Hans Vollmer (16 November 1878 – 15 February 1969) 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 ...
.
Life
His father was the architect (1845-1920), his grandfather of the Hamburg marine painter and sculptor
Adolph Friedrich Vollmer
Adolph Friedrich Vollmer (17 December 1806 – 12 February 1875) was a German landscape and marine painter and graphic artist. He and his contemporary, the painter Christian Morgenstern,Andresen (1872) 3, 25. were pioneers in Hamburg of early R ...
(1806–1875). He was the older brother of the painter and sculptor
Erwin Vollmer (1884–1973).
Vollmer studied
art history
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 ...
, history of sciences and philosophy in Berlin and Munich. In 1906 he was awarded a
doctorate
A doctorate (from Latin ''docere'', "to teach"), doctor's degree (from Latin ''doctor'', "teacher"), or doctoral degree is an academic degree awarded by universities and some other educational institutions, derived from the ancient formalism ''l ...
by
Heinrich Wölfflin
Heinrich Wölfflin (; 21 June 1864 – 19 July 1945) was a Swiss art historian, esthetician and educator, whose objective classifying principles ("painterly" vs. "linear" and the like) were influential in the development of formal analysis in a ...
in Berlin with a thesis on ''Schwäbische Monumentalbrunnen von der Gotik bis zum Klassizismus'' (Swabian monumental fountains from the Gothic to the Classicism).
Since April 1, 1907 he was employed in the editorial office of the ''
Thieme-Becker ''Allgemeiner Künstlerlexikon'' at the publishing house
E. A. Seemann in
Leipzig
Leipzig ( , ; Upper Saxon: ) is the most populous city in the German state of Saxony. Leipzig's population of 605,407 inhabitants (1.1 million in the larger urban zone) as of 2021 places the city as Germany's eighth most populous, as wel ...
, in 1923 he took over the editorial management and became editor of the
Thieme-Becker
Thieme-Becker is a German biographical dictionary of artists.
Thieme-Becker
The dictionary was begun under the editorship of Ulrich Thieme (1865–1922) (volumes one to fifteen) and Felix Becker (1864–1928) (volumes one to four). It was complet ...
company. He worked as the main contributor, supported by a small editorial staff, until the completion of the 37-volume work in 1950, after which he began working on the additions for the ''
General Encyclopedia of Visual Artists of the XXth Century'', which appeared in six volumes from 1953 to 1962. He dictated a total of 47,229 artist biographies to his secretary Claire Möbius, who also worked as a research assistant, on the basis of notes which he excerpted especially in the in Leipzig, and 15 to 20 typewritten pages were produced daily. In 1952 he was appointed professor. In recognition of his work Vollmer received the
Patriotic Order of Merit
The Patriotic Order of Merit (German: ''Vaterländischer Verdienstorden'', or VVO) was a national award granted annually in the German Democratic Republic (GDR). It was founded in 1954 and was awarded to individuals and institutions for outstanding ...
in silver of the German Democratic Republic in 1957.
On 1 January 1964 Vollmer retired after 57 years of work for the ''Künstlerlexikon''. He died in Leipzig at age 90.
Publications
* ''Schwäbische Monumentalbrunnen''. (''Kunstgeschichtliche Studien'', issue 1). Ebering, Berlin 1906.
* ''Kunstgeschichtliches Wörterbuch''. (''Teubners kleine Fachwörterbücher'' 13). Teubner, Leipzig 1928.
* ''Was mußt Du als Staatsbürger wissen?''
Literature
* Magdalena George (ed.): ''Festschrift Hans Vollmer. Aus Anlass seiner fünfzigjährigen Tätigkeit als Mitarbeiter und Herausgeber des Thieme-Becker''. VEB E. A. Seemann Verlag, Leipzig 1957 (with Schriftenverzeichnis
Digitalisat.
* Alfred Langer: ''Kunstliteratur und Reproduktion. 125 Jahre Seemann-Verlag im Dienste der Erforschung und Verbreitung der Kunst''.
''Kunstliteratur und Reproduktion : 125 Jahre Seemann Verlag im Dienste der Erforschung und Verbreitung der Kunst''
on WorldCat E. A. Seemann, Leipzig 1983, (with picture).
References
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Vollmer, Hans
German art historians
Recipients of the Patriotic Order of Merit in silver
1878 births
1969 deaths
People from Charlottenburg