Edmund Hildebrandt (29 April 1872 – 13 January 1939) was a German

art historian Art history is the study of aesthetic objects and visual expression in historical and stylistic context. Traditionally, the discipline of art history emphasized painting, drawing, sculpture, architecture, ceramics and decorative arts; yet today ...

. Hildebrandt was born in Berlin to businessman Georg Franz Hildebrandt (1843–1910) and Theone Hildebrandt née Wolkoff (1839–1901). In 1907 he married teacher Ottilie Schlesinger (1872–1939) in a civil ceremony, despite Ottilie being from a well known Jewish merchant family. The couple had a son in 1909, Franz, and moved into the affluent Charlottenburg area of Berlin. Hildebrandt considered himself a pantheist, and his son Franz Hildebrandt later became a renowned theologian and pastor. Hildebrandt suffered from

agoraphobia Agoraphobia is a mental and behavioral disorder, specifically an anxiety disorder characterized by symptoms of anxiety in situations where the person perceives their environment to be unsafe with no easy way to escape. These situations can in ...

, which manifested itself in his choice of small auditoriums for lectures. Hildebrandt received his doctorate degree in 1898 in Berlin, with his thesis on German sculpture. From 1908 he was a lecturer of art history, and from 1921 held the position of

associate professor Associate professor is an academic title with two principal meanings: in the North American system and that of the ''Commonwealth system''. Overview In the ''North American system'', used in the United States and many other countries, it is a ...

at the Humboldt University of Berlin. His main research interest was in Italian Renaissance and

Baroque The Baroque (, ; ) is a style of architecture, music, dance, painting, sculpture, poetry, and other arts that flourished in Europe from the early 17th century until the 1750s. In the territories of the Spanish and Portuguese empires including t ...

, and he wrote several books on the topic. He left his position in 1937 after failing to get the aryan certificate required by the rising National Socialist regime.

Publications

* '' Friedrich Tieck: ein Beitrag zur deutschen Kunstgeschichte im Zeitalter Goethes und der Romantik'' (1906) * ''Leben, Werke und Schriften des Bildhauers E.-M. Falconet, 1716-1791'' (1908) * ''

Michelangelo Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni (; 6 March 1475 – 18 February 1564), known as Michelangelo (), was an Italian sculptor, painter, architect, and poet of the High Renaissance. Born in the Republic of Florence, his work was insp ...

; eine einführung in das verständnis seiner werke'' (1913) * '' Antoine Watteau'' (1922) * ''Die Malerei und Plastik des achtzehnten Jahrhunderts in Frankreich, Deutschland und England'' (1924) * '' Leonardo da Vinci, der Künstler und sein Werk'' (1927)

References

1872 births 1939 deaths People from Charlottenburg German art historians Academic staff of the Humboldt University of Berlin Pantheists {{Germany-art-historian-stub