Susie Harries’ Nikolaus Pevsner: The Life is an interesting book because it focuses on my hero’s personal life rather than his lecture notes. Nikolaus Pevsner (1902–1983) was born in Leipzig into a comfortable and cultivated Jewish family. Father Hugo (1869-1940) was a fur merchant and mother Annie Perlman (1876-1942) was a pianist. Pevsner attended Leipzig, Munich, Berlin and Frankfurt Universities.
It was clear in his diary that Nikolaus Pevsner wanted to be a real German and was embarrassed by his parents’ Judaism and his father’s association with trade. In 1919 his brilliant brother Heinz committed suicide, so Nikolaus abandoned Judaism and converted to Lutheranism that same year.
Pevsner's doctoral thesis, Leipziger Baroque (1925) was a study of Italian mannerist and baroque painting. Soon he was working as Assistant Keeper at Dresden Gallery (1924–8), assisted the director of the Dresden International Art Exhibition in 1925 and became lecturer at Göttingen University in art and architectural history (1929–33). Loving English art, he travelled widely in England in 1930.
Back in Germany Pevsner found elements that were admirable about the Nazis, indicating how much his outlook on art history matched theirs. And he really DID support Goebbels in his drive for pure, non-decadent German art. Apparently he said of the Nazis in 1933 "I want this movement to succeed. There is no alternative but chaos".
Yet to the Nazis, Jewish-born Pevsner’s 1921 conversion to Protestantism was nothing; he would always would be a Jew. And his passion for medieval Saxon sculpture, the glory of German art, didn’t prove his Germanness either. The young man was caught up in the ban on Jews being employed by the Nazi state and lost his job at Göttingen in May 1933.
In 1934 the family emigrated and friends found Nikolaus a research post at the University of Birmingham. In 1936 he established his name by publishing Pioneers of the Modern Design, the single most widely read book on modern design.
He had no social life and little sleep. After a day looking at buildings and taking endless notes, Pevsner worked on his notes at night and planned the route for the following day.
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Pioneers of the Modern Movement
by Nikolaus Pevsner, 1936
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Pevsner was, and is best known for editing the monumental series, The Buildings of England (1951-74). Intending to cover every single building of architectural interest across Britain, he wrote 32 of the books himself and 10 with collaborators, personally visiting every building he described. A further 4 of the original series were written by others. This series became Pevsner Architectural Guides.
It was clear in his diary that Nikolaus Pevsner wanted to be a real German and was embarrassed by his parents’ Judaism and his father’s association with trade. In 1919 his brilliant brother Heinz committed suicide, so Nikolaus abandoned Judaism and converted to Lutheranism that same year.
Receiving his PhD in 1924, Pevsner married Karola Lola Kurlbaum, daughter of the respected appeal judges in Germany. It was a lifelong, sometimes unstable marriage, with 3 children. Lola was also Jewish but considered herself 100% Prussian and hoped to raise her husband up to her own cultural standard.
Pevsner's doctoral thesis, Leipziger Baroque (1925) was a study of Italian mannerist and baroque painting. Soon he was working as Assistant Keeper at Dresden Gallery (1924–8), assisted the director of the Dresden International Art Exhibition in 1925 and became lecturer at Göttingen University in art and architectural history (1929–33). Loving English art, he travelled widely in England in 1930.
Back in Germany Pevsner found elements that were admirable about the Nazis, indicating how much his outlook on art history matched theirs. And he really DID support Goebbels in his drive for pure, non-decadent German art. Apparently he said of the Nazis in 1933 "I want this movement to succeed. There is no alternative but chaos".
Yet to the Nazis, Jewish-born Pevsner’s 1921 conversion to Protestantism was nothing; he would always would be a Jew. And his passion for medieval Saxon sculpture, the glory of German art, didn’t prove his Germanness either. The young man was caught up in the ban on Jews being employed by the Nazi state and lost his job at Göttingen in May 1933.
In 1934 the family emigrated and friends found Nikolaus a research post at the University of Birmingham. In 1936 he established his name by publishing Pioneers of the Modern Design, the single most widely read book on modern design.
He had no social life and little sleep. After a day looking at buildings and taking endless notes, Pevsner worked on his notes at night and planned the route for the following day.
Nikolaus Pevsner: The Life
by Susie Harries
Random House, 2013
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Isle of Wight
one of Pevsner's Architectural Guides
He wrote mostly about English architecture, yet what he really admired was the modern functionalist German style. Pevsner traced the evolution of the C20th architecture from several sources, from William Morris and the Arts and Crafts movement, Art Nouveau and Victorian architecture, to Walter Gropius and his Bauhaus colleagues who broke with the past! Be still, my beating Bauhaus heart!
During WW2, Huyton Liverpool was an internment camp for prisoners of war. “Enemy alien” Pevsner was imprisoned there in 1940 and was not released until the Director General of the Ministry of Information intervened. Then Pevsner settled in London and caught up with the other German speaking refugees: Walter Neurath who founded Thames & Hudson art publishing, and art historian Ernst Gombrich.
I agree that architecture was the most important of the arts because it was the most closely connected with family life. Sadly Pevsner found that the study of architectural history did not win as much academic interest in Britain as it did in Europe. Social changes, the power of the Church and the Nobility, the rise of the estate of burgesses and eventually the emergence of the urban proletariat, underpinned his Outline of European Architecture (1943).
By war's end, Pevsner was established as an art-historian who loved “soothing, civilised” England, becoming a British citizen in 1946. But it was not until the UK was safely post-war that Pevsner told his children about their Jewish Russian-German heritage. Or that the grandparents had been killed in Leipzig in WW2.
Pevsner joined the academic staff at the University of London and also edited Architectural Review (1942-45) which ran until 1957. The Pelican History of Art, under Pevsner's general editorship, became one of the most authoritative works on the visual arts in English. From 1949 to 1955 he was Slade Prof of Fine Art at Oxford (1968-69), and a Fellow of St John's College Cambridge.
[Apart from Nikolaus Pevsner, my art history students were asked to read the brilliant works of Aby Warburg, Erwin Panofsky, EH Gombrich, Adolf Katzenellenbogen, Otto Kurz, Fritz Saxl and Rudolf Wittkower. Note that they were all trained at German-speaking universities!]
by Susie Harries
Random House, 2013
one of Pevsner's Architectural Guides
He wrote mostly about English architecture, yet what he really admired was the modern functionalist German style. Pevsner traced the evolution of the C20th architecture from several sources, from William Morris and the Arts and Crafts movement, Art Nouveau and Victorian architecture, to Walter Gropius and his Bauhaus colleagues who broke with the past! Be still, my beating Bauhaus heart!
During WW2, Huyton Liverpool was an internment camp for prisoners of war. “Enemy alien” Pevsner was imprisoned there in 1940 and was not released until the Director General of the Ministry of Information intervened. Then Pevsner settled in London and caught up with the other German speaking refugees: Walter Neurath who founded Thames & Hudson art publishing, and art historian Ernst Gombrich.
By war's end, Pevsner was established as an art-historian who loved “soothing, civilised” England, becoming a British citizen in 1946. But it was not until the UK was safely post-war that Pevsner told his children about their Jewish Russian-German heritage. Or that the grandparents had been killed in Leipzig in WW2.
Pevsner joined the academic staff at the University of London and also edited Architectural Review (1942-45) which ran until 1957. The Pelican History of Art, under Pevsner's general editorship, became one of the most authoritative works on the visual arts in English. From 1949 to 1955 he was Slade Prof of Fine Art at Oxford (1968-69), and a Fellow of St John's College Cambridge.
[Apart from Nikolaus Pevsner, my art history students were asked to read the brilliant works of Aby Warburg, Erwin Panofsky, EH Gombrich, Adolf Katzenellenbogen, Otto Kurz, Fritz Saxl and Rudolf Wittkower. Note that they were all trained at German-speaking universities!]
by Nikolaus Pevsner, 1936
Nikolaus Pevsner and his books, in 1980
Pevsner was, and is best known for editing the monumental series, The Buildings of England (1951-74). Intending to cover every single building of architectural interest across Britain, he wrote 32 of the books himself and 10 with collaborators, personally visiting every building he described. A further 4 of the original series were written by others. This series became Pevsner Architectural Guides.
In 1958, Pevsner became founding chairman of The Victorian Society for the study and protection of Victorian and Edwardian art and architecture, thankfully saving houses, churches, railway stations and other Victorian monuments.
In 1959 he became the first Professor of the History of Art at Birkbeck College, University of London. He focused on A History of Building Types 1976, covering national monuments, government buildings, town halls, law courts, theatres, libraries, museums, hospitals, prisons, hotels, banks, warehouses & offices, railway stations, market halls, exhibition buildings, shops and factories.
This Mittel-European Jew of Russian descent became a Protestant Englishman, knight of the realm, lecturer at the BBC, academic and publishing phenomenon, founding-father of academic architectural history in Britain. Pevsner died in London in 1983, memorialised in Church of Christ the King, Bloomsbury. He was buried in St Peter Wiltshire churchyard.
In 1959 he became the first Professor of the History of Art at Birkbeck College, University of London. He focused on A History of Building Types 1976, covering national monuments, government buildings, town halls, law courts, theatres, libraries, museums, hospitals, prisons, hotels, banks, warehouses & offices, railway stations, market halls, exhibition buildings, shops and factories.
This Mittel-European Jew of Russian descent became a Protestant Englishman, knight of the realm, lecturer at the BBC, academic and publishing phenomenon, founding-father of academic architectural history in Britain. Pevsner died in London in 1983, memorialised in Church of Christ the King, Bloomsbury. He was buried in St Peter Wiltshire churchyard.