Max Dvořák, Wilhelm von Bode, and the Monuments of German Art

Abstract

This paper was originally published on the ninetieth anniversary of Max Dvořák’s death, in ARS – Journal of the Institute of Art History of the Slovak Academy of Sciences (2011). It is based primarily on the correspondence between Dvořák and Wilhelm von Bode, the so-called Bismarck of the Berlin museums. In conjunction with various other sources, this correspondence reveals that Dvořák – who is usually hailed as the founding father of Czech art history – was heavily involved with Bode’s Deutscher Verein für Kunstwissenschaft (est. 1908), a very German society of art historians, and that he even drafted the programme of its grand series of art historical publications, Die Denkmäler der Deutschen Kunst (The Monuments of German Art), a monumental undertaking that was projected to stretch to some four hundred volumes.