Edwin Charles Hall

Long-time Grosse Pointe City resident and medievalist, Edwin Hall, 92 , died peacefully on 20 August at Beaumont Hospital, following a long and courageous battle with bone marrow disease. The son of Sidney and Mildred Hall, Ed was born on August 2, 1928, in Wauwatosa, a suburb of Milwaukee, the descendent of a hardy stock of Norwegian, German, and British immigrants who first settled the Boston Bay Colony and what later became Boston. Initially he planned to follow the family tradition of medicine. His great-grandfather had studied anatomy with Oliver Wendell Holmes, and his great-great grandfather studied medicine at Yale. Thus Ed entered the University of Wisconsin at Madison as a pre-med student. After his junior year, however, he went to Europe for two months, an experience that changed his life profoundly. Although he entered medical school in fall, he withdrew after two days and decided he would study medieval history instead. Ed studied under the eminent canon and Roman law scholar Gaines Post and subsequently went off on a Fulbright Scholarship to study in the Vatican Library and Archives, completing his dissertation on the ancient procedure for arbitration i...[more]

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oman law in the 12th and 13th centuries. After two years in Rome, Ed was awarded his PhD in 1955 and the same year joined the History Faculty at Wayne State University. He retired from the University in 1998 as Professor Emeritus of Medieval History, beloved by many students. Among his many publications is his re-evaluation of one of the major paintings in the Detroit Institute of Arts: Jan van Eyck's, Saint Jerome in His Study. Applying his historical training to the more conventional tradition of art history, he exposed the limitations of traditional and scientific connoisseurship in a historical vacuum and rebuilt the historical context of the painting, in the process adding immeasurably to a greater understanding of the work and its complicated authorship. His subsequent book on the famous Arnolfini Double Portrait, now in London and also by Jan van Eyck, sweeps away much of the mystification with which other scholars have surrounded it. A powerful example of how historical investigation can illuminate even the most familiar work of art, the book has become required reading for every advanced student in art history. An avid collector of early printed books as well as manuscripts, Ed's book on early printing in Italy made a crucial contribution to the re-evaluation of early printing in Rome. Noting Ed's achievement, Paul Needham, one of the world's authorities on the early history of printed books, declared that Ed's work embodied the very foundation stone of all scholarship--thinking. Ed Hall loved the Grosse Pointe community, especially Neff Park. While still in better health, he could be seen, virtually daily and in all seasons, walking his rounds through the park and the marina pier, always accompanied by his long-time companion, Horst Uhr. Many visitors to the park did not know them, but they were often referred to simply as "the walkers." Ed loved international travel, venturing in his earlier years to the Holy Land, the larger Middle East, Constantinople, and North Africa. Later he restricted himself to Europe, criss-crossing the continent almost annually and often returning to Rome, a city that remained his intellectual and spiritual home. He enjoyed gardening and chamber music, especially the late Beethoven quartets and the solo cello suites of Johann Sebastian Bach, which he considered among the highest achievements of the human mind. Ed is survived by his partner of 45 years, Horst Uhr, a sister, Helen Albert (John), a niece and two nephews, and several great nieces and great nephews. Burial will be in the Hall burial plot at the Wauwatosa Cemetery, Wisconsin. Arrangements were made by Charles Verheyden Funeral Homes, Grosse Pointe Park.