Art History in the University II: Ernst Guhl

This essay continues the examination, begun in volume five of this journal, of the training, appointment, and teaching careers of nineteenth-century art historians at the Friedrich-Wilhelms University in Berlin. It examines the extensive but little studied documentation for Ernst Guhl (1819-1862), the only new instructor with a primary focus on the history of art to join the university between the early 1840s and the later 1860s. After standard training in philology and archaeology, an extended stay in Italy, and several years teaching as Privatdozent, he applied four times for an extraordinary professorship (1851, 1854, twice in 1858). The successive reports assessing his qualifications demonstrate that while the historical study of art was becoming more sharply defined as a specific discipline, it continued to be assigned a minor role in the intellectual and pedagogical structures of the university. They also provide insight into the contested relationship between archaeology and art history.