Seite - 212 - in Wiener Jahrbuch für Kunstgeschichte, Band LIX

Erica Tietze-conrat212 zine rather uneven in its articles. Some of them were serious reviews written by pupils who had intimate knowledge of the material; others just imitating Wickhoff’s sharp approach without the background of specialists. I was one of the lat- ter and remember that the author whose book I criticized threatened with a libel suit.14 There was a kind of conference in Wickhoff’s apartment to which also Gustav Glück15 had been invited. I felt frightened as if I were in court to be indicted for murder. Wickhoff told us anecdotes which had nothing to do with the crime I was accused for, and then summing up assured me that if anybody it was he alone as the editor who could be sued. The affair petered out. I believe that Wickhoff wrote a soothing letter to the author. (I have not written too many reviews after this experience). The chief objects of Wickhoff’s fighting spirit were the growing “Literaten” who popularized art history. This discipline was for him insolubly connected with history and therefore subject to its strictly founded criticism. Wickhoff objected the cliché. I remember a report which Georg Sobotka16 gave on the monasteries in [...]. He had not yet stripped off the high school routine starting a composition with a generalization set- ting the tone, later on to be itemized by special facts; the life of the monks is divided into praying, eating and sleeping. A priest among the historians immediately interfered, and Wickhoff furiously smelling the cliché in Sobotka’s introduction con- templated Sobotka’s exclusion from the seminar. The excitement calmed down and Sobotka be- came one of Wickhoff’s most reliable pupils. He was killed in the last days of the First World War. The seminar took place in the students’ room around the table in its middle. Wickhoff sat with his back to the windows next to Dvořák, his as- sistant. Wickhoff looked to me an old man; he was rather stout and held himself so relaxed that it could almost be called stooped, but his way to dress showed a slight dandy touch. His ties became more juveniles when spring came. When I think of him as he climbed the ramp of the Albertina – oh so slowly up the hill – but the ends of his bow tie, intensely blue and curled up, were more enterpris- ing than those of any of his provincial historian students. The visit to the Albertina took place dur- ing a course on Dürer in order to show us some originals, and not only the Lipmann facsimiles.17 Josef Meder18 who then was Curator of the Al- bertina had complained that all the travelers who came to see the famous collection wanted to be shown the famous Hare by Dürer since their guide books had it astericized. Meder did not like to have the precious watercolor be handled so much. Wickhoff laughingly told us his suggestion: why not show them the Albrecht von Brandenburg portrait explaining to them that “the Hare” was the sitter’s nickname? When I (as a young stu- dent never admitted) could watch Wickhoff as he talked with his first pupils19 (Weixlgärtner20, 14 Vermutlich handelte es sich dabei um Tietze-Conrats 1906 in den Kunstgeschichtliche Anzeigen, III. Jg., Nr. 1, Inns- bruck 1906, S 57 f., erschienen „Verriß“ von Robert Hedickes Buch über den niederländischen Italianisten Jacques Dubroeucq (ca. 1500/10–1584); siehe: R. Hedicke, Robert, Jacques Dubroeucq von Mons. Ein Niederländischer Meister aus der Frühzeit des italienischen Einflusses. Zur Kunstgeschichte des Auslandes, Straßburg 1904. 15 Gustav Glück, geb. 1871 in Wien, gest. 1952 in Santa Monica/ USA; von 1911 bis 1931 Direktor der Gemäldegalerie des Kunsthistorischen Museums. 16 Georg Sobotka (1886–1918). Ein Nachruf auf Sobotka von Hans Tietze erschien in: Kunstchronik und Kunstmarkt, Nr. 3, 1918. 17 Zeichnungen von Albrecht Dürer, in: F. Lippmann (Hrsg.), Nachbildungen, Berlin 1905. 18 Joseph Meder (1857–1934), bis 1923 Direktor der Graphischen Sammlung Albertina. 19 Diese wurden von Julius von Schlosser als „Urschüler“ bezeichnet. Vgl. dazu Julius Schlosser, Franz Wickhoff, in: Neue Österreichische Biographie 1815–1918, Bd. VIII, Wien 1935. S. 190–198. 20 Arpád Weixlgärtner (1872–1961), 1920–38 Leiter der Schatzkammer sowie 1931–34 der Gemäldegalerie und 1945/ 46 der Wagenburg des Kunsthistorischen Museums, 1933 erster Direktor des Kunsthistorischen Museums.