Thursday 9 July 2026, 6:00 p.m.
Lecture Hall of the Museum of Decorative Arts Kulturforum, Potsdamer Platz, Matthäikirchplatz 4/6, 10785 Berlin
In a lecture for the Kunstgeschichtliche Gesellschaft zu Berlin (Founded in 1887), Martin Kauffmann (Head of Early and Rare Collections, Bodleian Library, Oxford) will speak on an Ottonian illuminated manuscript in Oxford, and how to study it
Oxford’s most important medieval work of art from the German-speaking lands is an illuminated manuscript which, though it does not tell us where or when or by whom it was made, was probably produced at the monastic house of Reichenau on Lake Constance in the first half of the 11th century. Whilst exploring the making of the manuscript, its relation to other books made at the same house, its uses and its reception (including its subsequent travels), it is important to interrogate the interlocking tools which historians have traditionally used to analyze such objects: codicology, palaeography, liturgy, stylistic criticism, and iconography. What is the place of an illuminated book in history, and in the history of art? Martin Kauffmann was born in London but his mother’s family came from Berlin. He studied History at Oxford and History of Art at the Courtauld Institute where he wrote his doctoral dissertation on a group of 13th-century illustrated saints’ lives. After a fellowship at the Warburg Institute he was appointed Curator of medieval manuscripts at the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, where he has catalogued, exhibited, taught and written about illuminated manuscripts from the Anglo-Saxon period to the end of the Middle Ages. He is now Head of Early and Rare Collections at the Bodleian (consisting of maps, music, early and rare printed books, and medieval and early modern manuscripts).
This lecture will be held in English The Secretary Please note that the main entrance to the Kulturforum closes at 6:00 p.m. After that time, the lecture hall can only be accessed via the entrance to the Art Library (coat check on the ground floor). Annual membership fees (€35, reduced rate €15) should be transferred to the account of the Kunstgeschichtliche Gesellschaft zu Berlin IBAN DE46 1001 0010 0623 7771 39, BIC PBNKDEFF, Postbank Hamburg. Mailing Address:: Geschwister-Scholl-Str. 6, 10117 Berlin Phone: 030/266-42-5531, e-mail: anmeldung@kunstgeschichtliche-gesellschaft.de