Collection Guide
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Eitner (Lorenz) papers
SC1519
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Table of contents
Language of Material:
English
Contributing Institution:
Department of Special Collections and University Archives
Title: Lorenz Eitner
Creator:
Eitner, Lorenz.
Identifier/Call Number: SC1519
Physical Description:
39 Linear Feet
Date (inclusive): 1950-2009
Physical Location: Special Collections and University
Archives materials are stored offsite and must be paged 36-48 hours in advance. For more
information on paging collections, see the department's website
Physical Location: Special Collections and University
Archives materials are stored offsite and must be paged at least 36 hours in
advance.
While Special Collections is the owner of the physical and digital items, permission to
examine collection materials is not an authorization to publish. These materials are made
available for use in research, teaching, and private study. Any transmission or reproduction
beyond that allowed by fair use requires permission from the owners of rights, heir(s) or
assigns. See: http://library.stanford.edu/spc/using-collections/permission-publish
[identification of item], Lorenz Eitner papers (SC1519). Department of Special Collections
and University Archives, Stanford University Libraries, Stanford, Calif.
Lorenz Eitner, an expert in 18th- and 19th-century European art and renowned for his work
on Théodore Géricault, was born Aug. 27, 1919, in Brno, Czechoslovakia, of Austrian parents.
His mother belonged to the Thonet family, which had originated the bentwood furniture-making
process. His father worked in the business. Eitner was educated in Frankfurt and Berlin. The
family moved to Brussels about the time the Nazis came to power, and immigrated to South
Carolina in 1935.
He earned a bachelor's degree from Duke University, where he graduated summa cum laude in
1940. He was drafted two years later. He eventually became a U.S. intelligence officer with
the Office of Strategic Services and was stationed in Washington, London, Paris and
Salzburg. He was head of the research section in the Office of Chief Prosecution for the
Nuremberg Trials. He met his future wife, Trudi von Kathrein, in Austria; she had been the
secretary to one of the leaders in the Austrian resistance.
After the trials, Eitner returned to the United States to earn his MFA and PhD degrees from
Princeton (1948 and 1952), with a dissertation on Géricault, which was published by
Princeton University Press in 1952. After 14 years at the University of Minnesota, Eitner
came to Stanford University in 1963 to be chairman of its art department and director of its
museum. By the time he retired in 1989, he had recruited a nationally prominent faculty of
artists and art historians, revamped and expanded the curriculum, added PhD and MFA programs
and created a highly ranked museum.
Eitner was a Fulbright Fellow (1952-53) in Brussels and a Guggenheim Fellow (1956-57) in
Munich. He received a National Endowment for the Humanities Research Grant, and both a
$10,000 Mitchell Prize for the History of Art and a Charles Rufus Morey Book Award of the
College Art Association for his book Géricault: His Life and Work (1983). He was elected to
the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1988. He won Stanford's Gores Award for
excellence in teaching in 1986. He was awarded the Gold Medal for Meritorious Service to the
Austrian Republic in 1990. The award is one of the highest decorations Austria bestows.
The Osgood Hooker Professor in Fine Arts, Emeritus, Eitner died March 11, 2009 at his home
of a heart attack. He was 89.
Excerpted from
'https://news.stanford.edu/news/2009/march18/eitner-031809.html
The collection includes Stanford Museum and Art Department correspondence, lecture notes
(boxes 1-8), publications drafts, research files, and unpublished research projects (boxes
13-15 and 24-39).
In addition, the Géricault files (boxes 9-12 and 16-23) contain, among other things,
Eitner's responses to requests for authentication of paintings and drawings (works often
previously unknown, or newly discovered), along with the reference material he used to back
up his decisions. Not infrequently he discovered works that were intentional forgeries or
accidental misattributions. The photos in those files are key to his evaluations, and often
are unique - i.e. not available online, for example, photos of artwork in private
collections sent to him only.
Subjects and Indexing Terms
Art.
Museums.
Stanford University