Heinrich Geissler papers

Geissler, Heinrich

1857-1996, bulk 1960-1990

The archive represents a lifetime of scholarship by the German art historian and curator Heinrich Geissler, who devoted his scholarly career to the study and attribution of sixteenth and seventeenth century drawing in German-speaking regions of Central Europe. It contains research material leading to Geissler's groundbreaking exibition Zeichnung in Deutschland deutsche Zeichner 1540-1640, held between December 1979 and February 1980 at the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, and the publication of the exhibition catalog, as well as unpublished material compiled for ten more years after the exhibition. Extensive files on individual artists are arranged preserving Geissler's original filing system by region or city. Besides a wealth of study photographs and copious notes, there is correspondence with art experts, and card indexes of artists and drawings in private and public collections. Also present are research materials Geissler inherited from another German scholar, Friedrich Thöne, including Thöne's unpublished manuscript "Die deutsche Meisterzeichung."