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Geissler (Heinrich) Papers
2001.M.9
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Contributing Institution: Special Collections
Title: Heinrich Geissler papers
Creator: Krumpper, Hans, approximately 1570-1634
Creator: Geissler, Heinrich
Creator: Schade, Werner
Creator: Thöne, Friedrich
Identifier/Call Number: 2001.M.9
Physical Description: 29.24 Linear Feet(75 boxes)
Date (inclusive): 1857-1996, bulk 1960-1990
Abstract: The archive represents a lifetime of scholarship by the German art historian and curator Heinrich Geissler, who devoted his
scholarly career to the study and attribution of sixteenth and seventeenth century drawing in German-speaking regions of Central
Europe. It contains research material leading to Geissler's groundbreaking exibition
Zeichnung in Deutschland deutsche Zeichner 1540-1640, held between December 1979 and February 1980 at the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, and the publication of the exhibition catalog,
as well as unpublished material compiled for ten more years after the exhibition. Extensive files on individual artists are
arranged preserving Geissler's original filing system by region or city. Besides a wealth of study photographs and copious
notes, there is correspondence with art experts, and card indexes of artists and drawings in private and public collections.
Also present are research materials Geissler inherited from another German scholar, Friedrich Thöne, including Thöne's unpublished
manuscript "Die deutsche Meisterzeichung."
Physical Location: Request access to the physical materials described in this inventory through the
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Language of Material: Collection material is in German.
Scope and Content of Collection
The archive represents a lifetime of scholarship by the German art historian and museum curator Heinrich Geissler, who devoted
his career to the study and attribution of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century drawing in the German-speaking regions of Central
Europe, most of which were part of the Holy Roman Empire. The archive contains a wealth of research material leading to Geissler's
groundbreaking exhibition
Zeichnung in Deutschland deutsche Zeichner 1540-1640, held between December 1979 and February 1980 at the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, as well as unpublished research material that
he continued to compile for ten more years following the exibition. While Geissler's extensive two-volume catalog of that
exhibition is considered a handbook for scholars of late Renaissance and early Baroque German drawing, it only represents
a fraction of the images present in this archive.
The archive contains a wealth of study photographs, notes, and printed matter; card indexes; Geissler's correspondence as
curator at the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart; and his collection of annotated offprints of articles from periodicals and other publications.
The photographic files are enriched by materials that are interfiled with the photographs, including notes, clippings from
auction catalogs and art journals, offprints, and correspondence with scholars, dealers, and collectors. The original location
of all items in the archive was maintained in order to preserve the scholarly significance of Geissler's innovative filing
system.
The archive includes research material he inherited from another German scholar, Friedrich Thöne. Present is Thöne's correspondence,
contact sheets reproducing drawings and other artworks from Thöne's photographic archive, and Thöne's unpublished manuscript
"Die deutsche Meisterzeichung." Thöne's prewar correspondence is filed with Series I.A. under Ingolstadt with research material
concerning Caspar Freisinger (box 23). Thöne's postwar correspondence is filed with Series I.B. with research material concerning
the Bocksberger family (box 36). Contact sheets of Thöne's photographic archive, along with corresponding notes by Geissler
are filed in Series II. (box 46). Geissler's correspondence regarding Thöne's archive and Thöne's unpublished manuscript
"Die deutsche Meisterzeichnung" are filed in Series IV.C. (box 69).
Series I contains files on individual artists. Comprising more then a half of the archive, it forms the most extensive part.
The arrangement follows Geissler's original geographic filing order by region or city. The files vary in extent but most include
study photographs, annotated printed matter, and notes. Often inserted are letters to Geissler from art historians and art
collectors as well as carbon copies of letters sent by Geissler. The majority of the artists are from German-speaking regions
of Europe, but also included are artists from the Netherlands and Italy who travelled to Austria, Germany, Poland, or Switzerland.
Especially extensive is the research material on Hans Bocksberger the Elder and other members of the Bocksberger family, Johann
Matthias Kager, Hans Krumpper, Hans (Johannes) Rottenhammer the Elder and his sons, and Lambert and Friedrich Sustris.
Series II comprises seven topical groups and two files of unsorted photographs and other research papers. The topical groups
include photographs, notes and various papers on paintings of Italian and Spanish origin; the Fryszmann collection; and the
Welt im Umbruch and
Prag um 1600 exhibitions. Also included here are photographs of artworks Geissler considered misattributed or could not identify.
Series III includes Geissler's card indexes of drawings in museums and private collections, and a card index of artists. These
meticulously organized indexes are cross-referenced and refer to thousands of drawings, many more as documented in the first
series. A separate group Geissler originally filed here are his notes, letters received, and transcripts of sixteenth-century
documents related to his research on the court painter Christoph Schwarz.
Series IV includes Geissler's professional correspondence as the curator of prints and drawings at Staatsgalerie Stuttgart;
correspondence concerning the exhibition
Zeichnung in Deutschland deutsche Zeichner 1540-1640; and correspondence concerning the archive of art historian Friedrich Thöne. Also filed with this series is a manuscript
by Eliška Fučiková, and Thöne's unpublished manuscript "Die deutsche Meisterzeichnung."
Series V consists predominantly of offprints from scholarly art magazines, but complete issues of some periodicals and a few
small monographic publications are also present. Some of the articles are annotated by Geissler and some bear dedications
from the authors to Geissler. Occasionally inserted are letters Geissler received from the authors, and his notes.
Heinrich Geissler papers, 1857-1996, bulk 1960-1990, The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, Accession no. 2001.M.9.
http://hdl.handle.net/10020/cifa2001m9
Open for use by qualified researchers.
Biographical / Historical Note
The German art historian Heinrich Geissler (1927-1990) spent most of his professional career at the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart,
becoming chief curator of prints and drawings in 1983. A student of Kurt Bauch, he completed his dissertation on the Bavarian
court painter, Christoph Schwarz, in 1960. The significance of his scholarship must be seen within the art historical context
of the post-war reevaluation of what until then, and especially under the Nazi regime, was considered German art. This substantial
reconsideration had a profound impact on Geissler's generation and without it his groundbreaking exhibition
Zeichnung in Deutschland deutsche Zeichner 1540-1640, held at the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart between December 1979 and February 1980, would likely have not taken place. After the
collapse of National Socialism, art historians were in a sense "free" to assess the artistic production in the many German-speaking
regions of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Central Europe as a totality, regardless of where the artists active in those
places were born. Seeing artists in terms of where they produced their works, rather than in terms of their national origin,
enabled the post-war scholars to rethink the history of late Renaissance and early Baroque German art. In addition, after
World War II, German museums were generally encouraged not to organize exhibitions promoting only great German masters such
as Albrecht Dürer. As a scholar and museum curator, Geissler focused on artworks by lesser-known artists from a period that
was still viewed as a time of decline after the heyday of German Renaissance art of the early sixteenth century, when the
"great German masters" such as Dürer, Lucas Cranach the Elder, Lucas Cranach the Younger, Hans Holbein the Elder, and Hans
Holbein the Younger were active.
Geissler devoted his scholarship to a period that was characterized by German artists travelling and adopting styles from
a variety of different regions and that also was marked by non-German artists who travelled throughout the German-speaking
world of the Holy Roman Empire. It was his innovative and systematic approach towards organizing his research files that opened
the way to new scholarship. Geissler arranged the materials geographically from North to South into separate groups for the
many centers of art production, and included not only artwork by artists who were schooled and active locally, but also artwork
by artists travelling from other German-speaking regions or from other countries, especially from the Netherlands and Italy.
If artists travelled and produced art in various places, he filed their artistic output in places where it was produced. Within
each center of art production, he organized the material chronologically and by category of the commissioned art. Such a systematic
approach made it possible not only to trace stylistic and iconographic changes in the artworks of travelling artists and to
define the specific style of locally produced art, but also to document interregional and international contacts between the
artists and to study the dynamics of art production resulting from such exchanges. Furthermore, by establishing the specifically
local characteristics of art production centers, Geissler contributed to the attribution of numerous anonymous and undated
drawings.
Thus, by filing the artwork geographically, regardless of the artists' regional origins or nationality, Geissler changed the
established definition of the art historical term "German drawing" from a term based on national identity to the geographically
defined term "drawing from Germany."
Geissler's major publication, the extensive two-volume catalog of the 1979-1980 exhibition
Zeichnung in Deutschland deutsche Zeichner 1540-1640, follows the arrangement of his research files and is considered a handbook for scholars of late Renaissance and early Baroque
German drawing. Geissler also published numerous articles. The bibliography of his writings was included in the 1991 publication
Erwerbungen der Graphischen Sammlung Staatsgalerie Stuttgart 1983-1990 (pages 181-184); and was supplemented in 2003 by Hans-Martin Kaulbach in his article on Geissler's archive in the
Kunstchronik (Feb. 2003, Heft 2).
Organized in five series: Series I. Artist files, 1857-1996, undated; Series II. Other research files, 1944-1992, undated;
Series III. Card catalogs, undated; Series IV. Correspondence, 1938-1990, undated; Series V. Offprints and manuscripts, 1886-1992,
undated.
Acquired in 2001.
The archive was first processed in 2001 by Richard Zwies. Isabella Zuralski reprocessed the archive in 2014 and wrote the
finding aid.
Subjects and Indexing Terms
Artists -- Holy Roman Empire
Gelatin silver prints
Drawing -- 17th century -- Expertising
Art historians -- Germany -- Correspondence
Drawing, Renaissance -- Holy Roman Empire
Drawing, Baroque -- Holy Roman Empire
Drawing, German
Drawing -- 16th century -- Expertising
Photographs, Original
Contact sheets
Color transparencies
Color photographs
Black-and-white photographs
Art historians -- Archives
Art museum curators -- Archives
Kager, Johann Matthias, 1575?-1634
Rottenhammer, Hans, 1564-1625
Bocksberger, Hans, active 16th century
Schwarz, Christoph, approximately 1548-1592
Sustris, Lambert, approximately 1515-approximately 1568
Sustris, Friedrich, approximately 1540-1599