Abstract

Aby M. Warburg the famous art historian, critic and great promoter of cultural history collected a unique research library which became a semiofficial part of the newly founded University of Hamburg called „Kulturwissenschaftliche Bibliothek Warburg” in 1920. At the end of 1933 this library and its staff left Germany in order to prevent the Nazis from destroying this Jewish foundation. Great Britain gave home to it and at the end of 1944 London University incorporated the library now named The Warburg Institute. The Warburg Institute efficiently helped to promote art history as an academic discipline in Great Britain though its actual aims are of interdisciplinary nature and go far beyond art history as it has been the case since the days of Warburg