 1906 on Francesco Laurana. Between 1907-1914 he was private lecturer at the university and academy of performing arts. From 1909 he turned his attention again to contemporary art. In 1912 Burger set out to issue the Handbuch der Kunstwissenschaft with Alfred Erich Brinckmann (q.v), a series of commissioned volumes on the history of art by important younger art historians, a work which traced its roots to the original by Anton Springer (q.v.). He himself contributed the volumes 21-23 in the series, Die deutsche malerei vom ausgehenden mittelalter bis zum ende der renaissance (German painting from the late middle ages to the end of the renaissance), 1913, written in conjunction with Hermann Schmitz and Ignaz Beth. In comparison to the three-volume Geschichte der Kunst aller Zeiten und Völker (1900-11) of Karl Woermann (q.v) and the 17 volume Histoire de l’art of André Michel, Burger incorporated the scholarship of numerous specialists. Burger's revisionist art history is most clear in his Cézanne und Hodler: Einführung in die Probleme der Malerei der Gegenwart (1913). The same year in Meissner, Burger gave speech about the "spiritual break" in art. Burger hoped that the Handbuch would reflect the reformulation of art in the 19^th century and 20^th as he saw it, and hoped that Georg Swarzenski (q.v) and August Grisebach (q.v), who shared his view, would author these. However this volume was eventually written by Hans Hildebrandt (q.v) after Burger's death. While still professor in Munich, Burger became a soldier in World War I. During the breaks in the war he wrote about culture and philosophy, including a theoretical essay, the Einführung in die moderne Kunst. He was killed at age 39 in the bloody battle at Verdun. Brinckmann took over Burger’s work as editor of the Handbuch and the publication of the Einführung. In a touching move, added as abstract painting of Burger's as the frontispiece illustration to the Einführung in his honor. The Einführung sold almost 50,000 copies by 1931 and became the best selling art book in German history.

Burger was a more revolutionary thinking than his younger colleagues Wilhelm Worringer (q.v) and Wilhelm Hausenstein (q.v). He questioned past assumptions about art, attempting to reinvent the very principles of the discipline. Throughout his life, he believed in a secret force behind modern art, an instrument above everything. His Handbuch widened the scope of art history: including art from nations outside Europe. He emphasized the German Geist in art, especially from the northern peoples. His analysis of the numerous works of arts remained a starting point for future art historians. Burger however was not infallible; his prediction that the art of Ferdinand Hodler would revolutionize art did not happen. Burger's Handbuch der Kunstwissenschaft is a masterpiece of art research and is the precursor to the modern, multi-volume art histories.

Home Country: Germany

Sources: Bazin, Germain. Histoire de l'histoire de l'art; de Vasari à nos jours. Paris: Albin Michel, 1986, pp.186, 325, 374, 375; Metzler Kunsthistoriker Lexikon. Stuttgart: J. B. Metzler, 1999, pp. 45-47.

Bibliography: [habilitation:] Francesco Laurana und die Meister des Triumphbogens des Alfonso in Neapel, Munich, 1906, republished in part as, Francesco Laurana, eine Studie zur italienischen Quattrocentoskulptur. Strassburg: J. H. E. Heitz, 1907; Cézanne und Hodler; Einführung in die Probleme der Malerei der Gegenwart. Munich: Delphin-Verlag, 1919; co-edited with Brinckmann, Albert E. Handbuch der Kunstwissenschaft. 35 vols. Berlin-Neubabelsberg: Akadmische Verlagsgesellschaft Athenain, 1914-1929.