Alfred Neumeyer (1901-1973) studied with Wölfflin in Munich in the 1920s. Fleeing Hitler’s Germany, he obtained a position as the first art historian on the west coast of the United States, as professor and director of the Mills College Art Museum. He was an intelligent interpreter of Wölfflin’s method in the U.S

Oskar Hagen (1888-1957), founder of the department of Art History & Criticism at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1925, studied in Berlin in the early 1910s, probably with Wölfflin. He was a deeply Wölfflinian thinker and his Birth of the American Tradition in Art (amongst other texts) was highly shaped by the principles.

Paul Westheim (1886-1973) attended Wölfflin’s lectures in Berlin in 1906. He engaged with modern art in Europe before emigrating to Mexico in 1941, fleeing Nazi persecution. In Mexico Westheim applied Wölfflin’s concepts to pre-Columbian Meso-American art, especially in his book, Arte Antiguo de Mexico (1950).

In 1925 the Pittsburgh-based Carnegie foundation started assembling and distributing “art sets,” which initially included 200 books, 1800 mounted photographic reproductions of works of art and architecture, and original prints and textiles. The Grundbegriffe only appeared in the Carnegie set once the English translation appeared in 1932 although there were other German-language titles in the

original set. Carnegie sets, most of which have long since been absorbed into specialized collections, were distributed to high schools, colleges and universities in the United States and in Commonwealth countries. By 1936, 275 sets had reached 48 U.S. states and 5 countries, including Canada. There were sets at the University of Toronto and down the street at the Art Gallery of Ontario.

Yomokichi Sawaki (1886-1930) studied in Munich with Wölfflin in the summer to winter semesters 1913-14, in the final phase of writing the Grundbegriffe. Sawaki initiated a Japanese translation upon his return to Japan but the incomplete project passed at his death to his student Kenji Moriya, who published the translation in 1936. Sawaki taught the history of art at Keio University where there is an enduring school of interpretation of Buddhist sculpture according to Wölfflinian principles.

Hanna Levy Deinhard (1912-1984) studied with Wölfflin and criticized his Grundbegriffe from a Marxist perspective in her dissertation Henri Wölfflin: sa théorie, ses prédecesseurs (Paris, 1936). During her years of exile in Brazil (1937-1948), Levy proposed in essays of the early 1940s that Wölfflin’s principles should be one part of a tripartite analytic framework for the Brazilian Baroque.

Wölfflin was the Doktorvater of Ludwig Bachhofer (Munich, 1894-Carmel, CA, 1976) who wrote his dissertation on Japanese woodcut prints (1922), and later published volumes on Chinese and

Early Indian Sculpture (1929). In all cases he applied the Grundbegriffe. Forced to leave National

Socialist Germany, Bachhofer was hired as the first chair in East Asian art at the University of Chicago in 1936.

Peter Briger (Breslau 1898-Toronto 1983) received his training in art history mostly in Breslau with the Wölfflin pupil August Grisebach. He also spent one summer in Munich where he studied with Wölfflin himself. Of Jewish descent, Brieger was forced to leave Breslau and emigrated over London to Toronto, where he was a founding faculty member of the University’s nascent Department of Fine Art. While Brieger dedicated himself after emigration primarily to Medieval art, Brieger’s university lecture notes feature discussions of the Principles.