Paul Frankl

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Paul Frankl (22 April 1878 30 January 1962) was an Austro-Hungarian-born art historian. Frankl is most
known for his discussions of architectural principles and history, which he famously organized within a
Gestalt-oriented framework.

Contents
1 Early education and career, 1878-1934
2 Transitions to the United States, 1934-1947
3 Later life and career, 1947-1962
4 Legacy
5 Writings
6 References
7 Further reading
8 External links

Early education and career, 1878-1934

Paul Frankl was born in Prague into the prominent rabbinic Spira-Frankl family. From 1888-1896, he
attended a German Gymnasium, after which he enrolled in the German Staats-Obergymnasium of Prague,
graduating in 1896. He served for one year as Lieutenant in the Austrian military. He converted to
Catholicism, in order to receive a higher education in Germany. Conversion was not uncommon during this
era. He entered the Technische Hochschule in Munich and, later, Berlin, to graduate in 1904 with a degree in
architecture.[1]
While in Berlin, Frankl fostered social relationships with circles of philosophers and artists that included
fellow Pragueian, Max Wertheimer who knew Kthe Kollwitz. These people not only introduced Frankl to
new systems of thinking, such as Gestalt psychology, but also to his future wife, the artist and musician, Elsa
Herzberg. Elsa Herzberg shared a studio with Kthe Kollwitz. The couple eventually had five children.
In 1908, Frankl left his work as an architect to study philosophy, history, and art history at the LudwigMaximilians-Universitt in Munich under Heinrich Wlfflin and Berthold Riehl, the founder of the Institut
fr Kunstgeschichte. Riehl supervised Frankl's doctoral dissertation on fifteenth-century glass painting in
southern Germany.[1]

After the completion of his dissertation in 1910, Frankl worked as Wlfflin's assistant and wrote his
Habilitationsschrift, which offered a systematic definition of the formal principles of architecture from the
Renaissance onwards.[2] This work was influenced by Wlfflin's understanding of architectural
development, but it did not follow Wlfflin's views on formalism. From 1914-1920, Frankl held a position
as privatdozent, which enabled him to teach at the University of Munich while contributing to the Handbuch
der Kunstwissenschaft (ed. Albert Brinckmann and Fritz Burger).[1] In 1914, Frankl wrote his first
theoretical work, Die Entwicklungsphasen der neueren Baukunst (1914). Die Entwicklungsphasen proposes
four major categories of art history analysis that Frankl continued to use in his later work. The categories
include spatial composition, treatment of mass and surface, treatment of optical effects, and the relation of
design to social function.[2]
Frankl held an assistant professorship at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich from 1920-1921,
after which he became full professor at Halle University. It was here that Frankl initiated his lifelong interest
in medieval architecture. His study, Die frhmittelalterliche und romanische Baukunst (1926) exemplifies
his categorical distinctions between Romanesque and Gothic architecture - the former being "additive",
"frontal", and "structural" while the latter is "partial", "diagonal", and "textural".[2] In 1933, Frankl's
enthusiasm for medieval architecture encouraged him to join a group of medievalists at the 13th
International Congress of the History of Art in Stockholm to view the only gothic church whose original
wooden arch scaffolding was still extant.[1]
The Nazis terminated Frankl's position in Halle in 1934. Upon leaving the university, Frankl returned to
Munich and wrote his monumental treatise, Das System der Kunstwissenschaft (1938), which offered a
comprehensive history of art grounded in phenomenology and morphology.[2] Das System was issued in
Czechoslovakia since Jewish authors were censured in Germany and Austria. During this time, Frankl also
made a brief trip to Constantinople.[1]

Transitions to the United States, 1934-1947

Frankl traveled to the United States in 1938, where he sought work and refuge from the growing Nazi
power. Although he was fluent in seven languages, English was not his strength since the language had not
yet become the lingua franca of the world. In spite this, Julius S. Held organized a volunteer seminar at
which Frankl was able to teach for a short time.[3] After six months, his visa expired and he became
desperately ill. In order to apply for US citizenship, he sailed to Cuba so as to step on "foreign" soil and
reentered the United States as an immigrant. In 1939, with the assistance of Max Wertheimer, Oscar
Kristeller (a professor of Italian Renaissance literature), and Erwin Panofsky, Frankl received a position as
art historian at the Institute of Advanced Study at Princeton University. The Institute was under the direction
of Frank Aydelotte at that time.[1] In 1949, Frankl received a tenure appointment, which he held until his
death.[4]
Meanwhile, four days after Kristallnacht, Frankl's wife, Elsa, and daughter, Susanne, fled to Denmark from
Munich. Because Elsa's son, Wolfgang, was in England, six months after entering Denmark, Elsa was
allowed to enter England as well. Upon coming to England, she was interned as an "enemy alien" on the Isle
of Man.
Wolfgang had left Germany in 1933 to live in Rome, but with the increased Fascist threat, had gone to
England where it was "safer". When Wolfgang first came to England, he was interned as an "enemy alien".
However, since Wolfgang was an architect, he was allowed to live in an apartment with the caveat that if he

wandered more than 5 miles from the apartment, he had to inform the authorities. He helped to design
buildings during the rebuilding of London after the Blitz.
Susanne escaped to Sweden with the Danish boat-saving rescue venture (Rescue of the Danish Jews) after
the Nazis started their attempt at rounding up the Jews.
Another daughter, Johanna, survived the war in Berlin with protected status with her non-Jewish husband.
Frankls youngest daughter, Regula, followed soon after Frankl to the US. Since she was still a minor, she
was allowed to stay in the US without renewing her visa. She went to Radcliffe under a special program for
German refugees.
As a personal response to the plight of the Jewish people and his family, Frankl joined a committee in
Princeton; among other members, the committee included Albert Einstein. The committee attempted to
hypothesize a world government system that would ensure that racial genocide could never happen again.
Frankl wrote a book called Welt Regierung (1948), his own thoughts on a system of world government.

Later life and career, 1947-1962

Frankl returned to Europe in 1947 with the support of a Guggenheim Grant. For two years, Frankl studied
European cathedrals and taught at European universities. After returning to the United States, he wrote The
Gothic: Literary Sources and Interpretations through Eight Centuries (1960) and Gothic Architecture
(1962), which he completed the day of his death. These works revealed Wlfflin's continued influence on
Frankl, who applied his former advisor's ideas of architectural style while supplementing his study with an
analysis of social function and religious significance.[2]

Legacy
Frankl's work on spatial analysis influenced many German architectural historians such as Siegfried Giedion
and Nikolaus Pevsner. It is possible that the work of Frankl's pupil, Richard Krautheimer, owes something to
Frankl's writings on architectural function and significance.[2] Frankl is responsible for creating the term
"akyrism," which connotes the changing contexts and meanings of art.[1]
Materials relating to Frankl's life and work are currently held at the Leo Baeck Institute in NY, USA, and the
Exil Literatur Archive in Frankfurt, Germany.

Writings
Die Glasmalerei des fnfzehnten Jahrhunderts in Bayern und Schwaben (Strasbourg, 1912)
Die Entwicklungsphasen der neueren Baukunst (Leipzig and Berlin, 1914) (See English translation,
The Principles of Architectural History: The Four Phases of Architectural Style, 14201900
(Cambridge, MA, and London, 1968, 1973)).
Die frhmittelalterliche und romanische Baukunst (Potsdam, 1926)
Das System der Kunstwissenschaft (Brno, 1938)
Weltregierung (1948)
1956 Kunst, Kistenfiger
1957 Zeit Schrift, Theobald von Lixheim
The Gothic: Literary Sources and Interpretations through Eight Centuries (Princeton, 1960)
1961 Hemmel, Kunst Chronik
1961 Boucher's Girl on the Couch

1962 Encyclopedia Britannica article on Gothik Architecture

1962 Roundel in Boston
Gothic Architecture, Pelican Hist. A. (Harmondsworth, 1962)
Zu Fragen des Stils, Leipzig 1988

References
1. "Frankl, Paul" (https://dictionaryofarthistorians.org/franklp.htm). Dictionary of Art Historians. A Biographical
Dictionary of Historic Scholars, Museum Professionals and Academic Historians of Art.
2. Paul Crossley. "Frankl, Paul". Oxford Art Online
3. The Intellectual Migration: Europe and American 1930-1960, ed. Donald Fleming and Bernard Bailyn (Belknap
Press of Harvard University Press: Cambridge MA, 1960)
4. The Institute of Advanced Study: Publications of Members 1930-1954 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University, 1955)

Further reading
R. Krautheimer: Obituary, A. J. [New York], xxii/1 (1962), p. 167
Obituary, Wallraf-Richartz-Jb., xxiv (1962), pp. 714
D. Porphyrios: On the Methodology of Architectural History (London, 1981)
Gerhard Sonnert and Gerald Holton, "The Grand Wake for Harvard Indifference" in Harvard
Magazine SeptemberOctober 2006

External links
https://www.ias.edu/people/cos/users/pfrankl01
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Paul_Frankl&oldid=711707544"
Categories: 1878 births 1962 deaths German art historians German architectural historians
Writers from Prague Guggenheim Fellows Princeton University faculty
Jewish emigrants from Nazi Germany to the United States University of Halle faculty
German male writers
This page was last modified on 24 March 2016, at 09:30.
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