1456
asked him to help with advice for the setting-up of a
photogrammetic inventory of buildings ready for pres-
ervation and reconstruction. Besides his work at the
Mineralogical Museum, Vogel managed to write a thesis
on the behaviour of silver halides under conditions of
light which was fi nished by 1863. Later in the same year,
he was named head of a newly established photographic
laboratory of the Berlin technical school where he had
studied before. This laboratory was opened in 1864,
and from then on Vogel unfolded a wealth of activities
within all fi elds imaginable in photography. In 1879, the
Berlin technical school and the building academy were
unifi ed to the Technical University where Vogel was
made Professor in Photo-Chemistry, a position he held
until his death in 1898. The chair gained world-wide
fame, and Vogel was succeeded by Adolf Miethe, Otto
Mente, and Erich Stenger, each of them outstanding in
their own fi elds.
Hermann Wilhelm Vogel’s most important contri-
bution to photographic chemistry and industry was
the sensitisation of the emulsion for larger parts of
the spectrum. In 1873, he described the enrichment of
photographic emulsions with eosin dye pigments for
dry plates which were to be named orthochromatic. As
a typical product of the science of its time, his fi ndings
were easy transferrable into industrial use, and the
benefi ts of Vogel’s plate sensitisation helped the Ger-
man photographic industry to both develop and achieve
world-wide acclaim. As orthochromatic emulsions
lacked sensitivity for red colours, Vogel continued this
part of his research until his death. Adolf Miethe, his
successor in the Berlin seat, was lucky to announce in
1902, four years after Vogel’s death, the introduction
of the panchromatic sensitisation which not only gave
black & white photography a perfect gray scale for
all colours but set the foundations for today’s colour
photography as well.
As head of the only department of photo-chemistry
in Prussia, Vogel was a major infl uence in the develop-
ment of German photography. He set up the fi rst com-
prehensive exhibition of photography in Berlin in 1865
and organized the medium’s half-centennial in 1889.
While setting up the fi rst exhibition, he stimulated a legal
debate on photographic copyrights, a law installed with
his help in Germany by 1897. For a gathering of pho-
tographers at the exhibition in 1865, Vogel co-authored
a dramatic comedy in two sets. As a member of the
jury, he took part in the preparation of the photographic
departments of the world exhibitions in Paris 1867, Vi-
enna 1873, Philadelphia 1876, and Chicago 1893. He
instigated not only the career of master scientists like
Miethe and Mente but of photographers as the young
Alfred Stieglitz alike. He wrote a number of books,
among them a four-volume comprehensive handbook
of photography whose fourth part is the fi rst overview
on the medium’s aesthetics in German language—and
contains a chapter on reproducing sculpture which
changed the views of art history. Vogel led photographic
expeditions to view solar eclipses and to archaeological
sites all over the world, and he brought home not only
masses of scientifi c results but landscape and travel
photographs as well. His own photographic work has
still to be unravelled from the huge amount of records
he left behind at his untimely death in 1898.
Rolf SachsseBiography
Hermann Wilhelm Vogel, born in Dobrilugk, Lausitz,
March 26, 1834. As the son of a merchant, he had to
leave school at the age of 14 and became the assistant
of a sales agent. From 1850 to 1852 he visited the trade
school at Frankfurt/Oder, from 1852 to 1858 the indus-
trial school at Berlin. From 1858 to 1864 he worked as
a scientifi c assistant at the mineralogical museum of the
University of Berlin, in 1863 he fi nished his doctorate
on the theory of photography which is considered the
fi rst scientifi c work in German photo-chemistry. In
1864 he founded the photographic laboratory at the
Berlin industrial school which was transferred into
the Technical University in 1879. From then until his
death on December 17, 1898, in Berlin, he was Profes-
sor and head of the Department of Photo-Chemistry in
this institution.
See also: Miethe, Adolf; and Stieglitz, Alfred.Further Reading
Baier, Wolfgang, Quellendarstellungen zur Geschichte der Foto-
grafi e, Leipzig: VEB Fotokinoverlag 1977, 266–267.
Herneck, Friedrich, Hermann Wilhelm Vogel, Leipzig: Teubner
1984.
Lerche & Isaaksen (i.e., Vogel and Jacobsen), Das Zukunftsatelier.
Oder die Photographie als Eheprocurator, Dramatisch-pho-
tographischer Scherz in 2 Akten, Berlin: Photographischer
Verein zu Berlin 1864.
Vogel, Hermann Wilhelm, Die Photographie auf der Londoner
Weltausstellung des Jahres 1862, Braunschweig: Neuhoff &
Comp. 1863.
Vogel, Hermann Wilhelm, Handbuch der Photographie, vol. 1–4,
Berlin: Oppenheim 1867–1891.VON ETTINGSHAUSEN, ANDREAS
RITTER (1796–1878)
Austrian mathematician and physicist
Ettingshausen was born on 25 November 1796 in Hei-
delberg, where his father was stationed during the fi rst
World War as a member of the Austrian general staff.
After the relocation of the family to Vienna in 1809 and
the completion of high school he turned to a career as