Rudolf Eitelberger von Eitelberg. Networker of the art world

Rudolf von Eitelberger (1817-1885) was a central actor within the emergence of numerous art historical institutions and initiatives in cultural politics and is well known as the first (Associate) Professor of Art History (1852, full professorship from 1864) at the University of Vienna, as the founding director of the first Museum of Applied Arts outside of England (1863), the Imperial Royal Austrian Museum of Art and Industry and its affiliated School of Applied Arts (1867), and finally as the initiator of the editing project Sources for Art history and Art of the Middle Ages and Modern Times (1871). On the occasion of his 200th birthday, six editors from three institutions founded by Eitelberger have collected contributions from internationally renowned scholars, which shed new light on Eitelberger`s decades of art-historical, cultural-political and institutional work. The 19 essays in the present volume Rudolf Eitelberger von Edelberg. Networker of the art world question and differentiate his influence, i.a. Eitelberger`s art-theoretical attitude towards the aesthetics of autonomy and the academic education of artists, his architectural critical positions between research on the history of architecture and ideologically influenced style preferences, his cultural-political interventions within the Habsburg monarchy and in exchange with Prussia, his role in the bourgeois womens movement and so forth. These essays are supplemented by the first list of Eitelbergers writings aiming at completeness, comprising about 500 positions, many of which yet unknown, as well as a newly researched list of books formerly in Eitelbergers collection, which are now preserved in the MAK library. The anthology Rudolf Eitelberger von Edelberg. Networker of the art world offers new scholarly knowledge about the art historian, art critic and cultural politician Eitelberger and thus allows deeper insight into the context of the emergence of the discipline of art history in the mid-19th century and the circumstances of the appreciation of the arts and crafts in art history and cultural politics.