584
Junod from Hamburg demonstrated their abilities by
showing battlegrounds, artillery, and corpses but nearly
no portrait of a general nor depictions of groups. As the
photographs were commissioned by the army’s leader-
ship command, no one of the military offi cers seems to
have understood the principles of effective propaganda
as did their British colleagues.
Exactly the opposite practice was the result of Carl
Friedrich Mylius’ participation in the German-French
war of 1870 and 1871. Mylius who had been specialised
in architectural photography at his hometown of Frank-
furt on Main before, concentrated on portraits of both
the troops and the offi cers, and his business must have
fl orished throughout the war. When the Prussian King
Wilhelm was made Emperor of Germany in the castle of
Versailles near Paris, the Berlin photographer Heinrich
Schnaebeli was commissioned to produce an album of
the military presence at this occasion—and his images
are clearly to be viewed as photomontages. The invis-
ibility of these important events had partially historical
reasons—the crowning of the Prussian king in 1861
had been a quiet feast, the 1863 assembly of dukes and
counts in Frankfurt on Main had failed in the unifi ca-
tion of Germany, and Joseph Albert’s photograph of this
congress only showed a part of those invited—but there
was a certain dislike in the medium due to old-fashioned
ideas about art within the ruling class in Germany. Only
at the very end of the 19th century, some members of the
royal family began to spend an interest in photography
which can be considered amateurish.
The military interest in photography grew with the
technical developments: When Ottomar Anschuetz
presented the fi rst results of high-speed photographs
with his patented focal-plane shutter to the General
Staff in 1883, he immediately was made the offi cial
photographer of the Emperor’s spring manœuvers, and
the photographs of the 1884 manœuvers were the fi rst
ones to be printed in the autotype process in a Ger-
man newspaper just a few days after the actual event.
Anschuetz’ close cooperation with the photographic
industry bore many fruits, and the military use of the
medium for technical purposes—like producing maps
and area surveys—as well as for propagandistic use
grew rapidly into the preparation of all kinds of appli-
cations of photography and cinematography as imple-
mented in World War I. These developments coincided
perfectly with the double use of another invention at
least in larger parts stimulated by German scientists:
photogrammetry. After seven years of investigation,
the architect Albrecht Meydenbauer in 1865 presented
a method of re-constructing buildings and sculptures
by drawings in orthogonal projection made after stereo
photographs under specifi c conditions. In 1885, the
Berlin institute of photogrammetry (Messbildanstalt)
was installed and became the most important source of
architectural photographs of historical buildings for the
next two decades. The military use of photogrammetry
lifted considerably with balloon and aerial photography
short before World War I.
In 1861, one of the most remarkable fi gures in Ger-
man industrial history, Alfred Krupp, commissioned his
far relative Hugo van Werden to learn photography in a
studio in Hannover then well known for its qualities in
depicting industrial products. After a short apprentice-
ship, van Werden set up the Krupp photographic and
lithographic institute which from then on had to deliver
all visual materials used for documentation, press re-
leases, and public relation of Krupp’s steel company. As
early as in 1862 on the occasion of the London World
Fair, Krupp was able to show and deliver larger quanti-
ties of photographs of all his products, and the company
gained fame for the use of the new medium in adver-
tising. Smaller companies of the fi ne-mechanical and
optical industries immediately followed this example
and created catalogues of their products by assembling
series of photographs depicting each object as meticu-
lously detailed as possible. But it must be admitted that
the integration of photography into industrial advertise-
ment and public relation was delayed in Germany if one
compares the country with European or North American
competitors on the world market, due to to two factors:
a long period of economic recession throughout the
1870s and early 1880s, and above all, a comparatively
low interest of German industrialists in the aesthetics of
their products. This was only to change, with the help
of photography, short after 1900.
On top of the Krupp stand at the World Fair in Lon-
don in 1862 there was a large display of a panoramic
photograph showing the Essen company site. Made of 12
images, it correlated to a recent fashion among manufac-
turers: showing a bird-like view of their establishment
on top of all business papers. These were still etched
in copper for the rest of the 19th century but each chief
offi ce had to have on the wall at least one panoramic
view of the company’s site. These photographs were
either made by the company’s own photographic de-
partment or by photographers specialized in landscape
and architectural views. Parallel to the success of the
travel photographers, a number of studios started to offer
portfolios displayed specifi c types of architecture like
villas, offi ce buildings, town halls, and industrial sites.
These portfolios were sold to architectural schools as
well as to administrations in towns and countries, and
some even caused interest among better-off citizens
looking for the latest fashion in homes and gardens.
Among the well known photographers working in this
fi eld one has to name Friedrich August Albert Schwartz,
Hermann Rueckwardt, and Waldemar Titzenthaler from
Berlin, Johannes Noehring from Luebeck, Julius Soehn
from Duesseldorf, Anselm Schmitz and Johann Heinrich