585
Schoenscheidt from Cologne, Friedrich Georg and Her-
mann Friedrich Brandseph from Stuttgart, Carl Teufel
and the company of Jaeger & Goergen from Munich,
Bernhard Johannes from Partenkirchen. One should not
under-estimate the visual training given to the public
by these photographs which were as infl uential as the
average portrait photography of the same days.
The last and—from an aesthetic view—most excit-
ing chapter of German photography in the 19th century
was opened with an exhibition in Berlin dedicated to the
half-centennial of the medium’s history. Installed by the
Photographische Verein zu Berlin under the direction of
Hermann Wilhelm Vogel, this exhibition comprised not
only the newest developments of photographic science
and the use of photography within science and practice;
it did not only show the early pride of the rising pho-
tographic industry in Germany by displaying cameras,
lenses, and all kinds of apparatus; this exhibition had a
special department devoted to photographic art—and it
saw the future of imagery in the works of amateurs like
the young Berlin student Alfred Stieglitz. He was the
actual star of both the exhibition and its juries, in all parts
of the show he either received gold and silver medals
or was an important member of the panel. Whether he
crowned a lens for portraiture or honoured a print-out
paper, Stieglitz was an integral part of the photographic
establishment mentored by his teacher Vogel and other
celebrities of German photography.
Stieglitz’ astonishing success was accompanied by
the distinction for several amateur photographers from
all over Europe and defi nes the actual birth of a fi ne art
Photography movement in Germany. When the art histo-
rian Alfred Lichtwark became director of the Kunsthalle
in Hamburg in 1886 he delivered a number of speeches
emphasizing the importance of amateurs’ activities in
the arts. Subsequently he supported the foundation of
the fi rst Hamburg society for the amelioration of pho-
tography which became the nucleus of the German Fine
Art Movement in photography. Similar societies existed
already in Berlin and Dresden, numerous others were
founded within the 1890s, and at the turn of the century
Germany had a lively scene of fi ne art photographers
who were dedicated amateurs.
The social distinction of these amateur circles is obvi-
ous: There were well-to-do merchants like Heinrich Wil-
helm Mueller, Georg Einbeck, and Gustav E.B. Trinks,
physicians like Eduard Arning and Konrad Biesalski,
military offi cers like A. Boehmer, Ludwig David, and
Walter Heinrich von Ohlendorff, civil servants like the
brothers Theodor and Oskar Hofmeister and Anton
Christian Bruhn, school teachers like Otto Scharf, Ru-
dolf Crell, and Heinrich Linde, and the women involved
often enough had an aristocratic background, e.g. like
Alma Lessing, Harriet Helene von Bronsat, or Anna von
Krane. The collectors of these early fi ne art photographs
either shared the interests of their friends or were busy
with acknowledging photography as a true medium of
art—among them one has to name Ernst Juhl and Fritz
Matthies-Masuren who were not only private collectors
of interest and quality but instigated several graphic
departments of established museums to build up pho-
tographic collections of their own. These collections in
Hamburg, Berlin, and Dresden today still rank among
the fi nest in Germany.
Above all other implications, the fi ne art movement
instigated a substantial rise of quality within profes-
sional photography. Be it the careers of Rudolph Dueh-
rkoop from Hamburg, of Nicola Perscheid from Berlin,
of Hugo Erfurth and Erwin Raupp from Dresden, of
Albert Gottheil from Danzig, of the brothers Jacob and
Theodor Hilsdorf from Bingen and Munich, and of Wil-
helm Weimer from Darmstadt—neither of these were
possible without their early acknowledgement of what
happened in the fi ne art circles and their exhibitions. The
life history of Hugo Erfurth may be seen as exemplary
for most of his competitors: He participated in three
major amateur photography exhibitions—including
the famous 1893 show of the Hamburgian friends of
photography—before he enrolled as an apprentice with
the Dresden photographer Wilhelm Hoeffert. Only one
year later he already owned his fi rst studio, and within
the last fi ve years of the 19th century, Erfurth managed
to become one of the fi ve most celebrated photographers
in Germany.
The ‘professional fi ne art photographers’ balanced
economic success and aesthetic interest by combining
all important developments of their century. The sub-
jects were chosen in accordance to classical genres:
portraiture, nude, landscape—with a general exclusion
of heroic scenes and an equally general inclusion of
symbolic settings. The method of making allotted to
a personal style—chosing gum printing in one, two
or more specifi c colours or sticking to carbon or plati-
num printing, furnishing reception from the public by
brushing the negative or painting on the positive. All
of these manipulations formed a stylistic approach that
had secured the amateurs of fi ne art photography in
their creative autonomy but worked out as a valuable
set of distinctions between professional competitors. At
the end of the 19th century, photography in Germany
fi nally was a renowned practice of design if not fi ne
art—modernism, already visible in other forms of art,
just had to come.
Rolf SachsseSee also: von Steinheil, Karl August and Hugo
Adolf; von Kobell, Franz; von Humboldt, Alexander;
Talbot, William Henry Fox; Hill, David Octavius,
and Robert Adamson; Schneider, Trutpert, Wilhelm,
and Heinrich; Busch, Friedrich Emil; Carte-de-