Neumann, Carl, [sometimes Karl]

Date born:  1860

Place Born:  Mannheim, Germany

Date died:  1934

Place died:  Heidelberg, Germany

University of Heidelberg professor of art; wrote first full monograph on Rembrandt (1906). Neumann was the son of a wealthy Jewish mercantile family. In 1878 he entered the university in Heidelberg to study history. In 1880 he switched to Berlin, attending the lectures of Nitsch and the historian Heinrich von Treitschke (1834-1896). He returned to Heidelberg in 1882 to receive his Ph.D. with a dissertation topic on Bernhard von Clairvaux and the beginnings of the second crusade. Neumann went to Basel to hear the lectures Jacob Burckhardt (q.v.), which turned his interest to art history. At the end of the 1880 Neuman began displaying signs of mental illness, depression and long hospital stays. He spent 1882 studying classical art at the Glyptothek in Munich. It was around this time that Neumann also became devoted to modern art.  His book Der Kampf um die neue Kunst (The Struggle for New Art) was published in 1892. Neumann's preference was for the classicizing tendencies of artists such as Anselm Feuerbach. Between 1884 and1887 Neumann made several journeys to Italy.  He converted to Protestantism (from Judiasm) in 1887. In 1894 he completed his Habilitationsschrift on the "Byzantium before the Crusades." In 1894 he went to Heidelberg lecturing on historical topics from antiquity to the culture of the Middle Ages. Neuman also wove in contemporary art into his lectures.  He described a turning point in his life at the Bildergalerie (Picture Gallery) in Cassel when he saw Rembrandt's Jacob's Struggle with the Angel. It was not the technical virtuosity of Rembrandt that impressed him as much as painter's psychology. This aesthetic experience changed Neumann's interest from renaissance art to the art 17th century. In 1901 he published the first time monograph on Rembrandt.  During the academic year 1903-04 Neumann with the Renaissance scholar Robert Vischer at Götting university. But Vischer and Neumann had strong methodological differences and Neumann had to move on. In 1904 he transferred to Kiel under professor Adelbert Matthaei (1859-1924), as the chair for art history at the new technical university at Danzig, and faculty at Kiel.  Matthaei had founded in 1893 the Kunsthistorisches Institut at Kiel.  Neumann became a full professor at Kiel, teaching a range of courses, including French 18th and 19th century art and culture, Italian renaissance and a Rembrandt course.  His lectures attracted huge followings. In 1907 Neumann was first president of the Schleswig-Holstein art association, arranging numerous exhibitions in the art museum.   In February 1908 Neumann established an "Arts Center" for the University.   In 1911 Neumann replaced Henry Thode (q.v.) in Heidelberg, though Thode protested.  Arthur Haseloff (1872-1955) replaced Neumann at Kiel.  Neumann remained at Heidelberg until his retirement in 1929. In 1934 he moved to Frankfurt, where he died the same year.  The students he influenced included Wilhelm R. Valentiner (q.v.) and Eberhard von Bodenhausen (q.v.).

Neumann's methodology was strongly biographical.  His early monograph on Rembrandt (1906), was opposed by art historians who saw the Renaissance as the defining era of art history. Writing in the wake of the wildly successful and wildly twisted Rembrandt als Erzieher by Julius Langbehn (q.v.), Neumann, too, focused on the irrational element in Rembrandt, which eluded the systematic philosopher Georg Simmel (1858-1918) in his book of 1916.  Neumann believed that individualism in culture resulted in barbarism, though he strongly defended artists' rights to make art of their own time and not to rely on traditional models.  He believed that individualism in culture resulted from barbarism.  Neumann was a proponent of modern art, what he called "the rights of the times,"  in his Kampf um die Modern Kunst.

The art-historical work of Neumann is coined/shaped by a nationalistisch "native" basic view, a certain direction of the art-scientific research the early 20. Century controls. It assumes art is nationalspecifically determined. In Germany this meant a back meditation on medieval values "as mental-cultural basic stick of the erstarkenden future German nation". (25) Neumann sees to rem Brandt as Protagonisten of of a nordischen "Kunstwollens", which he opposes antithetisch to the Renaissance culture, and concomitantly the classicism, which it had used up itself before. As consequence Neumann in the future concerns itself among other things with native present art. In its late work outweighs the argument with the German art of the Middle Ages, which it however no more could not publish.

Home Country:  Germany

Sources: Fink-Madera, Andrea. Carl Neumann, 1860-1934. Frankfurt am Main: P. Lang, 1993; Jahn, Johannes, ed. Die Kunstwissenschaft der Gegenwart in Selbstdarstellungen. 2 vols. Leipzig: F. Meiner, 1924, pp. 33-76 ("1-44"), includes portrait, signature example, autobiography and bibliography; Bazin, Germain. Histoire de l'histoire de l'art: de Vasari à nos jours. Paris: Albin Michel, 1986, p. 150;  Metzler Kunsthistoriker Lexikon: zweihundert Porträts deutschsprachiger Autoren aus vier Jahrhunderten. Stuttgart: Metzler, 1999, pp. 280-2;  [Bodenhausen/Valentiner connection:] Barnes, James B.  "Chronology."  Masterpieces of Art:  In Memory of W. R. Valentiner, 1880-1958.  Raleigh, NC:  North Carolina Museum of Art, 1959, p. 1;  Kultermann, Udo. The History of Art History. New York: Abaris, 1993, p. 132.

Bibliography: [dissertation:] De primariis optandi, jubendi, vetandi enuntiatis apud Homerum comparato usu Hesiedeo[sic]. Varel a.d.J.[?], 1883;   Jacob Burckhardt. Munich: F. Bruckmann, 1927; edited, and Burckhardt, Jacob. Briefwechsel mit Heinrich von Geymüller. Munich: G. Müller und E. Rentsch, 1914;  and Kruse, John. Die Zeichnungen Rembrandts und seiner Schule im National-Museum zu Stockholm. The Hague: M. Nijhoff, 1920; Drei merkwürdige künstlerische Anregungen bei Runge, Manet, Goya. Heidelberg: C. Winter, 1916; Aus der Werkstatt Rembrandts. Heiderlberg: C. Winter, 1918; Rembrandt Handzeichnungen. Munich: R. Piper, 1918; Rembrandt. Berlin: Spemann, 1902; Der Maler Anselm Feürbach: Gedächtnisrede bei der Jahrhundertfeier für Feürbach an der Universität Heidelberg. Heidelberg: C. Winters, 1929; Aus der Werkstatt Rembrandts. Heiderlberg: C. Winter, 1918; Der Kampf um die neue Kunst. Berlin: H. Walther, 1896; Rembrandt van Rijn: das radierte Werk des Meisters in originalgetreuen Handkupferdrucken. 4 vols. Berlin: Amsler, 1928ff.; Vom Glauben an eine kommende nationale Kunst.  Heidelberg: C. Winter, 1919.