Herman Grimm

Herman Grimm (6 January 1828 – 16 June 1901) was a German academic and writer. Family and education Grimm's father was Wilhelm Grimm the Arnim's daughter, and published his treatise, Die Akademie der Künste und das Verhältniß der Künstler zum Staate. His short-lived periodical, Über Künstler und Kunstwerke (1864–1867), published many important essays. It also contained some of the first photographic illustrations of art in a magazine. The first volume of his biography of Michelangelo, Das Leben Michelangelos, began appearing in 1868. He wrote his dissertation in 1868 from Leipzig and his habilitation (1870) in Berlin. In 1871 he weighed in on the Hans Holbein "Meyer Madonna" debate concluding against the sound reasoning of the "Holbein convention" of eminent scholars, that the Dresden version was the autograph one.

He accepted the chair in the newly created discipline of History of Art (Lehrstuhl für Kunstgeschichte) in Berlin in 1872 and remained there the rest of his life. Grimm published the first (though incomplete) edition of his Das Leben Raphaels in 1872. Grimm's art history writing is characteristic of the period consolidation of standards following the unification of Germany, known as the Gründerzeit. When Friedrich Waagen, for example, criticized in the early issues of the Zeitschrift für bildende Kunst, Goethe's aesthetic taste of some fifty years before, Grimm, the spokesman for the Gründerzeit, took it personally, refuting Waagen effectively point by point. Grimm's Beiträge zur deutschen Culturgeschichte, essays about important cultural personalities, appeared in 1897. Throughout his life his biographies passed through numerous editions. At his death he was succeeded by Heinrich Wölfflin. His students included Alfred Lichtwark; Julius Meier-Graefe studied under him but did not receive a degree. Reputation Grimm's reputation is that of the arch-Romantic, Gründerzeit art historian. He viewed himself as the intellectual successor of Goethe. "Ist die moderne Kunstgeschichte eine auf solider Grundlage ruhende Wissenschaft? Gründe warum nicht. Notwendigkeit einer änderung." In Über Künstler und Kunstwerke 1 (1864): 4–8 Die Venus von Milo. Rafael und Michel Angelo: Zwei Essays von Herman Grimm. Boston: De Vries, Ibarra & Co., 1864, partially translated into English, The Venus de Milo. Boston: J. J. Hawes, 1868, collected and republished as, Zehn ausgewählte Essays zur Einführung in das Studium der Neuern Kunst. Berlin: Dümmler, 1871 Über Künstler und Kunstwerke. 2 vols. Berlin: F. Dümmler's Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1865–1867 Albrecht Dürer. Berlin: C. G. Lüderitz, 1866 [Meyer Madonna opinion] "Die Holbein'sche Madonna." Preussische Jahrbücher 28 (1871): 418–31 Das Leben Raphaels von Urbino: italienischer Text von Vasari übersetzt und Commentar. Berlin: F. Dümmler, 1872, [first complete edition, 2nd, 1886, 3rd ed., 1896 contains the chapter on Rezeptionsgeschichte of Raphael], English, The Life of Raphael. Boston: Cupples and Hurd, 1888 The Destruction of Rome: a Letter. Boston: Cupples, Upham, 1886 Beiträge zur deutschen Culturgeschichte. Berlin: W. Herts, 1897 Fragmente. Berlin: W. Spemann, 1900