Page - 249 - in Wiener Jahrbuch für Kunstgeschichte, Volume LIX

sedlmayr and schapiro correspond 249 Massen und ganz besonders nicht bei unseren österreichischen Ereignissen. Was sie nicht miss- verstehen wollen. Denn sogar die Regierungs- Communiquées vom Februar und später haben den Kämpfern die höchste Achtung nicht ver- sagt. There is also in the letter of 7 October 1934 what seems like a shift in Sedlmayr’s art historical ori- entation, which supports Hans Aurenhammer’s circling around the work of the mid 1930s as a turning point in Sedlmayr’s work:43 he says that Schapiro is right to suspect that he would not be happy in the long run with a pure formal analy- sis. Dass ich kein Einzelgänger bin beeinfl usst mei- ne wissenschaftlichen Versuche nun insofern als ich – wie Sie richtig vermuten – mit einer puren Formalanalyse auf die Dauer nicht zu- frieden bin. Ich würde einen Versuch einer kon- sequent politisch-soziologischen Kunstgeschichte für so wichtig halten, wie nichts anderes – selbst wenn er einseitig ausfällt. Nur sehe ich gar keine Ansätze dazu, nirgends. Dafür habe ich meine eigene Erklärung. Von unserem heutigen Zustand ist die Funktion der Kunst nicht mehr recht verständlich. Sie ist unverständlich wie Magie, Religion oder wie der Bauer – den man auch entweder als einen kleinen Grossgrundbe- sitzer oder Industriellen missversteht. – Aber das führt zu weit. At the beginning of this paragraph, though Sedlmayr starts to say that the fact that he is not a lone wolf makes formal analysis unattractive in the long run, it seems that he had come to think of himself as isolated in structural analysis (he alluded to it in an earlier letter) and this might have had something to do with a change in direc- tion, towards a konsequent politisch-soziologischen Kunstgeschichte. In a postscript to the letter Sedlmayr’s distinction between racial and political anti- Semitism breaks down in his explanation of what has happened to Schapiro’s submission to the ‘Kritische Berichte’ edited by Bruno Fürst (who was Jewish). Sedlmayr details how he and Swoboda had recommended the essay and left it to Fürst to make the final decision. Sedlmayr, in a previous letter, had recommended that the arti- cle be returned to Schapiro in order that he could seek publication elsewhere. Fürst, he says, used this as an excuse, about which he commented: Dass aber Fürst diese Ausrede gebraucht ist einfach ‘a shame’. Es gehört ganz in die Linie der mehr als unglücklichen Taktik der hiesigen Juden. After this letter Schapiro can contain himself no longer. It is a pity that his letter is not pre- served but Sedlmayr’s response, the only written in English and only two weeks later, 1 November 1934, gives us a sense of the openness of the hos- tility. The letter in full, reads: Dear Mr. Schapiro! What can a man who is an opponent of communism an[d] of jews (as far as they – in consequence of their history and the social struc- ture of that nation –- are preparers and allies of communism) – what can a man who believes in peasants, religion and art (see the end of my last letter) be? I am astonished that you could not solve this riddle. He naturally is a ‘conservative.’ A ‘conservative’ not in the sense of one of the destroyed parties which in later nineteenth century represented different ideas of conserva- tivisme, but in a broader and simpler sense: one who wants to have conserved (not mum- myfied [sic]), which he is sure to be alive. I for ex. believe that a peasant can not be replaced by an industrial producer of agricultural goods; I believe that there is a certain sphere of religion (the ‘holy’) which cannot be replaced by ‘Welt- anschauung’ or science; I believe that there is a 43 Aurenhammer, Zäsur oder Kontinuität (cit. n. 2), p. 49.