Ernst Cohn-Wiener (1882-1941) and his contribution on Islamic Art and Architecture in Central Asia

Abstract

Ernst Cohn-Wiener was an unusual wide oriented art historian, whose interests spanned from European and Jewish art, to East Asian and Islamic art and architecture, the latter one is in the focus of this paper. Despite his many contributions in the area of art history he did not get the place he deserved. In the 1920s his interest turned to Islamic Art History and he decided to explore Islamic architecture in Central Asia, a widely unknown field. Two expeditions carried out by him and his wife in 1924 and 1925, resulted in his well-illustrated overview on the Medieval Islamic architecture of Turkestan, published as Turan – Islamische Baukunst in Mittelasien (1930). When he lost his position as a lecturer in 1933 due to the ‘Rassegesetze’ imposed by the ruling Nazis, he emigrated together with his wife via England to India, working for the Maharaja of Baroda until 1939. Their last move was to New York, where Cohn-Wiener died two years later in 1941.