Papers of Wilhelm Reinhold Walter Koehler

Wilhelm Reinhold Walter Koehler (1884-1959), German art historian, taught at Harvard University from 1932 until his retirement in 1953. He began his college education at the Universities of Strassburg and Bonn in Germany, then received his D. Phil. degree from the University of Vienna, Austria, in 1907.

After serving in World War I, Koehler was appointed Director of the Museum in Weimar, Germany. In 1923, he became Privatdozent at Jena University and was made Professor the following year. Koehler married Margarete Bittkow (1897-1964), a painting student at the Bauhaus in 1920; they had two sons, Lorenz and Andreas.

The growing political unrest in Germany prompted Koehler to seek work in the United States, and he was able to secure a position at Harvard as Kuno Francke Professor of German Art and Culture for one year beginning in September 1932. He was reappointed for the first half of the 1933 to 1934 academic year, then returned to Germany to await a permanent position at Harvard, which was finalized in September 1934. Koehler was made Martin A. Ryerson Lecturer in Fine Arts in 1941, and was promoted to William Dorr Boardman Professor of Fine Arts in 1950. He took a leave from teaching from 1941 to 1943, when he worked on Early Christian and Byzantine art at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, DC; he was one of the co-editors of the first volume of the Dumbarton Oaks Papers. While at Harvard, he also served as an Associate of Leverett House. He retired from Harvard in 1953, and died in 1959.