(b Gräfentonna, Thuringia, July 13, 1841; d Tegernsee, Bavaria, March 28, 1916).
German writer, publisher and editor. In 1875 he co-founded the publishing company Knorr & Hirth based in Munich. Werke unserer Väter, an exhibition of German Renaissance arts and crafts held in Munich in 1876, stimulated his interest in art, and in that year he began to edit and publish a series of handsomely produced art books and prints in affordable editions. In 1881 he took over the printing of the Münchner neuesten Nachrichten, developing it into one of Germany’s leading daily newspapers. He himself wrote on a wide range of issues. In Ideen über Zeichenunterricht und künstlerische Berufsbildung (1887), for example, he advocated a democratizing reform of the teaching of art; in Das plastische Sehen als Rindenzwang (1892) he took issue with the optical theories of Hermann von Helmholtz by propagating the idea that the optical function was physiologically inborn. Although he initially favoured German Gothic and early Renaissance art, by the 1890s he had become interested in contemporary art. In ...
