Erwin Panofsky and Walter Benjamin: German Jewish cultural traditions and the writing of history in Weimar Germany

In this thesis, I have analyzed how Erwin Panofsky's and Walter Benjamin's attitudes toward historical interpretation developed within the fragmented culture of Weimar Germany. I have evaluated the function served by the classical tradition--in particular the works of the German Renaissance artist Albrecht Durer--in the political and cultural rhetoric of the Weimar Republic and in Panofsky's and Benjamin's methodological studies. I specifically focus on how Panofsky's theory of iconology and Benjamin's allegorical philosophy intersect with German idealist thought and with German-Jewish political and philosophical traditions.; I have compared their writings to studies by other German writers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries including Frederich Nietzsche, Aby Warburg and Thomas Mann and have attempted to evaluate how Panofsky's, Benjamin's and Aby Warburg's use of language is consistent with the Nietzschean rhetoric circulating within Weimar culture. In concluding, I have compared Panofsky's 1943 monograph of Albrecht Durer with Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus (1948). Although these two works were written after the National Socialists came to power, I have regarded them as "mournful" tributes to Weimar culture. In this chapter and also throughout the dissertation, I have tried to show how Panofsky and Benjamin utilized the Renaissance and classical traditions as metaphors for their own commentaries about the death and/or survival of enlightened German culture.