Sir Nikolaus in Leipzig
Professor Heinrich Dilly
University of Halle
There is no visible memorial to Sir Nikolaus Pevsner in Leipzig, the home of his birth, although his book on Leipzig baroque architecture is still to be found in libraries and bookshops. But the municipal archives have yielded records which throw some light on his family background. His father, Gilel (Hugo) Pevsner, born 1869, was a Russian fur trader who settled in the city. He applied for naturalisation already in 1896, but bureaucratic wheels turned slowly, and his request was granted only in 1913. By this time he was a respected member of the cosmopolitan society of Leipzig merchants, well known for his interest in the arts, and his wife Anna, née Perlmann, was noted for her voluntary work. The eventual granting of naturalisation to the family appears to have been prompted by the desire to exempt the two Pevsner sons from Russian military service and make them available for their year in the Saxon army.
The family lived at first at 41 Ferdinand-Rohde strasse, then from 1904 in a large and sumptuous apartment in the still extant 11 Schwägerischen strasse in the city’s music quarter. The building dates from 1894-6, by the architect Otto Bruckwald; its elaborate exterior and interior decoration is noted in the latest Dehio Handbuch. Nikolaus Pevsner and his older brother, who died in 1919, were both educated at the famous Thomas Gynasium, where they were among its best pupils. In his final year at school Nikolaus was able to attend art history lectures and seminars at the university under Wilhelm Pinder; he went on to study at the universities of Munich, Frankfurt and Berlin, benefiting respectively from the teaching of Heinrich Wolfflin, Rudolf Kautsch and Adolph Goldschmidt, before returning to his home town to write his thesis on Leipzig baroque.
