Paul Clemen

Paul Clemen (31 October 1866 – 8 July 1947) was a German art historian known in particular for his large inventory of monuments in the Rhineland area, many of which were destroyed or severely damaged in World War II.

[1] He studied at the universities of Strassburg (now Strasbourg), where he was awarded his doctorate in 1889 for a dissertation on the portraits of Charlemagne (Porträtdarstellungen Karls des Grossen)[2] and Bonn, where, in 1893, he received his habilitation.

He began, in 1891, the publication of the series Die Kunstdenkmäler der Rheinprovinz (Monuments of the Rhine Province), for which he served as editor for the next 46 years.

The project culminated in 1937 with the publication of the volume on the Cologne Cathedral, Der Dom zu Köln, a collaboration with Heinrich Neu and Fritz Witte, but with Clemen as main author.

An obituary of Clemen published in an American journal noted that "far from despoiling the occupied country of its art objects this commission saw its purpose in the cataloguing and photographing of Belgian monuments.