Everyday life at the Dvořák Seminar, on the basis of contemporary sources. Addenda to the history of the Vienna School of Art History

Abstract

Discussing the relationship of Max Dvořák and Johannes Wilde on the previous study (János (Johannes) Wilde and Max Dvorák or, can we speak about the Budapest School of art history), I proposed – indirectly – the provocative thesis that “there is no Dvořák without Wilde”. What justifies this polarized statement is the set of documents of source value found a few years ago in Wilde’s estate in archives of Budapest and London. Johannes Wilde cherished a profound relationship with his siblings, Ferenc and Margit, who did not have families of their own but lived with their mother Munisi until her death. They are the addressees of the letters of invaluable importance which Wilde wrote from Vienna and later from various stations of his forced exile. Wilde spent longer periods in Vienna twice: first, between 1915 and 1917, he was the student of the Vienna University department of art history led by Max Dvořák, and then, after the fall of the short-lived communist interlude, the Hungarian Republic of Councils, he returned to the Viennese capital as Dvořák’s protégé, colleague and friend. The few years spent side by side deepened their professional and personal relationship so much that when fate put an end to the life of the Czech-born professor still at an early age, Wilde was at the side of his death-bed and informed posterity of the details of this sorrowful event through his letters. In the this paper I am concentrating on the period of 1915–1917, starting with the moment when young Wilde left Budapest and the team of the drawings-and-prints department in the Museum of Fine Arts who knew Dvořák personally – Simon Meller, Frigyes Antal, Edith Hoffmann – upon his director Elek Petrovics’s encouragement who sent him directly to Dvořák to study. Lengthy passages are to be cited from the letters, since these weekly reports offer a direct insight into the life and daily routine of the Vienna School, particularly of the so-called Dvořák seminar and into Dvořák’s teaching methods.