Video from Spirited Scholar
The Symbolism of the Greek Column
"Reading from Wilhelm Worringer's book "Form in Gothic" from the video introduction
"Full Name: Worringer, Wilhelm
Gender: male
Date Born: 13 January 1881
Date Died: 29 March 1965
Place Born: Aachen, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany
Place Died: Munich, Bavaria, Germany
Home Country/ies: Germany
Subject Area(s): art theory, Expressionist (style), and German Expressionist (movement)
Overview
Art Historian and theoretician of Expressionism. Worringer formed his education at a number of German universities, Freiburg, Berlin, and Munich, before finally writing his dissertation at Bern in 1907. His thesis was entitled Abstraktion und Einfühlung: ein Beitrag zur Stilpsychologie (Abstraction and Empathy: Essays in the Psychology of Style). Its publication aroused the interest of art critic Paul Ernst, who reviewed it like a new art book in the influential Kunst und Künstler. It was then issued in a trade edition which gained it immense popularity among intellectuals and artists. German expressionists of Die Brücke, especially Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Emil Nolde, found Worringer’s ideas justifying the primitive art which their art took in part as its inspiration. Worringer was appointed to the University at Bern. His next book, an expansion of the concluding section of Abstraktion, focused on gothic art and architecture. Formprobleme der Gotik (Form in the Gothic), 1911, contrasted and celebrated the “gothic impulse” to create stylized art, opposing it to a Mediterranean infatuation with verisimilitude. The book again met acclaim and Worringer’s reputation was secure. His subsequent publications, such as Die altdeutsche Buchillustration of 1912, were more art historical and never caught the public imagination the way his first two works had. Worringer left Switzerland in 1914 for German military service in World War I and saw fighting. Afterward, he returned to teaching at the Universität Bonn, appointed professor in 1920. There he published two more works, Agyptische Kunst (1927) and Griechentum und Gotik (1928), before moving to Königsberg, also in 1928. Worringer himself continued to expand on his initial stylistic ideas in abstraction. After the Second World War, Worringer moved briefly to Halle, which was then in the Soviet Zone of conquered Germany. The founding of the communist German Democratic Republic in 1950 induced Worringer to leave for Munich, where he remained the rest of his life..." from the article: Wilhelm Worringer
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