Max Dvořák

Training under Alois Riegl is recorded. Frederick Antal, Antonio Morassi and Bruno Grimschitz are recorded as having studied under Max Dvořák. the recorded working language is German. The field of work recorded is history and art history. Places of work recorded in the authority are Vienna. Employment is recorded with University of Vienna.

• Name — Max Dvorak • Occupation — Austrian art historian • Born — 4 June 1874 • Died — 8 February 1921 • Birthplace — Roudnice nad Labem, Bohemia • Place of death — Hrušovany nad Jevišovkou, Czechoslovakia

Dvořák was born on 24 June 1874 in Roudnice nad Labem, Bohemia, the son of a Bohemian archivist and librarian. He studied at the universities of Prague and Vienna. In 1897, he completed a PhD thesis in history at the Institut für Österreichische Geschichtsforschung, Vienna. Having been impressed by the teaching of art historian Franz Wickhoff, he focused his attention on art history and wrote his Habilitationsschrift on Bohemian thirteenth- and fourteenth-century manuscript illumination by Johannes von Neumarkt (1901).

In 1902, Dvořák was appointed lecturer in art history at the University of Vienna. After Alois Riegl's death in 1905, he became, with the help of Julius von Schlosser, curator of public monuments in Austria. In 1909, he was appointed full professor of art history at the University of Vienna, which caused some problems among the nationalists of the art faculty because of Dvořák's Czech origin. Therefore, Josef Strzygowski set up his own, competing art history institute, known as the "Wiener Institut", within the same university, resulting in Dvořák and Strzygowski teaching from two different art history "centres". He was one of the main representatives of the Vienna School of Art History, his most important publication being on the concept of art history as a history of ideas (Kunstgeschichte als Geistesgeschichte). In 1905, he succeeded Riegl as general curator of the Imperial Central Commission for the study and conservation of art and historical monuments, today Bundesdenkmalamt. He helped save many Austrian art treasures for post-World War I war reparation. He also continued the publication of the Kunstgeschichtliches Jahrbuch der Zentralkommission für die Erhaltung der Kunst- und historischen Denkmale, and in 1907, he established an inventory of Austrian and Hungarian monuments, called Österreichische Kunsttopographie. Also in 1907, he created the first complete catalogue of The Lobkowicz Collections. In 1916 he published his standard work, Katechismus der Denkmalpflege, in which he was able to raise a broad understanding for the concerns of monument protection.

Dvořák died from a stroke on 8 February 1921 during a visit to his friend Count Khuen von Belasi at Emmahof castle near Hrušovany nad Jevišovkou in South Moravia. He left a widow and two children. He was buried in Grusbach cemetery, in an honorary grave.