Andreas Ay
Nachts: Göthe gelesen
Heinrich Wölfflin und seine Goethe-Rezeption
1. Edition 2010
453 pages
ISBN 978-3-89971-581-1
V&R unipress
plus S&H
Book
When art historians cannot sleep at night they take the classics at hands. Basis of this interdisciplinary study are the written remains of the Swiss art historian Heinrich Wölfflin, who belongs to the most important academics of his subject. By means of extensive archive files the complex occupation with Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ist clearly revealed to the reader. The reader literally gets at Wölfflin's desk and sees how the art historian has come to his terms and from which sources they have been developed. In doing so Wölfflin did not take the way via Goethe's art historian writings but via his natural scientific writings. Wölfflin's system of terms concerning form and the development of form is provably integrated into a morphological context according to Goethe. In a surprising consequence Wölfflin transferred this conception also to his own life: He wanted to educacte himself by Goethe. Wölfflin's Goethe reception appears in this interpretation as an intellectual and ingenious undertaking that initiates an extremely productive "Go-in-Track" between the poles of standard thought patterns and independent thinking.