Medium and monument. Arthur Haseloff's photographic archive and research campaigns in Italy (1904-1915).

• Applicants: Dr. Kerstin Helmkamp; Professor Dr. Hubert Locher; Professorin Dr. Caecilie Weissert
• Subject Area: Art History
• Term: since 2025
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 551820557

Since 1920, the Institute of Art History at Kiel University has housed the extensive photo collection of the art historian Arthur Haseloff (1872-1955). The archive, which was created in Italy as early as 1904, is evidence of a large-scale research campaign by the Royal Prussian Historical Institute in Rome, which was under the patronage of Kaiser Wilhelm II. The campaign aimed to systematically and completely record Staufer architecture in southern Italy in the medium of photography for in-depth research. The photographs show both well-known castles and little-publicized medieval monuments, particularly in the regions of Campania, Basilicata, and Apulia. Under the direction of Arthur Haseloff, these photographs were taken between 1904 and 1911 on several research trips by an interdisciplinary team consisting e.g. of the art historians Martin Wackernagel and Bernd Curt Kreplin. The First World War brought an early end to the extensive research project, and the German Research Institute in Rome was closed when Italy entered the war in 1915. In the course of Haseloff's appointment as professor at the Institute of Art History in Kiel (1920), the campaign material made its way to northern Germany. After the First World War, the collection was expanded as a university image archive in Kiel. The project includes the analytical recording, description, and scientific-historical investigation of the southern Italy project led by Haseloff. In particular, it investigates the critical examination of the specific use of photography as an art historical research instrument in the form of a differentiated digital representation and evaluation of the campaigns based on the material. To this end, the photographs, and other archive material will be enriched with research data in the database systems specially adapted for the project (Image archive Foto Marburg, DDK and image database software easydb, Kiel University Library) and research will be ensured based on the digitally accessible overall data. The photographic images will be recorded as a collection of photographic objects in their own right (medium) as well as documentation of art-historically relevant works (monument). The overall project aims to describe and interpret the research campaigns of Arthur Haseloff and his team based on new, largely unpublished material. On the one hand, these are to be characterized comparatively as exemplary photographically supported research campaigns in the context of contemporary art historical research practice. On the other hand, they will be critically interpreted in their specific orientation as a concise imperial-era examination of medieval imperial history in Italy. Beyond the positive documentation of unique historical monuments, Haseloff's Italian campaign is to be recognized as an expression of a political-imperial academic culture characteristic of the scholarly culture of the German Empire.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants