Page - 210 - in Wiener Jahrbuch für Kunstgeschichte, Volume LIX

Erica Tietze-conrat210 dents were well read in modern languages. We had to know Italian, French and English and could manage Dutch with the help of a diction- ary. The miracle is that we really could do it. I don’t know how the others succeeded, but none of us was ever hampered by a foreign language. I for one had a French Governess who took us for walks and bored us to death. When I was 16 or so I engaged a student with whom I read Dante’s Inferno. When he turned out to be an “irriden- tista”11, my Austrian-conscious mother threw him out. I continued my Dante reading with the correspondent of the more restrained Milanese newspaper Corriere della Serra. I never learned colloquial Italian, but had not difficulties with the sources in my later art historical studies. As I told before, it was not much difference with my colleagues. The reason for our being acquainted with about three modern languages – apart from the classical ones – lies in the fact that our school system had not been democratic at that time. (I don’t know whether this has changed). The great- er part of the population had to stay at school up to their 14th year only (“Bürgerschule”). They could then learn a handicraft or start as unskilled workers or – the girls – remain at home and learn to cook from their mothers. Boys who wanted to become engineers entered the so-called “Re- alschule” after their 10th year, where no Greek was taught and – as far as I remember – no Latin but instead of those humanistic subjects a modern language. Only those who were to study at the Universities went to the “Gymnasium”. Their parents took it on themselves to provide their upkeep until they were 22, eight years “Gymna- sium” at least four years University, and mostly longer. Parents who do that have to have the financial means and be ambitious as well. They took care that their youngsters enjoyed an all round education and the knowledge of languag- es then belonged to the idea of a well educated man. (I have now the experience how important it is for an art historian having met the gradu- ate and the postgraduate students at Columbia. They attend their language courses all right, but rarely get more out of them than to be able to de- code a printed German page in six hours labors.) Wickhoff after having screened a small group of serious pupils had his assistant distribute the subject matter on which they had to prepare re- ports in the seminar. The newcomers were of course excepted. I do not remember having given a report in my first or even second year. It would have been quite impossible, since I had no ink- ling about art history. Our history textbooks in high school showed sometimes a paragraph of a few lines in small print affixed to important ep- ochs, but we had been allowed to skip it. Neither Wickhoff nor his assistant had any contact with the first or second year students. There were the books on the shelves, but nobody to tell us which of them would be a good introduction. We tried those first which were easy to reach. (What a waste of time! Was it really a waste of time? The head librarian in Columbia’s art library compiled a list of the most important reference books in 1957; the beginners here will have less waste of time. But will they become as independent schol- ars as we were who had to fend for ourselves?) Wickhoff as a lecturer was mostly disappoint- ing. He never was reconciled to the new routine of using slides. He entered class with Dvořák carry- ing a load of large sized photographs or other kind of reproductions. I never heard him deal with another subject than Italian Renaissance. When he characterized Fra Bartolommeo he showed the pertinent illustrations to the next students in the first row who passed them to his neighbor; when Wickhoff was dealing with Sarto, the stu- dents far back were still awaiting to see the sam- ples of Fra Bartolommeo. His lectures had neither the literary charm nor the rhetorical splendor of 11 Ziel des italienischen Irredentismus war es, sämtliche italienischsprachigen Gebiete, insbesondere auch jene der Habsburger-Monarchie, dem vereinten Italien anzugliedern.