Sidelight on an unwilling grey eminence -Schlosser as 'Schlüsselfigur'

A selection of the papers was published in book form by Mitchell B. Frank and Daniel Adler as German Art History and Scientific Thought by Ashgate in 2012. In the last decade or two of his life he seems by contrast to have made some generalizations apparently difficult to reconcile with his earlier devotion to the particularity of historical sources. Since the "Herr Hofrat"- as he was addressed in the halls of the university and along the Gumpendorfer Strasse - did not save any of his correspondence, and always sought to conceal his individual and personal life behind his publications, the more intimate information about his approach to the growing mountain of information that began to overwhelm later 19th century scholarship can only be gleaned from occasional asides, favorite images, and some of the poetic flights which animate his writing from beginning to end. After completing his studies under Wickhoff and working as curator and director of the Kunsthistorisches Museum for approximately thirty years, Schlosser accepted the chair of art history at the University of Vienna after the premature death of Max Dvorák. Among the most decisive figures in defining the academic subject of the history of art - as I am arguing him to be - Schlosser might possibly be the only one to have identified himself as a subject specialist - a medievalist, and also as a museum curator uncomfortable in a lecture hall.