author
Ernst Cohn-Wiener
1882–1941
A wide-ranging art historian, he moved from medieval European subjects into Jewish, Islamic, and Asian art, helping open new paths for readers in the early 20th century. His work is especially remembered for its lively, well-illustrated studies of Islamic architecture in Central Asia.
2 Audiobooks
About the author
Born in Tilsit in 1882, Ernst Cohn-Wiener studied art history, archaeology, and philosophy in Berlin and Heidelberg, and later taught in adult education in Berlin. Early in his career he worked on European medieval art, but his interests kept expanding.
In the 1920s he turned strongly toward Islamic art and architecture, as well as Jewish and Asian art more broadly. He is particularly associated with research trips to Central Asia in 1924 and 1925, which informed his important book Turan: Islamische Baukunst in Mittelasien, a major study of medieval Islamic architecture in the region.
As a Jewish scholar, he left Germany after the Nazi rise to power in 1933. He lived in exile in England and India before reaching the United States, where he died in New York in 1941. His career reflects both remarkable intellectual curiosity and the upheavals that shaped the lives of many scholars of his generation.