Zprávy památkové péče 2018, 78(2):104-114 | DOI: 10.56112/zpp.2018.2.03

Rudolf Eitelberger and Moritz Thausing: two founders of the Vienna School of Art History

Jiří Kroupa

Filozofická fakulta Masarykovy univerzity v Brně

Two years after the death of Rudolf Eitelberger von Edelberg, Wilhelm Schram gave a lecture on his life at a meeting of the Historical and Statistical Section of the Moravian-Silesian Economic Society on 28 March 1887, inviting the Moravian public to create a memorial plaque on his native home. This happened the very next year. Two hundred years later, we recall Rudolf Eitelberger again, from a variety of perspectives: once as an art historian, secondly as a conservationist, and finally as a theorist of the 19th century artistic and industrial movement. In this paper we will briefly discuss his origins in Moravia, and by comparing the concept of art history with his younger colleague Moritz Thausing, we will try to characterize his place in the historiography of art history.
The family of Rudolf Eitelberger von Edelberg came from Brno. His great-grandfather Johann Georg Eitelberger arrived here from Freiburg im Breisgau in the early 1740's and worked here as a master carpenter. His grandfather, Johann Wenzl Eitelberger, continued in the family tradition and also became a prominent member of the carpenters' guild: he was also a respected surveyor and builder. He was married twice: he had five daughters with Katharina Komarek and a son Wenzl Josef Vincenc, who continued the family tradition of carpentry into the early 19th century. Johann Wenzl Eitelberger married once again with Anne Thekla Hankin; from this marriage, more children were born, this time four sons and one daughter. One of the sons was Johann Evangelista Thomas, who became an officer and teacher at the Military Academy in Olomouc and was promoted to noble status. To him and his wife and Magdalene Doppelmayer, Rudolf Eitelberger von Edelberg was born in Olomouc on 14 April 1817. Eitelberger was bonded with Brno through his extensive family, which is apparently what brought him here in 1827-1834 to study at the Brno gymnasium and continuing at the Philosophical Institute. Both schools had a fairly good reputation: the students at that time included the Benedictine historian Bedu Dudík and the Augustinian naturalist and philosopher František Tomáš Bratránek, with whom Eitelberger corresponded throughout his entire life.
After the middle of the 19th century, Rudolf Eitelberger found himself in the circle of art historians around the magazine "Deutsches Kunstblatt". His colleagues subscribed to Hegel's philosophical aesthetics and to the legacy of Winckelmann, but for the most part, they were either direct followers or at least friends of Carl Friedrich von Rumohr. Eitelberger drew his approach from the same sources as well, combining Rumohr's inspired emphasis on the material component of works of art with Hegel's aesthetics.
When characterizing Eitelberger's significance, we can note several features: (a) In his first journal essays in the second half of the 1850's, he repeatedly used the word "orientation". His aim was to convey his knowledge of the new discipline, the terminology that should be used correctly, and the mutual relationship of historical and the contemporary art. (b) The motivation that accompanied Eitelberger's art-historical work was his pan-Austrian patriotism. For him, a pragmatic sanction remained the basic law that ranked above the parliamentary and national system. The other side of the same coin was Eitelberger's defense of regional "provincialism", with its maintained system of tradition and its values, against a nationally motivated "federalism", which he feared on the other hand. (c) He sought the role of art history not only in scientific work, but also understood it as a precondition for protecting culture and restoring the contemporary nature of art. He also understood the theory of art in a similar manner. For him, writing theory meant, above all, working with historical sources in art history and, on this basis, offering a theoretical "orientation" to the creators of contemporary art (to which he also logically included applied art).
Moritz Thausing, the second professor of art history at the University of Vienna, was one of Eitelberger's first pupils. At the same time, however, he was his obvious counterpart. He taught strongly for the scientific concept of the history of art without any share of aesthetics or practical artistic creation, i.e. for a discipline working with modern expert and strictly historical methods. The very beginnings of the Vienna School of Art History saw the thematic and methodical expansion of its artistic and historical field.
The thoughts and writings of both founders, however, were not simply superimposed by the thoughts of the new generation. Jörn Rüsen, in the context of the crisis of historicism, speaks of an art-historical alternative between the loss of art (through the de-aestheticism of history) and the loss of history (through the de-historicizing of art). If, then, we look at the work of Eitelberger and Thausing, we are well aware of their initiatory significance. We understand the activity of the elder as a contribution to the historical-aesthetic and pragmatic concept of art history, while the thoughts of the younger are still an important part of the historical-critical and scientific concept of art history.

Keywords: Rudolf Eitelberger, Moritz Thausing, Vienna School of Art History

Published: June 1, 2018  Show citation