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Auction: 19001 - Orders, Decorations and Medals
Lot: 512

Sold by Order of the Family

'The refugee who opened our eyes to the manmade beauty of Britain. No one has done more to make us understand our built environment'

Ian Jack in The Guardian

The Honours and Awards of Sir Nikolaus Pevsner, C.B.E., the famous architectural scholar

Nikolaus Bernhard Leon Pevsner was born on 30 January 1902 at Leipzig, Saxony, the son of a fur merchant. Having studied at Universities across Germany, Pevsner completed his doctorate upon the baroque houses of his hometown in 1924. It was this innate passion of the history of architecture that would be observed throughout his long career.

A figure in the advancement of modernist German architecture during the 1920's and 1930's, Pevsner supported many of the early policies of what would become the tyrannical Nazi regime. It would be that very same regime which he supported which took his position at the University of Göttingen in 1933. He moved to Britain and found home in Hampstead, soon finding a position at the University of Birmingham. With the onset of the Second World War, and his promotion of 'pure non-decadent German art' well known, Pevsner found himself arrested both as an enemy alien of the state, but it should also be noted he was listed within Hitler's 'Black Book'. He was once referred to as 'more German than the Germans.'

Released after 3 months of internment and interrogations, he would be found clearing Blitz damage and writing and reviewing for the Ministry of Information. His first work for Penguin Books soon followed, An Outline of European Architecture, which would sell over half a million copies.

A part-time teaching position at the University of Birkbeck was taken in 1942, while he would later become the longest-serving Slade Professor at the University of Cambridge, 1949-55, where he would lecture for over three decades.

A prolific author, his crowning glory was without doubt the epic 46-volume The Buildings of England, affectionately known today as 'Pevsner's'. It remains a landmark publication.

Besides writing he often contributed to radio and television broadcasts and was a founding member of the Victorian Society in 1957 which sought to save the futures of scores of buildings condemned for re-development.

He was made a British Citizen in 1946, was appointed C.B.E. in 1963 and Knighted in 1969. Pevsner died in Hampstead on 18 August 1983. His contributions in the fields of history of architecture and art remain seldom surpassed - it was only in 2017 that Greyson Perry produced a review for BBC Radio 4 on the importance of Pevsner's Reith Lectures on English Art.

(We would recommend Susie Harries' Nikolaus Pevsner; The Life, which offers many additional anecdotes that cannot be conveyed in this short introduction.)


The C.B.E. and German Order of Merit bestowed upon Sir Nikolaus Pevsner

The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, C.B.E. (Civil) Commander’s 2nd type neck badge, silver-gilt and enamel, in its Goldsmiths & Silversmiths case of issue, the neck riband adapted as originally worn; Germany, Federal Republic, Order of Merit, Commander's neck Badge, gilt and enamel, in case of issue, with full neck riband as worn, good very fine (2)

C.B.E. London Gazette 1 June 1953. Awarded whilst Slade Professor of Fine Art, University of Cambridge.

[Knight Bachelor] London Gazette 14 June 1969:

'For services to the history of Art.'

(The Knight Bachelor's Badge is not extant within the family.)

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Sold for
£750