Geisteswissenschaft - Journal of Art Historiography

Riccardo Marchi Hans Tietze and art history as Geisteswissenschaft
In what follows, I prove my thesis by examining the Methode der
Kunstgeschichte through three of the fundamental issues it discusses: the role of the
individual in the evolution of art; the question of the historian’s value judgments
and objectivity; and the problem of the study of form and content. 11
My analysis starts from the passages in which Tietze states the general
principles upon which he bases his conception of art history, which he calls
‘evolutionary [entwicklungsgeschichtlich]’ (41). With this definition, Tietze inserts his
own work into a consolidated paradigm that was widespread in art historical
studies, 12 and that had constituted the framework for the research of the key figures
of the Vienna school of art history. Already present in Rudolf Eitelberger and
Alexander Conze, 13 this paradigm had been central in Wickhoff, 14 too, but more than
any other, Riegl 15 was the one who had made it the cornerstone of his research, and
the early work of Dvořák 16 also followed in this vein. In reality, however, Tietze’s
call to tradition already contains the signs of integration and novelty in his
intimately problematic general statements.
The ‘most decisive factor’ in the evolution of art
The first axiom reads:
The evolution of art is all-embracing, and involves all of the phenomena and
expressions that the period in question produces; a single individual –
however eminent he might be – cannot fall out of this evolution, which takes
place according to inner laws, giving expression to the Kunstwollen of the
period. 17
11 As brilliantly explained by Willibald Sauerländer (‘Alois Riegl und die Entstehung der autonomen
Kunstgeschichte am Fin De Siècle’, in Fin de Siècle: Zu Literatur und Kunst der Jahrhundertwende, ed.
Roger Bauer et al., Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1977, 125 ff.), these are the three cornerstones that
contributed to the birth of scientific art history, freed from the tutelage of Kulturgeschichte, the
biographical method and normative aesthetics. Hence these three issues constitute a valid litmus test
for reading the Methode der Kunstgeschichte and evaluating its position.
12 For art history see Christian Töwe, Die Formen der entwickelnden Kunstgeschichtsschreibung: Zugleich ein
Beitrag zur Deutung des Entwicklungsbegriffs, Berlin: Junker und Dünnhaupt, 1939 and for a more
general overview Karl Clausberg, ‘Naturhistorische Leitbilder der Kulturwissenschaften: Die
Evolution-Paradigmen’, in ‘Geschichte allein ist zeitgemäß’: Historismus in Deutschland, ed. Michael Brix
and Monika Steinhauser, Lahn-Gießen: Anabas-Verlag Kämpf, 1978, 41-51.
13 See Sciolla, Materiali, 10.
14 See Max Dvořák, ‘Franz Wickhoff’, in Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Kunstgeschichte, Munich: R. Piper, 1929,
299-312.
15 See Max Dvořák, ‘Alois Riegl’ (1905), in Dvořák, Aufsätze, 28 ff.; Karl Maria Swoboda and Otto Pächt,
introduction to Aloïs Riegl, Historische Grammatik der bildenden Künste, ed. Karl Maria Swoboda and
Otto Pächt, Graz: Böhlau, 1966, 12. [This introduction was not translated in Aloïs Riegl, Historical
Grammar of the Visual Arts, trans. Jacqueline E. Jung, New York: Zone Books, 2004.]
16 See Benesch ‘Dvořák’, 267-268; Busse, Kunst, 90-95.
17 Tietze, Methode, 41-42: ‘die Entwicklung der Kunst ist eine allgemeine und umfaßt alle
Erscheinungen und Äußerungen, die die betreffende Periode hervorbringt; ein Einzelindividuum -
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