Henry Thode

Henry Thode, actually Henry Thode ( born January 13, 1857 in Dresden, † November 19, 1920 in Copenhagen ) was a German art historian.

Life

Thode came from a respected North German family. He went to school in Görlitz and then studied law in Leipzig. Later he changed the subject and dealt with art history in Vienna. The following doctoral and habilitation.

On a study trip through Italy, he met Richard Wagner know in Venice, where he met on his stepdaughter. In 1886 he married Daniela von Bülow, the eldest daughter of Cosima Wagner from her first marriage with Hans von Bülow.

For two years, he became in 1889 director of the Städel Art Institute in Frankfurt am Main. Where he met the painter Hans Thoma, with whom verbandt him a long-standing friendship. Later, a call came as a professor at the University of Heidelberg.

In 1910 he acquired the Villa Cargnacco in Gardone on Lake Garda. In the same year he met his second wife, the Danish violinist Hertha Tegner, whom he married in 1914 after divorcing Daniela von Bülow. During the First World War, the villa was confiscated and later transferred as a gift to the State of Italy Gabriele D' Annunzio, who transformed it into the monumental complex " Vittoriale degli Italiani ".

By the expropriation Thode also lost his extensive library, art collection and unpublished manuscripts. The couple initially went back to Germany and then to Copenhagen, where Thode died down in 1920.

The two focal points of his art historical works are the Italian Renaissance and the German art around 1900. Richard Wagner and Hans Thoma stood for him for the German ideal of art. Because of his racial-ideological approaches that have been exploited by the Nazis, the scientific work Thode has been recognized in the present little.