This volume of the Wiener Jahrbuch für Kunstgeschichte contains fourteen studies, which were written on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of 's appointment to 's first extraordinary professor for history of art and art archaeology in 1852. This was to be the foundation of the Viennese institute for history of art and, in the long run, the beginning of the so-called "Viennese the School of history of art". (Some of the articles were presented at the symposium "Viennese school and the future of the history of art" in 2002, some are completely new.) In 1934, 's "Review on a Saeculum of German scholars' Work in " explicitly used the term "Viennese School" for the first time. Apart from the fact that Schlosser's historical review definitely was a selective one, he succeeded to underline the autonomy and the professionalism of the relatively young discipline of history of art by presenting an ancestor gallery and a demonstration of the specific methodology (see: B. Wyss/Stuttgart). Schlosser's term "Viennese school" of course recurred upon topics, which his predecessor Max Dvorák had already mentioned in his obituaries for and , both former teachers of Julius von Schlosser. In 1936, the New York art historian Meyer Schapiro also used the term "New Viennese School" and therewith canonized Schlosser's invention. He took main interest in the methodical notions of Otto Paecht, Fritz Nowotny and . Schapiro focused on ideas dealing with the analysis of form, which could be put down to Alois Riegl - therefore it was in America, that the term "Viennese school" gained theoretical profile (see: Ch.Wood/New Haven). This volume is dedicated to this emergence of the Viennese school and deals with the generation of Julius von Schlosser's pupils, thus with Sedlmayr, Paecht and Gombrich (see: M. Podro/Essex and Th. Zaunschirm/Essen); on the other hand, the present studies ask for those, who were the preceding teachers, namely Wickhoff, Riegl and Dvorák (see: U. Rehm/Bonn, W. Hofmann/Hamburg, H. Koerner/Duesseldorf and J. Bakoš/Bratislava). The history of persons and conceptions in a scienctific-historical and an ideological sense are critically analysed, not least the years 1934 to 1938 and 1938 to 1945 (see: H. Aurenhammer/Wien and B. Binstock/New York). In addition, this volume of the Wiener Jahrbuch aims to deal with Schlosser's pupils and contemporaries regarding the future of the Viennese School in a methodical discourse (see: V. Schmidt-Linsenhoff/Trier, M.V. Schwarz/Vienna, K. Kokai/Vienna - Budapest, D. McEwan/London).