An intimate biography of an eminent historian of art and culture, exploring his life both within and away from the academy.
 
Tangled Paths tells the life story of Aby Warburg (1866–1929), one of the most influential historians of art and culture of the twentieth century. It also tells the story of a man who, throughout his life, struggled to assert his place in the world. Charting Warburg’s many projects and identities—groundbreaking historian, public intellectual, ethnographer, shrewd academic administrator, and founder of a library—the book explores not only the vagaries of an academic career but also the personal demons of a man who relentlessly sought to live up to his own expectations. In this biography—the first in English in over fifty years—Hans C. Hönes presents an evocative and richly detailed portrait of Warburg’s personality and career, and of his attempts to make sense of the tangled paths of his life.

Hans C. Hönes is a lecturer in art history at the University of Aberdeen. He has written extensively on art historiography since the eighteenth century and has published books about Heinrich Wölfflin and British antiquarianism, among others.

Chapter 1: A Life in Retrospect
Chapter 2: Becoming an Art Historian
Chapter 3: Travels in the World of Symbols
Chapter 4: Voices from the Past
Chapter 5: Itineraries: Warburg’s Destiny
Chapter 6: Hamburg: The Making of a Public-Private Scholar
Chapter 7: Fighting Border-Guard Mentality
Chapter 8: In Turmoil: Re-assembling Life
Chapter 9: The Tower
Chapter 10: ‘Mnemosyne’: Warburg’s Curtain Call
Chapter 11: Alpha and Omega

References
Select Bibliography
Acknowledgements
Photo Acknowledgements
Index