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Gottfried Boehm

German art historian

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJan 2, 2026
Entity authorityQ91848
Source-derived summary

Gottfried Boehm (pronounced [ˈɡɔtfʁiːt ˈbøːm]; born 1942) is a German art historian and philosopher.

Life

Boehm studied art history, philosophy and German in Cologne, Vienna and Heidelberg. He obtained his Promotion (doctorate) in philosophy in 1968 and his Habilitation in 1974 in art history. From 1975 to 1979 he taught art history at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum. In 1979 he was made professor of art history at the Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen. In 1986 Boehm moved to the University of Basel, where since 2005 he has also been director of the Swiss national research project "Eikones / NCCR Iconic Criticism".

In 1993-94 Gottfried Boehm was fellow of the Wiener Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen (Institute for Advanced Studies) and in 2001-02 fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin. Since 2006 he is a corresponding member of the Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften.

Work

In his work Gottfried Boehm is particularly influenced by hermeneutics and phenomenology and by the hermeneutic thought of Hans-Georg Gadamer. He has worked on the theory of art and perception in the Renaissance, the 19th and 20th centuries, on contemporary art and on general questions of modernity.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Gottfried Boehm” is german art historian. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Gottfried, Boehm and German, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA productive starting point for separating a subject’s documented career from later reputation and commemoration. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1942, 1968, 1974, 1975—that can be checked directly. The authority record carries competing date values—1942-09-19, 1942-09-16—which should remain separate until their references and qualifiers are resolved. For this dossier, Gottfried, Boehm and German is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “german art historian” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jan 2, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q91848. VIAF identifies the subject as 54161157. The Library of Congress control number is n82001789. 5 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1942, 1968, 1974 and 1975.

Critical limits

Later biographies can compress uncertainty and repeat inherited reputations, so apparently settled claims may still require comparison. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
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Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Gottfried Boehm”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Gottfried Boehm primary sources, Gottfried Boehm archive and Gottfried research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Gottfried Boehm”?
  2. How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
  3. Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Gottfried Boehm” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.