‘Neutral observer or institutionalized voice? Willibald Sauerländer and German art history after 1945‘. Review of: Willibald Sauerländer und die Kunstgeschichte, Franz Hefele/Ulrich Pfisterer (eds.), Passau: Dietmar Klinger Verlag 2022 (Veröffentlichungen des Zentralinstituts für Kunstgeschichte in München 54). ISBN 978-3-86328-186-1

Abstract

The volume Willibald Sauerländer und die Kunstgeschichte highlightsthe academic career of one of the more influential German art historians of the twentieth century, who for nearly twenty years headed the Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte in Munich. It focuses on his contributions to the study of Gothic art and later periods, and also highlights his methodological innovations in these fields. At the same time, many contributions implicitly or explicitly discuss his choices in the context of post-WW II Western Germany, and the way political debates influenced the development of art history. The explicit call for methodological denazification, as voiced in the 1970s by young academics such as Martin Warnke, was not followed by the slightly older Willibald Sauerländer, who opted to distance himself more implicitly from the previous generation. It was only after his retirement in 1989 that he openly reflected upon his experiences in the immediate post-war period, and even then adopted the position of a neutral observer, even if by then he had already embarked upon an impressive academic career. As such, this volume suggests how institutional history, individual careers and politics intersected in the second half of the twentieth century.