Otto Demus

Who was Otto Demus?

Otto Demus was an Austrian art historian and Byzantinist. He is considered a member of the Vienna School of Art History.

Between 1921 and 1928, Demus studied art history at the University of Vienna under Josef Strzygowski, receiving his Ph.D. summa cum laude. In the following years Demus travelled throughout Greece, photographing the mosaics of its Byzantine churches in color, a project that resulted in his first major publication, Byzantine mosaics in Greece, written together with Ernst Diez. He also worked for Austria's historical preservation service, documenting and restoring the medieval monuments of Carinthia. In 1936 he returned to Vienna, and defended his Habilitation the following year. Armed with this necessary qualification, Demus began to lecture on the history at the University of Vienna.

Following the Anschluss in 1938, however, Demus resolved to leave Austria, now under Nazi control, and emigrated to Great Britain in 1939, where he found employment as a librarian at the Warburg Institute and as a lecturer at the Courtauld Institute of Art. Due to his Austrian background, in 1940 he was interned and sent to Canada for a brief period as a prisoner of war, after which he returned to Britain. The main scholarly fruits of his British years were his highly influential essay on middle Byzantine mosaic programs, Byzantine mosaic decoration, and his foundational study of the Mosaics of Norman Sicily.