Martin Warnke


Martin Warnke was a German art historian.

Life and work

Warnke grew up in a German pastor's family in Brazil. He studied art history, history and German literature at the universities of Munich, Madrid and Berlin. In 1963, he wrote a Ph.D. thesis on Peter Paul Rubens at the Free University of Berlin under Hans Kauffmann. In 1964 and 1965, he worked at the Berlin museums. In 1970, he completed his Habilitationsschrift on court art at the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster. From 1971 to 1978 he was a professor of art history at the University of Marburg. In 1979, he moved to the University of Hamburg, where he taught art history until his retirement in 2003.
Warnke represented a research direction that is particularly focused on the social history of art. He directed the Center for Political Iconography at the Warburg Haus, Hamburg. Here he devoted himself to the work of the important cultural theorist, Aby Warburg.
Warnke was a member of the Deutsche Akademie für Sprache und Dichtung and the Committee on the Preservation of German Cultural Heritage. From 1983 to 1984, he was a member of the Institute for Advanced Study, Berlin. In 1987, he was a fellow at the Getty Research Institute in Santa Monica, California. From 1998 to 1999, he was a member of the Collegium Budapest - Institute for Advanced Study.
Warnke died on 11 December 2019 in Halle, Germany at the age of 82.

Publications