Parallel Odysseys of Ernst Herzfeld and Ernst Diez

This paper aims to present the conditions around Herzfeld’s departure from Iran in 1934 together with the reasons behind Ernst Diez’ leave of Turkey in 1949, as parallel instances of confrontations of fin-de-siècle art historical scholarship. The common Austrian-German background of these scholars and their pioneering role in defining Islamic, Persian and Turkish art historiography deem these controversies of 1930s and 1940s, as signifiers of change in their reception in later socio-political contexts. The confrontations are marked by the involvement of the transforming nationalisms in Iran and Turkey, but also both art historians confront change in their home countries. Herzfeld escapes Nazism in Germany to States, and although Diez conforms to the political circumstance in Vienna, he becomes an outcast in the changing art historical scholarship of Vienna’s Art Historical Institute. The paper reads these many-fold controversies as parallel odysseys of both biographical and academic nature, from expeditions to expatriations and to exiles.