Emil Kaufmann, Max Dvořák a idea (v) umění 18. století

This study examines Emil Kaufmann's (1891–1953) interpretation of 18th-century architecture in relation to the ideas of his teacher Max Dvořák (1874–1921), a key figure of the Vienna School of Art History. Kaufmann is known for linking 18th-century French architecture with modernist principles, especially through his influential book Von Ledoux bis Le Corbusier (1933), where he connected Claude-Nicolas Ledoux's work with that of Le Corbusier. While this modernist reading has been widely discussed, Kaufmann's intellectual debt to Dvořák has received little attention. Based on archival sources, this study traces their shared view of 18th-century art, particularly through Kaufmann's 1920 dissertation Die Entwürfe des Architekten Ledoux und die Aesthetik des Klassicismus, written under Dvořák's supervision at the University of Vienna, and Dvořák's unpublished 1918 lecture series Die Entwicklung der malerischen Probleme im 18. Jahrhundert. The findings reveal deeper continuities between the Vienna School's historical thought and early modernist architectural theory.