39
ANGERER, LUDWIG (1827–1879) AND
VIKTOR (1839–1894)
The brothers Ludwig and Viktor Angerer are variously
described as being of Hungarian or Austrian nationality.
They were born in Malaczka, Hungary.
Ludwig was trained as a pharmacist in the early
1850s, and some accounts state that he served as a
pharmacist in the Austrian army, while others place him
in the Imperial Pharmacy at Donauländern. Initially,
photography was his hobby, but a series of views of
Hungary and Austria, taken during his military service
in the Danube countries in 1854, brought him to public
notice, and apparently encouraged him to make his
hobby his profession.
He moved to Vienna, probably in 1857, and opened
a photographic studio in the city, quickly earning a
reputation for high quality portraiture, both indoors and
outside in the garden of his home.
By 1864 he was a member of the executive com-
mittee of the Photographic Society of Vienna, which,
according to Eder, brought him into contact with Anton
Friedrich, then manager of Voigtländer’s premises in
Vienna. This led to Angerer acquiring and working
with Voigtländer’s recently introduced and massive 8-
inch diameter Petzval-style portrait lens. Indeed, it was
Angerer’s own lens which was displayed at the Berlin
International Photographic Exposition in the following
year. With this lens, he produced a series of very large
format portraits, and his achievement was reported in the
review of the exposition published in Photograpische
Korrespondenz
Ludwig Angerer exhibited portraits, busts and three-quar-
ter lengths, taken with an eight-inch Voigtländer lens.
From the technical standpoint, these were highly success-
ful and vigorous without retouching, but, unfortunately,
they were not as much appreciated as the diffi culty of
their production made them deserve.... The nucleus of
his exhibit were the portraits, size 13 × 16 inches, taken
with a six-inch Voigtländer lens.That six-inch diameter lens, introduced in 1860 in two
different focal lengths, weighed in at a massive 31 lbs!
The weight of the eight-inch version must have been
considerable. Indeed, so heavy was it that Angerer had to
design a special tripod to carry the weight of the camera
and its optic, with geared mechanisms to raise and lower
the camera. Camera, lens and tripod reportedly weighed
over two hundred pounds!
Angerer is credited with the introduction of the carte-
de-visite into Vienna in 1857, and thereafter he produced
and marketed many portraits of the Austrian Imperial
family and celebrities in that format as well as the larger
format prints for which he was already renowned.
His continued success led to expansion of his prem-
ises, and a larger studio, illuminated with blue glass
skylights, was opened in 1867. It was in this studio that
he was joined by his brother Viktor in 1872, or 1873.
Viktor had previously operated his own highly success-
ful studio since the early 1860s. Their partnership, as
L & V Angerer, apparently lasted just over a year as
Ludwig’s health deteriorated and the operation of the
studio passed solely to Viktor. Ludwig died in 1879,
aged 52, and one of his sons and his daughter would, for
a time, work as photographers in the family studio.
Viktor was a military engineer by training, having
briefl y operated a portrait studio in Bad Ischl at the age
of twenty. On leaving the military, he returned to photog-
raphy, eventually becoming Court Photographer to the
Austrian Imperial Family. A pioneer in the production
of photographic enlargements in Vienna, he report-
edly visited Claudet in London in 1861 to familiarize
himself with the challenges of using Woodward’s solar
enlarging camera. His photographic career spanned
more than thirty years, and embraced both photography
and the manufacture of photographic materials, during
which time he produced celebrated portraits of Austrian
celebrities, including a fi ne series of studies of Johann
Strauss in the early 1890s.
A series of photographs exhibited in the 1863 exhibi-
tion of the Photographic Society in London, and identi-
fi ed only as by ‘Angerer’ were probably examples of
both men’s work. They had previously been exhibited
in Paris, and were brought to the London exhibition by
the Société française de photographie. Amongst them
are two portraits of the Empress of Austria, probably by
Ludwig, but the majority relate to technical experimen-
tation which the two men undertook around that time.
Amongst them, large format portraits of Voigtländer,
Callaghan, and one of the Angerer brothers—and taken
with Voigtländer lenses—are probably by Ludwig. ‘A
Photograph on albumenized paper, magnifi ed eight
times without being retouched, produced by means of
the Solar camera’ clearly stems from Viktor’s 1861–2
experiments with enlarging. The experimental nature of
the images in this exhibit is underlined by the fact that,
with the exception of the portraits of the Empress, the
subject matter of the images was not catalogued, while
lenses used are precisely described. Thus, the catalogue
confi rms, two images (subject unknown) were taken
with the ‘short-focus’ version of Voigtländer’s six-inch
diameter lens.
In 1881 he is recorded as the proprietor of the Pho-
tographic Art Institute of Vienna, the most celebrated
studio in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, for which he
bought a licence from Karl Klic to use Kilic’s heliogra-
vure printing process, having received training at Klic’s
Photochemical Works. Printing, by heliogravure, collo-
type and photogravure, eventually became an important
aspect of the studio’s activities.
While Klic was refi ning his process, he used dry