Page - 242 - in Wiener Jahrbuch für Kunstgeschichte, Volume LIX

Evonne Levy242 (Swoboda war so freundlich, ihn als die Sensation dieses Winters zu bezeichnen) he has managed, he says, to have found one or more constants in Medieval architecture die nicht formal ist. But he is not yet ready to lay it out in a letter. Finally, in this letter we first hear of Sedlmayr’s interest in the work of Emil Kaufmann on Ledoux.29 Kaufmann was to publish an essay in the KWF on Chaux. In a postscript Sedlmayr recommends a non-art historical text, Robert Musil’s Mann ohne Eigenschaften (the first two books of the novel, left unfinished at his death in 1942, were published in 1930), as a Gegenstück to Joyce that he considers wichtig and also a basis for discus- sion. In a subsequent letter he promises to return to the subject but never does. (Musil was a friend of Otto Pächt and Bruno Fürst, who were devot- ed to him.30) 1 June 1932 Sedlmayr writes to Schapiro of a 4-week trip to France31 about which he makes four observations. His subjects of study were the structure of Gothic architecture and the ar- chitecture of the French Revolution, to which Emil Kaufmann had drawn his attention. He saw drawings by Ledoux at the Carnavalet for the Paris ‘Barrieren’ and wants to pursue the subject. He was also occupied with the problem of the 19th century and with the problem of qual- ity in its fusion with ‘Struktur’.32 He is struck by the insubstantiality of architecture he has seen in France compared to the ancient architecture he saw in Nimes. He says these are not impressions, but ‘Fermenten’. In a postscript Sedlmayr passes on the thanks to Schapiro of Bruno Fürst for agreeing to review Baltrusaitis for the ‘Kritische Berichte’, an essay which appeared in the 1932/33 number of the journal.33 The single letter from Schapiro to Sedlmayr is a draft dated October 1932. In this letter, com- posed in German but likely ultimately written in English (for Sedlmayr quotes Schapiro back in English in his reply of 19 December 1932), he praises the 1st volume of the ‘KWF’ whose form and emphasis on critical writing he finds sehr sch- oen. He confesses to having had difficulty with Pächt’s essay and found the Andreades particu- larly interesting (because closer to his own work) though he found that he said too little about the technical and structural aspects of the form for a correct formulation of the stylistic princi- ple.34 He objects to Andreades’ characterization of the wall as irrational since he had not noted the hoehere Elastizitaet solchen Ordnungen, and die innere Koordination statische Momente in diesem Wand. Around this particular essay a more critical dialogue opens up: Auch unanne- hmbar sind Adrandes [sic] liturgische-theologische Spekulationen die rein deduktiv sind und imagi- 29 Haiko, Hans Sedlmayr (cit. n. 2), p. 77, notes Sedlmayr’s own statement in ‘Verlust der Mitte’ that parts of the post-war book were conceived “shortly after 1930” triggered by Kaufmann’s research on French architecture of the revolutionary period. 30 Karl Corino, Otto Pächt und Robert Musil, in: Pächt/Rosenauer, Otto Pächt (cit. n. 26), pp. 19–38. 31 In the letter I date to 2 May 1931 Sedlmayr says a trip to France is urgent. 32 This thought is echoed in the postscript to the 4th edition of ‘Verlust der Mitte’ (1950): Kunstwerke, die echte Schöp- fungen sind, ausschliesslich als Symptome einer Störung zu werten, wäre allerdings ein Unrecht gegen sie, doch schwerlich ein grösseres als das, sie ausschliesslich als Exempel und Durchgangspunkte eines Stilverlaufs zu nehmen, wie das die Betrachtung der Kunst rein auf den Stil – nicht minder alle Unterschiede des Ranges und Wertes nivellierend als die symptomatische Betrachtung – seit langem tut. H. Sedlmayr, Verlust der Mitte. Die bildende Kunst des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts als Symptom und Symbol der Zeit, 4th rev. ed., Salzburg 1950, p. 254. 33 M. Schapiro, Über den Schematismus in der romanische Kunst, in: Kritische Berichte zur kunstgeschichtlichen Literatur 1, 1932–1933, pp. 1–21. 34 The first volume of the ‘KWF’ included four essays: Hans Sedlmayr, Zu einer strengen Kunstwissenschaft; G. A. Andreades, Die Sophienkathedrale von Konstantinopel; Otto Pächt, Die historische Aufgabe Michael Pachers; Carl Linfert, Die Grundlagen der Architekturzeichnung.