The Wolfgang Born – Kondakov Institute correspondence : art history, freedom, and the rising fear in the 1930s

Abstract

Between 1931 and 1934, German artist and art historian Wolfgang Born exchanged several letters with the Kondakov Institute in Prague. Written during the troubled years of rising nationalism in Europe, these letters tell both part of Born's story and, indirectly, of the Russian émigré institute itself. Born's life story, until his forced emigration, allows us to question the role of culture at large when the society is under invasive political threat. It shows a trajectory from a vast, interconnected, intellectual milieu towards a fragmented world of émigré scholars. Above all, this epistolary exchange highlights how similar questions on the origins of artistic forms arose in humanistic milieus across Europe. It also illustrates how the rising totalitarian regimes attempted to shoehorn those inquiries into propagandistic, racist narratives.