Wagner-Rieger, Renate [née Rieger]

Date born: 1921

Place born:  Vienna, Austria

Date died:  1980

Place died:  Vienna, Austria

Architectural and art historian. Rieger studied art history in 1942 at the University in Vienna writing her dissertation under Karl Maria Swoboda (q.v.). She was hired as a research assistant in 1945. She worked during the de-Nazification of the University, becoming a Lecturer in 1956.  That year, too, she married the historian Walter Wagner (b. 1923). At the same time her research on early gothic architecture in Italy and a paper on historicism presented to the 1964 International Congress of Art History in Bonn brought her to international attention. Wagner-Rieger was appointed associate professor in Vienna in 1964.  She was appointed director of the Forschungsunternehmen Wiener Ringstrasse. She became an editor of the prestigeous Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte. In 1971 she was appointed professor of Austrian art history.

Wagner-Rieger was not only a leading architectural historian, but particularly well known to the public.

Home Country:  Austria

Sources:  Metzler Kunsthistoriker Lexikon: zweihundert Porträts deutschsprachiger Autoren aus vier Jahrhunderten. Stuttgart: Metzler, 1999, pp. 446-9; Krause, Walter. "Wagner-Rieger, Renate."  Dictionary of Art; [Obituary] Österreichische Zeitschrift für Kunst und Denkmalpflege Wien 35 no 1-2 (1981): 70-71; Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 44 no. 2 (1981): 196-198; "150 Jahre Kunstgeschichgte an der Universität Wien." http://www.univie.ac.at/kunstgeschichte-tutorium/wienerschule/geschichte.htm.

Bibliography:  [complete bibliography] Österreichische Zeitschrift für Kunst und Denkmalpflege Wien 35 no 1-2 (1981): 71-77; also, Mitteilungen der Gesellschaft für Vergleichende Kunstforschung in Wien 33 no.3-4 (1981): 5-10.