“Gertrud Bing – Zentralfigur im intellektuellen Netzwerk der Bibliothek Warburg”
Lecture by Martin Treml and Philippe Despoix
Lecture by Martin Treml and Philippe Despoix as part of the conference Bilderatlas Mnemosyne at HKW, 25 Sep 2020
Gertrud Bing (1892–1964), a student of the philosopher Ernst Cassirer and a librarian at the KBW, was Aby Warburg’s closest confidante in the latter years of his life. They toured Italy together. Bing collaborated on Warburg’s final project, the Bilderatlas Mnemosyne; she was largely responsible for its coordination and—after Warburg’s death in 1929—also for the KBW’s correspondence. She and Fritz Saxl were a perfect research duo. She later became the third director of the Warburg Institute in London. But, as she published little under her own name, her achievements have gone unnoticed. The lecture aims to highlight Bing’s achievements, not least because of her contributions to an intellectual biography of Warburg.
Gertrud Bing: Fragments sur Aby Warburg, édité par Philippe Despoix et Martin Treml
Fig. and Video: © HKW