Introduction: Warburg's Library and Its LegacyGrafton, Anthony; Hamburger, Jeffrey F.; Mack, Peter; Baxandall, Michael; Sears, Elizabeth; Didi-Huberman, Georges; Ginzburg, Carlo; Koerner, Joseph Leo; Wood, Christopher S.; Kraye, Jill; Steinberg, Michael P.; van Eck, Caroline; Anderson, Christy; Kaufmann, Thomas DaCosta; Crossley, Paul; Stafford, Barbara Maria
2012 Common Knowledge
doi: 10.1215/0961754X-1456845
Abstract In this introduction to a Common Knowledge special issue on the Warburg Institute, the authors argue that the Institute remains today — as it has been, in different forms, for almost a century — one of Europe's central institutions for the study of cultural history. At once a rich and uniquely organized library, a center for doctoral and postdoctoral research, and a teaching faculty, the Institute was first envisioned by Aby Warburg, a pioneering historian of art and culture from a wealthy Jewish family in Hamburg. Warburg rejected the traditional view that the classical tradition was a simple, purely rational Greek creation, inherited by modern Europe. He argued that it was as much Mesopotamian as Greek in origin, as at home in the Islamic as in the European world, and as often irrational as rational in its content — and on the basis of this rich vision he devised brilliant new interpretations of medieval and Renaissance symbols and ideas. Warburg's chosen associate Fritz Saxl put his creation on a firm institutional base, first in Hamburg and then, after a narrow escape from the Nazi regime, in London. For all the changes the Institute has undergone over the decades since then, it continues to ask the questions that Warburg was the first to raise and to build on the methods that he created. CiteULike Connotea Delicious Digg Facebook Google+ Reddit Technorati Twitter What's this? « Previous | Next Article » Table of Contents This Article doi: 10.1215/0961754X-1456845 Common Knowledge 2012 Volume 18, Number 1: 1-16 » Abstract Full Text (PDF) Classifications The Warburg Institute A Special Issue on the Library and Its Readers Services Email this article to a colleague Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Similar articles in this journal Similar articles in Web of Science Download to citation manager Citing Articles Load citing article information Citing articles via Web of Science Google Scholar Articles by Grafton, A. Articles by Stafford, B. M. Related Content Load related web page information Social Bookmarking CiteULike Connotea Delicious Digg Facebook Google+ Reddit Technorati Twitter What's this? Current Issue Winter 2012, 18 (1) Alert me to new issues of Common Knowledge Duke University Press Journals ONLINE About the Journal Editorial Board Submission Guidelines Permissions Advertising Indexing / Abstracting Privacy Policy Subscriptions Library Resource Center Activation / Acct. Mgr. E-mail Alerts Help Feedback © 2012 by Duke University Press Print ISSN: 0961-754X Online ISSN: 1538-4578 var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www."); document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E")); var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-5666725-1"); pageTracker._trackPageview();
RETURNING TO THE LIBRARYMack, Peter
2012 Common Knowledge
doi: 10.1215/0961754X-1456854
Abstract This essay reflects on the different uses that its author has made of the Warburg Institute Library, first as a student, resident in the Library for two years, then as a visitor on day-long research trips from Warwick, and most recently as director of the Institute. After describing how the Library shelves can be accessed now electronically and discussing the arrangements of the opening sections of the fourth floor (history) and the second floor (comparative literature, poetics, and rhetoric), the essay concludes with comments on the future of the Library. CiteULike Connotea Delicious Digg Facebook Google+ Reddit Technorati Twitter What's this? « Previous | Next Article » Table of Contents This Article doi: 10.1215/0961754X-1456854 Common Knowledge 2012 Volume 18, Number 1: 17-21 » Abstract Full Text (PDF) Classifications The Warburg Institute A Special Issue on the Library and Its Readers Services Email this article to a colleague Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Similar articles in this journal Similar articles in Web of Science Download to citation manager Citing Articles Load citing article information Citing articles via Web of Science Google Scholar Articles by Mack, P. Related Content Load related web page information Social Bookmarking CiteULike Connotea Delicious Digg Facebook Google+ Reddit Technorati Twitter What's this? Current Issue Winter 2012, 18 (1) Alert me to new issues of Common Knowledge Duke University Press Journals ONLINE About the Journal Editorial Board Submission Guidelines Permissions Advertising Indexing / Abstracting Privacy Policy Subscriptions Library Resource Center Activation / Acct. Mgr. E-mail Alerts Help Feedback © 2012 by Duke University Press Print ISSN: 0961-754X Online ISSN: 1538-4578 var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www."); document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E")); var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-5666725-1"); pageTracker._trackPageview();
“IS DURABILITY ITSELF NOT ALSO A MORAL QUALITY?”Baxandall, Michael
2012 Common Knowledge
doi: 10.1215/0961754X-1456863
Abstract Centering on his relationship with Gertrud Bing from 1958 until her death in 1964 — as well as, to a lesser extent, on his relationship with Ernst Gombrich — the author recalls his informal induction during those years into a tradition of thought and an intellectual climate that Aby Warburg had embodied in the Institute and Library that he founded in Hamburg. The Institute is described as existing, during the late 1950s and early 1960s in London, less as a formal institution than as the interaction of some two dozen émigrés with what the author describes as “the intention of the books” and the Library's “frame of mind.” The essay — which is a somewhat revised excerpt from the author's memoir Episodes: A Memorybook (2010) — goes on to detail various habits of classification in the Warburg Library's arrangement and to show how these have entailed assumptions about how the human world works. CiteULike Connotea Delicious Digg Facebook Google+ Reddit Technorati Twitter What's this? « Previous | Next Article » Table of Contents This Article doi: 10.1215/0961754X-1456863 Common Knowledge 2012 Volume 18, Number 1: 22-31 » Abstract Full Text (PDF) Classifications The Warburg Institute A Special Issue on the Library and Its Readers Services Email this article to a colleague Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Similar articles in this journal Similar articles in Web of Science Download to citation manager Citing Articles Load citing article information Citing articles via Web of Science Google Scholar Articles by Baxandall, M. Related Content Load related web page information Social Bookmarking CiteULike Connotea Delicious Digg Facebook Google+ Reddit Technorati Twitter What's this? Current Issue Winter 2012, 18 (1) Alert me to new issues of Common Knowledge Duke University Press Journals ONLINE About the Journal Editorial Board Submission Guidelines Permissions Advertising Indexing / Abstracting Privacy Policy Subscriptions Library Resource Center Activation / Acct. Mgr. E-mail Alerts Help Feedback © 2012 by Duke University Press Print ISSN: 0961-754X Online ISSN: 1538-4578 var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www."); document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E")); var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-5666725-1"); pageTracker._trackPageview();
WARBURG INSTITUTE ARCHIVE, GENERAL CORRESPONDENCESears, Elizabeth
2012 Common Knowledge
doi: 10.1215/0961754X-1456872
Abstract Aby Warburg's Nachlass , the heart of the Warburg Institute Archive, is complemented by other large holdings which are no less remarkable. Quietly accumulating over the decades, still only provisionally cataloged, the vast corpus of letters filed as “General Correspondence” reveals itself to be a spectacularly rich resource for twentieth-century cultural and intellectual history. The secretariat was efficient: most everything was kept, letters received as well as copies of letters sent, meaning that the visitor to Woburn Square can sit in a single archive, read both sides of exchanges, and follow conversations over years — a rare circumstance. The academic staff maintained contact with an impressively large number of internationally active scholars, working in many fields, and the letters are characteristically substantive. In this article, the author indicates how a book she is presently writing, Warburg Circles, 1929 – 1964 , has been shaped by these archival holdings. She offers a brief history of the consolidated archive now located on the fourth floor of the Warburg Institute, a story that throws light on recent scholarly trends; and she gives examples of the sorts of historical insight that may be gained from this corpus of correspondence. CiteULike Connotea Delicious Digg Facebook Google+ Reddit Technorati Twitter What's this? « Previous | Next Article » Table of Contents This Article doi: 10.1215/0961754X-1456872 Common Knowledge 2012 Volume 18, Number 1: 32-49 » Abstract Full Text (PDF) Classifications The Warburg Institute A Special Issue on the Library and Its Readers Services Email this article to a colleague Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Similar articles in this journal Similar articles in Web of Science Download to citation manager Citing Articles Load citing article information Citing articles via Web of Science Google Scholar Articles by Sears, E. Related Content Load related web page information Social Bookmarking CiteULike Connotea Delicious Digg Facebook Google+ Reddit Technorati Twitter What's this? Current Issue Winter 2012, 18 (1) Alert me to new issues of Common Knowledge Duke University Press Journals ONLINE About the Journal Editorial Board Submission Guidelines Permissions Advertising Indexing / Abstracting Privacy Policy Subscriptions Library Resource Center Activation / Acct. Mgr. E-mail Alerts Help Feedback © 2012 by Duke University Press Print ISSN: 0961-754X Online ISSN: 1538-4578 var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www."); document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E")); var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-5666725-1"); pageTracker._trackPageview();
WARBURG'S HAUNTED HOUSEDidi-Huberman, Georges
2012 Common Knowledge
doi: 10.1215/0961754X-1456881
Abstract This article deals with the genesis of the Bilderatlas Mnemosyne , composed by Aby Warburg between 1927 and 1929 as a response to the Great War. His reaction to the war was both pathetic (even pathological) and epistemic (which is to say, methodological). If the history of culture amounted to a great psychomachia of the astra (concepts) and the monstra (chaos), as Warburg said, the war was for him a direct test of his theory (or Kulturwissenschaft ). It should be no surprise, then, that between 1914 and 1918 he should assemble a large iconographic collection of materials from and about the war. This essay compares that collection and its theoretical foundations with similar projects of Warburg's contemporaries in France and Germany (notably those of the historians Lucien Febvre and Marc Bloch). CiteULike Connotea Delicious Digg Facebook Google+ Reddit Technorati Twitter What's this? « Previous | Next Article » Table of Contents This Article doi: 10.1215/0961754X-1456881 Common Knowledge 2012 Volume 18, Number 1: 50-78 » Abstract Full Text (PDF) Classifications The Warburg Institute A Special Issue on the Library and Its Readers Services Email this article to a colleague Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Similar articles in this journal Similar articles in Web of Science Download to citation manager Citing Articles Load citing article information Citing articles via Web of Science Google Scholar Articles by Didi-Huberman, G. Related Content Load related web page information Social Bookmarking CiteULike Connotea Delicious Digg Facebook Google+ Reddit Technorati Twitter What's this? Current Issue Winter 2012, 18 (1) Alert me to new issues of Common Knowledge Duke University Press Journals ONLINE About the Journal Editorial Board Submission Guidelines Permissions Advertising Indexing / Abstracting Privacy Policy Subscriptions Library Resource Center Activation / Acct. Mgr. E-mail Alerts Help Feedback © 2012 by Duke University Press Print ISSN: 0961-754X Online ISSN: 1538-4578 var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www."); document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E")); var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-5666725-1"); pageTracker._trackPageview();
UNE MACHINE À PENSERGinzburg, Carlo
2012 Common Knowledge
doi: 10.1215/0961754X-1456890
Abstract The author describes his research experience in the 1960s, as an apprentice historian, in the Warburg Library. His work on witchcraft trials in early modern Italy, he argues, was deeply affected by the Library's unique character. Aby Warburg's law of the “good neighbour” (the book we need is placed next to the one we are looking for) is illustrated through a specific example: the encounter with a forgotten tract dealing with some anomalous Bavarian witchcraft trials — a book that would have been very difficult (if not impossible) to come across anywhere but Warburg's Library. CiteULike Connotea Delicious Digg Facebook Google+ Reddit Technorati Twitter What's this? « Previous | Next Article » Table of Contents This Article doi: 10.1215/0961754X-1456890 Common Knowledge 2012 Volume 18, Number 1: 79-85 » Abstract Full Text (PDF) Classifications The Warburg Institute A Special Issue on the Library and Its Readers Services Email this article to a colleague Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Similar articles in this journal Similar articles in Web of Science Download to citation manager Citing Articles Load citing article information Citing articles via Web of Science Google Scholar Articles by Ginzburg, C. Related Content Load related web page information Social Bookmarking CiteULike Connotea Delicious Digg Facebook Google+ Reddit Technorati Twitter What's this? Current Issue Winter 2012, 18 (1) Alert me to new issues of Common Knowledge Duke University Press Journals ONLINE About the Journal Editorial Board Submission Guidelines Permissions Advertising Indexing / Abstracting Privacy Policy Subscriptions Library Resource Center Activation / Acct. Mgr. E-mail Alerts Help Feedback © 2012 by Duke University Press Print ISSN: 0961-754X Online ISSN: 1538-4578 var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www."); document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E")); var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-5666725-1"); pageTracker._trackPageview();
WRITING RITUALSKoerner, Joseph Leo
2012 Common Knowledge
doi: 10.1215/0961754X-1456899
Abstract This essay finds its departure point in a title page that Aby Warburg (1866 – 1929) drafted for his lecture on the Pueblo Indians. Through the labyrinthine thought pathways evidenced by this much-amended and overwritten typescript, it explores the relation between reason and mania in Warburg's thought specifically and in humanistic scholarship more generally. Composed in 1923 while Warburg was committed to the Bellevue mental sanatorium in Kreuzlingen, Switzerland, the title page, and the lecture that it attempts to name, belong to their author's profound and influential meditations on the defensive function of rituals and symbols. More practically, the lecture was intended, by its successful drafting and delivery before an audience of inmates, doctors, and professional colleagues, to prove Warburg's sanity and secure his release. Through an investigation of the outbreak and symptoms of Warburg's psychosis, which uncannily prefigure real historical terrors, this article represents the lecture as (in Warburg's words) a powerful “seismograph” of the European soul. Placing us at Warburg's writing desk at the pivotal moment of the author's cure-by-writing, the title page also illuminates the legacy of Warburg's Library, today at the core of the Warburg Institute in London, since the crisis that the page documents — larger than Warburg's personal one — still lies at the heart of humanistic scholarship as it attempts to grasp the essence of what it means to be human. CiteULike Connotea Delicious Digg Facebook Google+ Reddit Technorati Twitter What's this? « Previous | Next Article » Table of Contents This Article doi: 10.1215/0961754X-1456899 Common Knowledge 2012 Volume 18, Number 1: 86-105 » Abstract Full Text (PDF) Classifications The Warburg Institute A Special Issue on the Library and Its Readers Services Email this article to a colleague Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Similar articles in this journal Similar articles in Web of Science Download to citation manager Citing Articles Load citing article information Citing articles via Web of Science Google Scholar Articles by Koerner, J. L. Related Content Load related web page information Social Bookmarking CiteULike Connotea Delicious Digg Facebook Google+ Reddit Technorati Twitter What's this? Current Issue Winter 2012, 18 (1) Alert me to new issues of Common Knowledge Duke University Press Journals ONLINE About the Journal Editorial Board Submission Guidelines Permissions Advertising Indexing / Abstracting Privacy Policy Subscriptions Library Resource Center Activation / Acct. Mgr. E-mail Alerts Help Feedback © 2012 by Duke University Press Print ISSN: 0961-754X Online ISSN: 1538-4578 var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www."); document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E")); var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-5666725-1"); pageTracker._trackPageview();
DROMENONWood, Christopher S.
2012 Common Knowledge
doi: 10.1215/0961754X-1456908
Abstract “ Dromenon ” was and is the rubric governing the fourth and final floor of Aby Warburg's Library. The word means “the thing done,” “the action,” and in the context of the Greek Mysteries referred to rites, as opposed to words and images. In the Warburg Library in London, dromenon covers law, social institutions, folklore, and customs, among which Warburg located politics. This essay is in large part a reflection on what Warburg understood by politics and its inherent conflict with libraries. For Warburg, both politics and libraries were ways of managing time; and the basic irony underscored in this article is that academic politics in the UK is now threatening the Warburg Library's continued existence. CiteULike Connotea Delicious Digg Facebook Google+ Reddit Technorati Twitter What's this? « Previous | Next Article » Table of Contents This Article doi: 10.1215/0961754X-1456908 Common Knowledge 2012 Volume 18, Number 1: 106-116 » Abstract Full Text (PDF) Classifications The Warburg Institute A Special Issue on the Library and Its Readers Services Email this article to a colleague Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Similar articles in this journal Similar articles in Web of Science Download to citation manager Citing Articles Load citing article information Citing articles via Web of Science Google Scholar Articles by Wood, C. S. Related Content Load related web page information Social Bookmarking CiteULike Connotea Delicious Digg Facebook Google+ Reddit Technorati Twitter What's this? Current Issue Winter 2012, 18 (1) Alert me to new issues of Common Knowledge Duke University Press Journals ONLINE About the Journal Editorial Board Submission Guidelines Permissions Advertising Indexing / Abstracting Privacy Policy Subscriptions Library Resource Center Activation / Acct. Mgr. E-mail Alerts Help Feedback © 2012 by Duke University Press Print ISSN: 0961-754X Online ISSN: 1538-4578 var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www."); document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E")); var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-5666725-1"); pageTracker._trackPageview();
UNPACKING THE WARBURG LIBRARYKraye, Jill
2012 Common Knowledge
doi: 10.1215/0961754X-1456917
Abstract Against the backdrop of Walter Benjamin's famous essay, “Unpacking My Library” (1931), this article, by the Librarian of the Warburg Institute, tells the story of the many times that the Warburg Library has been packed and unpacked. First it was the private collection of Aby Warburg, later a public institution, originally in Hamburg (in the 1920s) and then in London from 1933 to the present. This essay also explores the various ways in which books have been — and continue to be — acquired by the Warburg Library, including publication (both individual and institutional), donation, recommendation, and purchase. Each of these methods is not only discussed but also examined in light of Benjamin's account of the acquisition of his own library. Moreover, Benjamin's view that collections lose their meaning when they cease to be personal is challenged by the example of the Warburg Library, which has been transformed from a private collection containing around 15,000 books in 1911 to a public institution today housing over 350,000 volumes, while still maintaining its unique character. CiteULike Connotea Delicious Digg Facebook Google+ Reddit Technorati Twitter What's this? « Previous | Next Article » Table of Contents This Article doi: 10.1215/0961754X-1456917 Common Knowledge 2012 Volume 18, Number 1: 117-127 » Abstract Full Text (PDF) Classifications The Warburg Institute A Special Issue on the Library and Its Readers Services Email this article to a colleague Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Similar articles in this journal Similar articles in Web of Science Download to citation manager Citing Articles Load citing article information Citing articles via Web of Science Google Scholar Articles by Kraye, J. Related Content Load related web page information Social Bookmarking CiteULike Connotea Delicious Digg Facebook Google+ Reddit Technorati Twitter What's this? Current Issue Winter 2012, 18 (1) Alert me to new issues of Common Knowledge Duke University Press Journals ONLINE About the Journal Editorial Board Submission Guidelines Permissions Advertising Indexing / Abstracting Privacy Policy Subscriptions Library Resource Center Activation / Acct. Mgr. E-mail Alerts Help Feedback © 2012 by Duke University Press Print ISSN: 0961-754X Online ISSN: 1538-4578 var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www."); document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E")); var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-5666725-1"); pageTracker._trackPageview();
THE LAW OF THE GOOD NEIGHBORSteinberg, Michael P.
2012 Common Knowledge
doi: 10.1215/0961754X-1456926
Abstract This essay portrays the “law of the good neighbor” as the principle of the Warburg Library's collections — as the argument for their expansion and coherence, as well as the principle governing the scholarly practice inspired by the Warburg Institute and “Warburg school” of cultural analysis. The essay includes a tribute to Anne Marie Meyer (1919 – 2004), Warburg scholar and long-time affiliate of the Institute, with special emphasis on the question that she uniquely raised: “Exactly what was the relation between (Aby) Warburg's research on paganism in the Renaissance and his meditations and fears about Judaism (and Jews)?” CiteULike Connotea Delicious Digg Facebook Google+ Reddit Technorati Twitter What's this? « Previous | Next Article » Table of Contents This Article doi: 10.1215/0961754X-1456926 Common Knowledge 2012 Volume 18, Number 1: 128-133 » Abstract Full Text (PDF) Classifications The Warburg Institute A Special Issue on the Library and Its Readers Services Email this article to a colleague Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Similar articles in this journal Similar articles in Web of Science Download to citation manager Citing Articles Load citing article information Citing articles via Web of Science Google Scholar Articles by Steinberg, M. P. Related Content Load related web page information Social Bookmarking CiteULike Connotea Delicious Digg Facebook Google+ Reddit Technorati Twitter What's this? Current Issue Winter 2012, 18 (1) Alert me to new issues of Common Knowledge Duke University Press Journals ONLINE About the Journal Editorial Board Submission Guidelines Permissions Advertising Indexing / Abstracting Privacy Policy Subscriptions Library Resource Center Activation / Acct. Mgr. E-mail Alerts Help Feedback © 2012 by Duke University Press Print ISSN: 0961-754X Online ISSN: 1538-4578 var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www."); document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E")); var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-5666725-1"); pageTracker._trackPageview();