Truth and Beauty

Born the younger son of a noble family in what became Latvia after World War I, Peter von Blanckenhagen has travelled a long road to his guest appointment in classical art this spring. Naturalized as an American citizen in 1955, he holds something of a record of having been a legal citizen of four countries in succession, and at one time a citizen of none. He was Russian until the Bolshevik revolt, legally Latvian until 1941 when Latvia was annexed. Then he became German where his family had emigrated some time before as their familial holdings had been confiscated. But, says Professor von Blanckenhagen, scholarship is universal. "In spite of national difference, what good scholars have in common is much more important than the differences in their cultural background." He feels himself very much of an American, and he says, though he is overly modest about his command of the language, that he finds English a happier means to express his thoughts than his native German. "English forces one into exact and disciplined thought and German is very prone to cloudy thinking."

Professor von Blanckenhagen's attitude toward the classics clearly reflects his cultural background. "I hope that the atmosphere of Harvard will continue to produce classically educated gentlemen of leisure who will not be concerned with money or being men of affairs, but who read the classics for delight, and form a background absolutely necessary for a living university." Anything but a snob, he seems to mean this more as a scholar than as a gentleman.

A man to whom reactions are always strong and most often favorable, the majority opinion holds that his intense and nearly formidable exterior is the true earnest of a lively and curious intellect, and that his seeming dogmatism and frank outspokeness is rather an extremely moral and courageous statement of opinion for its own sake. According to one of his former students, he will often take a point as the devil's advocate, in order to stimulate discussion and thinking. And he is always willing to shift his opinion in those rare cases in which he is bested. Asked whether he views teaching or research as the central interest of his life, he replied "There is no choice to be made. Good teaching is trying out one's ideas before they are published. One is forced to make up one's mind on troublesome questions." He eagerly encourages comment and criticism from his students, as well as being extremely interested in all his human contacts, and is very warm and humanly responsive although he maintains a certain aloofness that makes him always stand slightly apart in a group.

Although a scholar for most of his life, Professor von Blanckenhagen has through a combination of desire and circumstance begun his teaching career comparatively recently. He entered Hamburg University in 1929 and transferred to Berlin in 1930. Thence he went to Rome for independent study and research, receiving his doctorate from Munich in 1936. As a humanist, he was loath to begin an academic career under the Nazis. His first academic position, as a non-teaching fellow, was with the University of Marburg in 1941, from whence he was appointed to the faculty of Hamburg University in 1946. From 1947 to 1949 he was a visiting lecturer at the University of Chicago and finding that he enjoyed it, accepted a permanent appointment in the Department of Art and the Committee on Social Thought which shelters particularly promising graduate students of many different fields. Harvard's Fine Arts 132 is the first undergraduate course he has taught.

Professor von Blanckenhagen claims with great pride the honor of being the first German scholar to be admitted to this country after the war. He adds with a slight smile that he finds American students far more stimulating to teach than Germans, although far more demanding because they are less respectful and awe-struck and much more curious and questioning, but he claims that this seems to be more true of the University of Chicago than of Harvard.

Although the greatest part of his published work has been in the field of Roman art, the central concern of his life has been the complexity and meaning of Greek art. This study he feels can only be approached by an extremely mature scholar, and he is only now beginning a book in this field. The opposite of the caricature of the German scholar of minutiae, Professor von Blanckenhagen makes a great effort to expose the general terms and standards which the art of the period expresses--the "image of man" as he calls it--but he insists on a firm discipline in the facts for any flight of fancy or supposition. "Everything of true worth in other periods of art can be found in the Greek. It is also more reasonable, yet the eye and the reason are both equally satisfied. In the classical period proper, the fifth century, man is most noble and most knowing, not hoping or relying on anything beyond death, and recognizing the loneliness of man with courage. This is the genius of Greek art, its glory lies in its acknowledgement of life's essential futility and a system of images that is ultimately tragic." Yet there is a joy and lightness in his presentation. He envisions the great achievement of the Greeks as having portrayed the excellent man in body and mind, kalos kayathos, in the midst of a complex of tensions.

Best described as an eighteenth century gentleman, Professor von Blanckenhagen has the reputation of being a brilliant conversationalist with a ready and sardonic wit, sometimes almost playful. He is an astute critic of his adopted country and is as firm in his standards of political and public behavior as he is in his standards of art. Yet his friends assert that one of the most remarkable things about this rather enigmatic man is his ability to laugh at himself and at the world. With a combination of strictly disciplined yet imaginative logic and endearing generosity, interest and vitality, there are few of his students or colleagues who do not find him an enormously stimulating if somewhat complex person.

In closing, he observed, "The biggest difference I've noticed between Harvard and Chicago is that the girls are much prettier here. Is that too wicked for a bachelor like me to say?"