In his meticulously researched and elegantly written biography, Hans Christian Hoeneß presents Aby Warburg in all his personal and intellectual entanglements and conflicting identities: the story of one of the most influential historians of art and culture of the twentieth century.At the age of thirteen, Abe abdicated his role as heir to the Warburg banking house on the condition that his younger brother would buy all the books he wanted for the rest of his life. Against all odds, this strange Jew, sensitive and physically weak, too rebellious to accept academic discipline, would lay the foundations of modern art history.Hoeneß traces the course of his life from his early student works, which already show signs of uncompromising intellectual originality, through his debut in Florence, his travels in America, his marriage to the artist Marie Hertz, his continuing interest in the Renaissance, and his stay at the Binswanger Sanatorium in Kreuzlingen, through to his work on the lecture “Serpent Ritual” with Fritz Saxl and on the “Mnemosyne” picture atlas with Gertrud Bing.
With many illustrations, such as excerpts from notebooks and rough drafts.
