Robert E. Lerner - Ernst Kantorowicz: A Life

Ernst Kantorowicz

Ernst Kantorowicz

a Life

Robert E. Lerner

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

PRINCETON AND OXFORD

Copyright 2017 by Princeton University Press

Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street,

Princeton, New Jersey 08540

In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press,

6 Oxford Street, Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1TR

press.princeton.edu

Jacket art: Ernst Kantorowicz in Copenhagen, summer 1925

(courtesy of the Lerner archive)

All Rights Reserved

ISBN 978-0-691-17282-8

British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available

This book has been composed in Minion Pro and Birch Std

Printed on acid-free paper.

Printed in the United States of America

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

For Callum, Minna, Theo, and Till

Contents

Figures

Acknowledgments

O NE OF THE REWARDS OF WORKING ON THIS BOOK has been that it allowed me to get to know a large number of scintillating people who granted me interviews. Sadly, because much time has elapsed since I started my project, many of them are no longer alive. I mention the deceased first, with reverence for their memories: John W. Baldwin, Robert L. Benson, William M. Bowsky, Donald Bullough, William A. Chaney, Walter D. Fisher, Horst Fuhrmann, Arianna Giachi, Felix Gilbert, Ralph Giesey, Gordon Griffiths, Walter Gross, Erich Heller, Harry Jaffa, Alice Kahler, Howard Kaminsky, Ursula Kpper, Gerhart Ladner, Gertrude Meyer, Charles Muscatine, Margarete Ohlig, Vera Peters, Felix Rosenthal, Beate Salz, Ihor evenko, Margaret Bentley evenko, Lacey Baldwin Smith, Sir Richard W. Southern, Homer Thompson, Joseph Tussman, Donald Weinstein, Kurt Weitzmann, and Josefa Weitzmann-Fiedler. Lucy Cherniavsky, so sound and sensible, was a particularly valuable research source over the telephone. Her death just as this book was sent to the publisher deprived me of a friend whom I had never met. Others who generously consented to interviews are Beata Alden, Wilder Bentley, Jr., Michael Hauck, Eva Peters Hunting, Ellen Hurwitz, Norman Rich, Bernard Rosenthal, and Katherine Whild. Another list comprises people who have aided me with information of various sorts. They are Dauril Alden, Margaret Anderson, Sonja Asal, Hartwig Graf von Bernstorff, Thomas Bisson, Eva Cherniavsky, David dAvray, Thomas Gruber, Henry Hardy, Peter Hayes, Peter Jelavich, Arnd Kerkhecker, Thomas Kuehne, Andrea Meyer Ludowisy, Karl F. Morrison, R. I. Moore, Elisabeth Mller-Luckner, Ute Oelmann, William A. Percy, Jr., Tom F. Peters, Johanan Petrovsky-Shtern, Carl F. Petry, Martin Ruehl, Kaya Sahin, Korinna Schnhrl, Elizabeth Sears, Walter Simons, Randolph Starn, and David H. Wright. And then there was a marvelous number of women who gathered evidence for me near and far: Catherine Arney, Christina Bobek, Stephanie Di Notto, Deborah Gerrish, Fiona Robb, and Kim Setze. Ariane Phillips not only authorized me to publish passages from her granduncles letters but transmitted to me a hitherto unknown cache of letters, dating from the period of the First World War. A project aimed at publishing an annotated edition of Kantorowiczs letters is still under way. The de facto editors, Janus Gudian and Jost Philipp Klenner, and I were always exchanging information and evaluating evidence. John Van Engen helped to improve the book with a careful reading. I have deeply appreciated my acquisitions editor Ben Tates confidence in me, and I express my deep appreciation as well to Jill Harris, who gets the message to Garcia, and to Anita OBrien, expert which hunter. Eckhart Grnewald and Harvey Shoolman provided unflagging encouragement and crucial advice for writing this book over many years; aside from my wife, my debt to them is the greatest. Yes, my wife Erdmut. Indeed, yes.

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