Reflections on past Lectures, Conferences and Symposiums:

Our First Fundraiser: Walter Horn and Hitler's Holy Relics



A lecture and reception in honor of Walter Horn, founder of the UC Berkeley History of Art Department, celebrating his most famous exploit in the aftermath of World War II.

May 2010 saw the publication of a new book by best-selling writer, Sidney Kirkpatrick, author of A Cast of Killers, recounting the extraordinary story of Walter Horn's recovery of the crown jewels of the Holy Roman Empire, after they had been spirited away by the Nazis to a secret hiding place. As part of the author's west coast book tour, we invited him to give a presentation of his latest book on campus, and a large group of the department's friends and supporters gathered in the Morrison Library to hear a lively and entertaining account of Walter Horn's war-time adventures. The event was well attended and raised more than $3000 for the Walter Horn fund for Graduate Studies in the History of Art. The article that follows gives some excerpts from Beate Fricke's brief introduction to the evening's program.

Beate Fricke on Walter Horn
Approaching a Famous Dark Horse

A Memorable Ascent
In 1934 Walter Horn, following the handrail, climbed up the tiny steps on to the hexagonal roof of the Baptistery in Florence. Then he ascended still further—and crept up to the lantern on top of the roof. He had taken the opportunity to join Walter Paatz, who was then in charge of the excavations at the Florentine baptistery. What was the purpose of this ascent? And what was its outcome? To place this event in its proper historical context we need a little background information.

Walter Horn was one of Erwin Panofsky's first doctoral students, and at that time he had only recently finished his PhD in Hamburg. Horn shared his mentor's interest in the reception of antiquity. But his interest applied exclusively to the history of medieval architecture, a field in which "the reception of antiquity" could describe some very diverse phenomena. He had chosen the facade of St. Gilles du Gard in Southern France as his dissertation topic—a work that revealed there were many different ways for medieval architects to refer to the distant past. 		Sidney Kirkpatrick
Sidney Kirkpatrick
Sidney Kirkpatrick, speaking in the Morrison Library, about researching and writing his recent book, Hitler's Holy Relics. The author also regaled the audience with a wide array of anecdotes drawn from Horn's remarkable life. [Photo: Erin Babnik] 		In the 1920s for a German student to choose French Gothic Architecture as the topic of a doctoral dissertation was rather unusual. The political climate between France and Germany during these years was well described—and without exaggeration—as an "ice-age". Mutual malice and reciprocal disregard had characterized relations between the two neighbors ever since the end of the 19th century. Few scholars attempted to bridge this established culture of national animosities. The dissertation of Walter Horn, however, succeeded in achieving exactly this aim.

The circumstances for Horn's work on the facade of St. Gilles were particularly favorable for undertaking such a task. As a PhD-student, he was allowed to use the photographic material of Richard Hamann, who had previously organized huge photo campaigns to document French Gothic architecture. Furthermore, he was able to access the Kulturwissenschaftliche Bibliothek (Library of Cultural History) of Aby Warburg. It remains unknown, however, whether Horn was interested in participating in Warburg's intellectual circle in Hamburg. The close group of scholars around Aby Warburg, to which Panofsky belonged, had perceived the warning signs of the rising power of Hitler. And ever since the time of Warburg's death in 1929 they had tried to find a new home for the library. Finally the negotiations were successful. On December 12, 1933 two freighters left the port of Hamburg for London, full of boxes with books, catalogues, and bookshelves. This departure signaled an abrupt end to one of the most creative periods in art history, but saved Aby Warburg's library, delivering it to a country with as yet no department of Art History. It was only in 1955, twentytwo years later, that Edgar Wind, returning to Oxford from the United States, became the first appointed professor of Art History in Great Britain.

Following Panofsky's prescient advice, Walter Horn also left Germany—but in the opposite direction. He became a research assistant at the Institute for Art History at Florence in Italy, today one of two Max-Planck-Institutes for Art History. The library of this institute in Florence hardly compared with the Warburg library; however it matched perfectly Horn's strong interest in the careful analysis of the structure, the context, and the historical layers of medieval architecture.
Now, what was the result of Walter Horn's foray on to the roof of the Florence baptistery in 1934? On the lantern he discovered an inscription that had been overlooked in all previous research on this building. Up until this time the absence of written documents had led to furious speculations about the Baptistry's date of origin – with estimates ranging from the 4th, to the 13th century. However, the inscription discovered by Horn was securely datable, paleographically, to the eleventh century. So Horn could provide a terminus post quem of 1096 and a terminus ante quem of 1207 for the baptistery. A long and contentious dispute about the extent of Florence's antique heritage came to an end.

A Mysterious Photograph
Walter Horn's publication on the Florence baptistery, and his book on St. Gille du Gard, are unquestionably his most significant publications. But even after having read both of these I still had very little idea of him as a person, nor did I have the slightest idea what he actually looked like. Jan Eklund, the manager of the department's Visual Resource Center, was so kind as to send me two pictures, which she had fished out of the drawers of our now almost abandoned slide collection. I was delighted and a little amused. They showed four men in dark suits, standing in front of a late medieval tapestry, protected by a white handrail. The visible parts of this tapestry did not reveal its subject. My art-historically schooled eyes were drawn immediately to the seemingly inconsequential details of the tapestry. What kind of topic would an art historian located in the Bay Area choose as the backdrop for this kind of a self- portrait? At a second glance the men in black seem to have stolen not only the empty chair of a museum-guard, but also a sign: "Please do not touch". This explained Jan's title for the slide—"The Untouchables". So, I was wondering, where were these men when the picture was taken? And which of them was Walter Horn? Writing again to Jan, I inquired if she knew more about the location and persons displayed? Her answer arrived promptly: Walter is the guy with the big grin on his face, second from the left. Furthermore, she provided me with the information that Walter Horn had typed on the frame of the slide: "Four Horseman of the Apocalypse: Rogues Gallery, G.G.I.E., 1939." The two pictures were taken at the Golden Gate International Exposition on Treasure Island. The tapestry was given on loan by the Legion of Honor. The tapestry that Walter Horn and his three friends chose as background for their group portrait was part of a series of four panels that showed "The Redemption of Man", which came originally from the Cathedral at Toledo in Spain. This particular panel shows the climax of the sequence: a magnificent battle rages in front of a crucifixion and is surrounded by allegorical figures. As Adolph Cavallo describes it, "The Christian Knight, as an allegorical representation of the Savior, leads the Virtues forward to victory as Jesus expires on the cross." 		Walter Horn
But, more important for us, the tapestry shows the Four Horseman who are about to release a divine apocalypse upon the world, as it is told by John the Evangelist in the Book of Revelation (6, 1-8). The other information given by Walter Horn on the label—Four Horseman of the Apocalypse—clearly indicates a certain ironical self-identification with these galloping Warriors, who announce the end of time. Furthermore, it is a reference to one of the most important and successful silent movies: The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, an early anti-war-film by Rex Ingram, made in 1921, which recounts the complicated fate of a French-German family. The second part of the inscription on the slide's frame, "Rogues' Gallery", strengthens the theme of self-identification further. A "Rogues' Gallery" describes a police line-up of pictures or photographs of criminals and suspects kept for identification purposes. Though of course it may also be used figuratively by extension for any group of shady characters. These ironic titles that Walter Horn selected for the photograph may thus also give us a taste of his uneasiness in these years, gazing out over the futuristic temporary architecture of the exhibition buildings, lit up at night by dazzling searchlights, in a dramatic display of technological might. For Horn had arrived only a few years earlier as a political refugee from Nazi Germany.

Ironies and Forebodings
These titles, typed on the frame of the slide by Walter Horn, may also help us to understand the strong opposition of German refugees at Berkeley towards the loyalty oath, instituted ten years later by the Regents on April 12th, 1950. The wording of the oath was as follows:

"Having taken the constitutional oath of the office required by the State of California, I hereby formally acknowledge my acceptance of the position and salary named, and also state that I am not a member of the Communist Party or any other organization which advocates the overthrow of the Government by force or violence, and that I have no commitments in conflict with my responsibilities with respect to impartial scholarship and free pursuit of truth. I understand that the foregoing statement is a condition of my employment and a consideration of payment of my salary."

Walter Horn signed it under protest. As Ernst Kantorowicz, author of the famous study The King's Two Bodies and a nonsigner of the loyalty oath, later put it, Walter Horn did so because "he shared the fate of hundreds of colleagues, highly respectable and upright men, who for the sake of their families and for lack of economic independence could not afford to hold out to the last." Ernst Kantorowicz, who had taught at Berkeley since 1939, was dismissed from the university—with 30 other colleagues— and moved to teach at Princeton. Kantorowicz published Walter Horn's letter of protest from August 23rd 1950 to illustrate the grave conflict of conscience and economic coercion to which, after fifteen months of pressure, Horn had finally to yield. I conclude my account by quoting from the letter of protest written by Walter Horn:

"I have set forth as one of my essential reasons for opposing the oath and its contractual equivalent the fact that their imposition has coerced, under the threat of dismissal, hundreds of honorable men and women to lend their signatures to a form of employment which they consider detrimental to the welfare of the University and an insult to the academic profession at large. It was in avoidance of pressures of this type that I left Germany in 1938 and came to this country. And it was in the desire of contributing to the eradication of such methods that I volunteered during the last war to take up arms against the country of my birth."