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Your editorial and associated article (11 August) on the position of the Warburg Institute in relation to the University of London do not fully reflect one feature of the institute. It consists of the library, the photographic collection and the archive, all representative of the Aby Warburg legacy. The third of these is also a cultural treasure, reflecting not only the history and development of the institute both in London and before but also cultural life in Europe and, after the 1933 move to London, in Britain. Its holdings reveal the effort expended by the director, Fritz Saxl, Edgar Wind and other members of the staff in negotiating the transfer from Germany and establishing the institute in its new location. Contacts had to be made with British academics and institutions, and money sought to maintain staffing or to initiate major new publications.
Above all, Saxl placed his trust in Britain to provide a continuing basis for the work of the institute across its areas of interest as a reflection of the Warburg legacy. In December 1944 its gift to the university was welcomed as “the nation’s greatest Christmas present of the year”. Were it to leave London or Britain as a result of the current dispute, it would surely be a betrayal of that trust.
Graham Whitaker
Honorary research fellow in classics, University of Glasgow
• The worst thing about the appalling news that the University of London is even contemplating the destruction of the Warburg Institute is that it comes as no surprise. For the past few decades the universities have been worse than supine in face of the onslaught of neoliberal barbarism, for, rather than resisting it, defending the civilised values they are supposed to embody, they have colluded in their own destruction. They wallow in pseudo-managerialism; pretend to be about everything except what they should be; and, rather, glory in aims, objectives, outcomes, whatever these actually are. You seldom happen upon such words as “scholarship” or “learning” in the promotional material any university publishes, for these ideals are incompatible with what they have become. The University of London is not alone in being living proof of this.
Professor Michael Rosenthal
Banbury, Oxfordshire
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