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William S. Heckscher (1904–1999) was a prominent German art historian and professor of fine art and art history at universities in the United States, Canada, and the Netherlands. ==Early life and education== Wilhelm Sebastian Martin Hugo Heckscher was born in Hamburg, Germany on December 14, 1904. He was the son of Hulda Foerster and Siegfried Heckscher, a lawyer and director of the Hamburg America Line. His maternal grandfather was the astronomer and mathematician Wilhelm Foerster.〔Sears, p. 110–111〕 From 1918 to 1921, the family lived in the Netherlands while Heckscher's father served as the Weimar Republic's ambassador to The Hague;〔Sears, p. 110〕 there, Heckscher enrolled at the Nederlandsch Lyceum. Heckscher pursued his interests in history and Flemish art by spending his off hours studying at the Dutch Royal Library, the Mauritshuis and the Kröller-Müller Museum, but was dismissed from the Lyceum in 1920 for "lack of scholarly potential".〔Sears, p. 114〕 After the family returned to Hamburg, Heckscher attended the Kunstgewerbeschule am Lerchenfeld, but failed a class in ceramics.〔 Having been stymied at furthering his formal art education, at the age of 19 Heckscher returned to The Hague and worked as a portrait painter. He spent months copying panels by Jan van Eyck and Konrad Witz, took informal painting lessons with Ludwig Bartning of the Berlin Academy, and was contracted to work on an anatomical atlas. His portraiture was in demand among Dutch, German, and Belgian patrons; this was his means of support from 1924 to 1930.〔Sears, p. 114–115〕〔Few of his paintings from this period survive, but an exhibition of his later paintings and drawings was held in Durham, North Carolina in 1967. See Bunker, Cameron and Heckscher, William S. "A Catalogue of Drawings and Prints by William S. Heckscher," Allied Arts Center and Durham Art Guild (1967) .〕 Heckscher was commissioned in 1931 to paint a portrait of Gustav Pauli, the director of Kunsthalle Hamburg. While at work in Pauli's office, they were interrupted by a strange little man unknown to Heckscher. The man, apparently a colleague of Pauli, immediately launched into some Dürer problem that was troubling him. The stranger's animated discussion with Pauli left Heckscher astounded at the depth of the man's insight. Intrigued, Heckscher followed Panofsky to his office and all but begged to study under him. Panofsky was thoroughly unimpressed by Heckscher's education—he had never finished high school—but Heckscher persisted, and Panofsky eventually relented, telling him of a program to support gifted students who had not completed high school. Heckscher passed the rigorous examination〔Of the 182 applicants at the time, he was in fact the only student to pass.〕 and was accepted into the University of Hamburg, but was only grudgingly given a seat in the back of Panofsky's seminar.〔Sears, p. 116–117〕 In 1932–1933, Heckscher lived in New York where he worked as Panofsky's assistant. During this time, he enrolled in the Graduate Department of Art History at the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University to study American art history.〔Sorenson〕〔Sears, p. 120〕 Heckscher returned to Germany to continue his studies in 1934. He and his mother were detained by the Gestapo and interrogated for ten days after being accused of having pacifist connections.〔Sears, p. 110〕 He received his PhD from the University of Hamburg in 1936. Panofsky had moved to the Institute for Advanced Study, and Heckscher followed him to Princeton as a visiting art historian. Heckscher also studied English there, and took up a study of linguistics the following year after moving to London.〔Sears, p. 121〕 In 1940, Heckscher was detained in London as an enemy alien. He was sent to an internment camp in Farnham, Quebec, where he was held for eighteen months. During this time, he organized an informal prison school to help foreign internees prepare for university entrance examinations.〔〔In recognition of his work at Farnham camp during the war, Heckscher was awarded an honorary degree in 1981 by McGill University.〕 Heckscher was released from internment early, on Christmas Day 1941, after the intervention of Canadian senator Cairine Wilson and John Lovejoy Elliott.〔Sears, p. 122–123〕〔John Lovejoy Elliott was the senior member of the New York Society for Ethical Culture; he came to Heckscher's aid out of respect for his grandfather Wilhelm Foerster, a pacifist who had been a founding member of the German Society for Ethical Culture. See Sears, p. 123〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「William S. Heckscher」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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