Celebrating the 5 Year Anniversary of the Heinz Götze Visiting Professorship in Chinese Art
Prof. Dr. Heinz Götze
(1912-2001)
The Heinz Götze Visiting Professorship for Chinese Art, Heidelberg University, was founded in 2011 in honor of Prof. e.h. Dr. med. h.c Heinz Götze (1912-2001), a celebrated, Heidelberg-based publisher, collector and scholar (partner in the scientific publishing house Springer-Verlag since 1957 and a member of the German Archaeological Institute in Rome since 1939), he devoted himself passionately to archaeological and art historical matters, including the collecting of Chinese and Japanese calligraphy. In 1999 his first-class collection became a permanent part of the Museum for East Asian Art, Cologne.
The primary goal of the Visiting Professorship is to bring Chinese educators to Heidelberg for opportunities in teaching and research at the Institute of East Asian Art History, and to encourage dynamic exchanges between these leading scholars and artists with our students and faculty. The program began in summer 2011, with the world-renowned scholar of early Chinese archaeology, Prof. Dr. Dame Jessica Rawson, Warden of Merton College, Oxford University (until 2010), who generously shared her knowledge of recent, field-changing excavations of Silk Road regions.
As her successors, Prof. Dr. Wang Cheng-hua and Prof. Dr. Lai Yu-chih, two leading Qing specialists from the Academia Sinica, Taipei, were the Heinz Götze Professors in Heidelberg in 2012 und 2013, respectively; they delivered keynote lectures, held seminars and shared their research expertise in lectures and seminars. In summer 2014, Prof. Yu Hui, Director of Research Institute of Palace Museum, Beijing, and celebrated authority on Chinese painting taught two popular courses on early painting and 20th century art. Additionally, each semester generous support from the Heinz Götze Stiftung also makes it possible to award research grants to our advanced M.A. students and Ph.D. candidates, to facilitate fieldwork and conference travel to China, Taiwan and the U.S.
To celebrate the 5-year anniversary of this Visiting Professorship, Xu Bing, the world-renowned contemporary artist, lectured on “Innovation from Tradition” as the fifth Heinz Götze Professor. We also want to take this opportunity to thank Dr. Cornelius Götze, Dr. Georgia Götze and Frau Linde Götze, three donors of the Heinz-Götze Stiftung, for their long-term financial support.
