Sternenfreundschaft

Published for the first time: The revealing correspondence between the friends Aby Warburg and Franz Boll. The letters between Aby Warburg and the Heidelberg classical philologist Franz Boll - which have so far received little attention in Warburg research - are published here in full for the first time. The correspondence began in 1909 with a letter from Warburg and continued until Boll's death in 1924. The initial academic exchange gradually developed into a close, mutually supportive friendship. The letters show how both scholars were committed to revealing the tense relationship between the Orient and antiquity as the focus of their academic work, a relationship that they regarded as fundamental to European culture. The correspondence therefore closes an important gap in previous Warburg research and helps to clarify the mysteries surrounding the "Bilderatlas Mnemosyne". The correspondence with Boll also provides a deep insight into Warburg's working methods and is a valuable document about his time at the sanatorium in Kreuzlingen. Warburg repeatedly tried to return to his employees and turned to Boll with questions and requests, who, together with Gertrud Bing and Fritz Saxl, among others, took care of the publication of his essays. Finally, the letters also document the prehistory of Warburg's last work: the exhibition on "Sternglauben und Sterndeutung" (Belief in the Stars and the Interpretation of the Stars) at the Planetarium in Hamburg.