Seite - 235 - in Wiener Jahrbuch für Kunstgeschichte, Band LIX

In the past decade German and Austrian schol-ars have taken part in a concerted effort to write the history of art history under National Socialism. Hans Sedlmayr, who was Ordinarius at the University of Vienna from 1936–1945, is a central character in this narrative for he was, as is well known, an early member of the Nazi party (1930–1932 and 1938–1945) and one of the few art historians who was not allowed to return to the cathedra after 1945 because of his party affiliation. When he was appointed to the University of Munich in 1951 he was and re- mained an extremely controversial figure.1 Hans Aurenhammer, Albert Ottenbacher, Peter Haiko (and others) have researched Sedlmayr’s political biography and drawn substantial connections between Sedlmayr’s publications from the mid- 1930s through the post-war period and National Socialist tenets.2 It has been demonstrated that Sedlmayr virtually exemplifies the “continuity problem,” since two of his key post-war books were well under way even before the outbreak of SEDLMAYR AND SCHAPIRO CORRESPOND, 1930–1935 Evonne Levy I would like to thank Hans Aurenhammer for his careful reading of this essay, and for many shared insights; Farris Wahbeh of the Columbia University Rare Book and Manuscript Library where the Sedlmayr letters are preserved of- fered much assistance in locating the Sedlmayr letters and bringing them to publication; Richard Woodfield provided an occasion to present this paper at a conference in Glasgow in October 2009 on the Vienna School. I would also like to thank the colleagues who took the time to read this essay and share their thoughts: Robert Levit, Peter Parshall, Walter Cahn, Christopher Wood, Andrew Hopkins and the participants in the Glasgow Conference. To Elizabeth Cropper and Julian Saenz my thanks for much sage advice. Above all I would like to thank Susanne Sedlmayr-Guéri- taud for her kind permission to publish her father’s letters. Schapiro’s letters to Sedlmayr have not survived. Research for this article was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. 1 W. Sauerländer, Der Münchner Protest gegen die Berufung Hans Sedlmayrs im Frühjahr 1951, in: C. Drude/H. Kohle (eds), 200 Jahre Kunstgeschichte in München: Positionen, Perspektiven, Polemik, Munich 2003, pp. 182- 198. See also H. Dilly, Deutsche Kunsthistoriker 1933-1945, Munich 1988, esp. pp. 82–83, pp. 86–87; M. Warnke, Apologet der Mitte: Hans Sedlmayr, in: Künstler, Kunsthistoriker, Museen: Beiträge zu einer kritischen Kunstge- schichte, Luzern 1979, pp. 74-76. 2 H. H. Aurenhammer, Hans Sedlmayr und die Kunstgeschichte an der Universität Wien 1938-1945, in: J. Held/M. Papenbrock (eds), Kunstgeschichte an den Universitäten im Nationalsozialismus, Göttingen 2003, pp. 161-194; H. H. Aurenhammer, Zäsur oder Kontinuität. Das Wiener Kunsthistorische Institut im Ständestaat und im National- sozialismus, in: Wiener Schule. Erinnerungen und Perspektiven (= Wiener Jahrbuch für Kunstgeschichte, 53, 2004), pp. 11–54; J. Held, Hans Sedlmayr in München, in: M. Papenbrock (ed.), Kunstgeschichte an den Universitäten in der Nachkriegszeit, Göttingen 2006, pp. 121–169. P. Haiko, ‘Verlust der Mitte’ von Hans Sedlmayr als kritische Form im Sinne der Theorie von Hans Sedlmayr, in: G. Heiss/S. Mattl/S. Meissl/E. Saurer/K. Stuhlpfarrer (eds), Willfährige Wissenschaft, Vienna 1989, pp. 77–83; N. Schneider, Hans Sedlmayr (1896–1984), in: H. Dilly (ed.), Altmeister moderner Kunstgeschichte, Berlin 1999, pp. 267–288; W. Schlink, The Gothic Cathedral as Hea- venly Jerusalem. A fiction in Germany Art History, in: B. Kühnel (ed.), The real and ideal Jerusalem in Jewish, Christian and Islamic Art: Studies in honour of Bezalel Narkiss on the occasion of his seventieth birthday, Jerusalem 1998, pp. 275–285. H. Justin, ‘Tanz mir den Hitler’: Kunstgeschichte und faschistische Herrschaft, Münster 1982, pp. 68–69. For evidence of Sedlmayr’s membership in the Nazi party see Haiko, Hans Sedlmayr (cit. in this n.), p.