Fritz Saxl facts for kids

Fritz Saxl

Friedrich "Fritz" Saxl (born January 8, 1890, in Vienna, Austria; died March 22, 1948, in London, England) was a very important art historian. An art historian studies the history of art. He was a key leader of the Warburg Institute, a famous research center. He took over from its founder, Aby Warburg, and guided the institute for many years.

Life and Work

Fritz Saxl studied in his hometown of Vienna. His teachers included famous scholars like Franz Wickhoff and Max Dvořák. Dvořák helped him write his main paper about the artist Rembrandt.

Later, Saxl studied in Berlin with Heinrich Wölfflin. From 1912 to 1913, he did research in Italy. This research was for his main book, which looked at old handwritten books from the Middle Ages. These books had pictures about stars and myths. In 1913, he married Elise Bienenfeld.

Saxl served as a lieutenant in the Austro-Hungarian army during World War I. He fought on the Italian front.

In 1913, Fritz Saxl started working at the Warburg Library in Warburg Haus, Hamburg. He was the librarian there. After the war, he returned in 1919. He also began teaching at the University of Hamburg in 1923.

When Aby Warburg passed away in 1929, Saxl officially became the director. However, he had already been leading the institute for several years. In 1933, the Nazi regime came to power in Germany. Saxl played a big part in moving the Warburg Institute to safety in London. He moved to England with the institute and became a British citizen in 1940.

Saxl worked very hard to keep the Warburg Institute going. Because of this, he wrote fewer big books himself. Most of his own work was in papers and lectures. In 1946, Saxl helped start the Census of Antique Works of Art and Architecture Known in the Renaissance. He created this project with other art experts, Richard Krautheimer and Karl Lehmann.

Main Published Works

Here are some of the important books and collections of writings by Fritz Saxl:

• Verzeichnis astrologischer und mythologischer illustrierter Handschriften des lateinischen Mittelalters. (This was his big study on old manuscripts with astrology and mythology.)
• English Sculpture of the 12th Century, London: Faber & Faber 1954
• Lectures. Vol. 1 & 2, London: Warburg Institute, 1957
• A Heritage of Images: A Selection of Lectures by Fritz Saxl. Introduction by E. H. Gombrich. Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin, 1970
• The History of Warburg's Library. in: Gombrich, Aby Warburg. 2nd ed. Oxford : Phaidon Press, 1986, pp. 325–38
• Gebärde, Form, Ausdruck, vorgestellt von Pablo Schneider, Zürich-Berlin: diaphanes, 2010, ISBN: 978-3-03734-131-5

Letters

Fritz Saxl also exchanged many letters with Aby Warburg. These letters show how they worked together and shared ideas.

• Ausreiten der Ecken. Die Aby Warburg – Fritz Saxl Korrespondenz 1910 bis 1919. Ed. Dorothea McEwan. Munich 1998. ISBN: 3-930802-79-1.
• Wanderstrassen der Kultur. Die Aby Warburg – Fritz Saxl Korrespondenz 1920 bis 1929. Ed. Dorothea McEwan. Munich 2004. ISBN: 3-935549-85-7

See also

In Spanish: Fritz Saxl para niños