Katharina Otto-Dorn and Her View on Persian (Seljuk) Art in Anatolia and Persia

Katharina Otto-Dorn (1908-1999) studied with Josef Strzygowski (1862-1941) in Vienna, and received her PhD (dissertation on Sasanian Silver) in 1934. She moved to Berlin, where she volunteered for a year at the “Islamische Abteilung” under Ernst Kühnel (1882-1964). In 1935, aged 27, she went to Istanbul and stayed in Turkey for almost 10 years. After WW II, in 1954 she was appointed Professor for Islamic Archaeology & Art History in Ankara (Ankara Üniversitesi, Dil, Tarih va Gografya Fakültesi). During the next 10 years she established a successful institute, which created a generation of scholars who would become the leading figures in Turkish Islamic Art and Architecture in Turkey for the next 30 years. In her “Ankara period” she researched and wrote on various topics mainly related to the Seljuk period contributing substantially to what is known as Anatolian Seljuk Art.
This paper will try to analyse - for the first time - some of her influential articles as well as her widely used “Kunst des Islam” (1st ed. 1964) and the unpublished 2nd revised and enlarged edition (Art and Architecture of the Islamic World) in order to determine how she defined and described the Art and Architecture of the Seljuk period, both in Anatolia and Persia.