48
extensive series showing the work of the German Post
Offi ce. His only surviving chrnophotographs are those
he sold as photolithographs beginning in 1887, those
that were printed for zoetrope bands, and a collection
of contact print leporellos at the Hochschule der Künste
in Berlin that were probably included with a report to
the Culture Ministry, who had fi nancially supported his
early work. Between 1894 and his unexpected death in
1907 he promoted amateur photography with lectures,
teaching, and an elaborate studio and exhibition space
opened in 1896. He devised and manufactured a num-
ber of photographic accessories, including a compact
arc lamp, portable darkroom, changing bag, universal
tripod head, and other apparatus; founded a commercial
organization to resist the inroads of foreign photographic
suppliers to the German market, particularly the East-
man Company; and accompanied the Kaiser and his
family on a long trip through the Holy Land in 1898.
His later photographs, still technically supeurb, were
nonetheless often highly retouched in part and refl ected
the romantic imagery of an earlier era.
Deac Rossell
Biography
Ottomar Anschütz was born on 16 May 1846 in Lissa in
the Prussian province of Posen (today Leszno, Poland),
the son of Christopher Berthold Anschütz, a respected
local decorative painter who took up photography late
in his career. Trained in drawing and painting, the young
Anschütz studied photography with Maksymilian Fajans
in Warsaw, Ferdinand Beyrich in Berlin, Franz Hanfs-
taengl in Munich, and Ludwig Angerer in Vienna before
returning to Lissa to take over his father’s business in
- In the late 1870s he built a travelling studio to
expand his clientele, in 1881 he began working with
dry plates, and the next year he photographed army
manouvers with a camera of his own design incorporat-
ing a practical focal plane shutter and a focussing guide
etched on the lens tube. With this camera, its innovations
kept secret for years, he began to achieve a national and
then European reputation for taking “instantaneous”
photographs that captured quick movements in natural
settings with both sharpness and clarity, with a series of
photographs of storks in their nests receiving particular
acclaim. He established a studio in Berlin in 1884, and
in 1885 began to take series photographs in the manner
of Muybridge using a set of 12 cameras, supported by
a grant from the Prussian Ministry of Culture. In 1886
he devised a wholly new camera unit with 24 lenses and
outfi tted with complex adjustments so that a variety of
subjects could be reproduced in a rotating viewer such
as a zoetrope; he designed several new and innovative
models of zoetrope, one of which carried three rings of
viewing slots and allowed didactic examination of move-
ment. The same year, Anschütz built his own viewing
apparatus, called a Schnellseher, using a continuously
rotating disk bearing between 17 and 24 images linked
to a strobing light source to provide the necessary
intermittentcy to register clear moving pictures for its
spectators. Between 1886 and 1895 eight models of An-
schütz Schnellsehers with his series photographs were
widely exhibited in Europe and North America, seen by
14,858 people in fi ve weeks in Frankfurt a. M. in 1891
and 56,645 people in Hamburg in 1895, but his arrange-
ments for the commercial exploitation of his apparatus,
through the specially-established Electrical Wonder
Company in London, were drastically undercapitalized
and quickly collapsed. From 1894 Anschütz gave up
his decade-long obsession with moving pictures and
devoted his energies to supporting amateur photography,
especially amongst the social elite of Berlin, where he
had long been the photographic teacher to the Kaiser’s
family. He continued to make commercial portraits,
few of which have survived, led an industry boycott of
“foreign” photographic products from the George East-
man Company, and died suddenly of complications from
acute appendicitis on 30 May 1907. His studio in Berlin
continued to operate under his name, often directed by
his son Guido, until 1925.
See also: Chronophotography.Further Reading
Kummer, Helmut, Ottomar Anschütz. Ein deutscher Photopionier
[Ottomar Anschütz. A German Pioneer of Photography],
Munich: Institut für Photogeschichte, 1983.
Liesegang, F. Paul, Ottomar Anschütz. Meister der Augenblicks-
und Reihenphotographie, Meister der Reihenwiedergabe.
Sein Leben, sein Werk, seine Bedeutung [Ottomar Anschütz.
Master of Instantaneous and Series Photography, Master
of its Reproduction. His Life, his Work, his Signifi cance],
Unpublished MSS (1940), Liesegang Nachlaß, Agfa Foto-
Historama, Cologne.
Morrison, Arthur, “Instantaneous Photographs,” in The Strand
Magazine, Vol. 3, no. 18 (June 1892), 629–638.
Rossell, Deac, Faszination der Bewegung. Ottomar Anschütz
zwischen Photographie und Kino [The Fascination of Move-
ment. Ottomar Anschütz Between Photography and Cinema],
Frankfurt a. M./Basle: Stroemfeld/Roter Stern, 2001.ANTHONY, EDWARD (1819–1888) AND
HENRY TIEBOUT (1814–1884)
For much of the nineteenth century the fi rm of E and H
T Anthony was the dominant retailer and photographic
manufacturer in the United States.
Edward Anthony (1819–1888) was born in New York
and graduated from Columbia College in 1838. In De-
cember 1839 he paid to see François Gouraud’s exhibit
and lectures on the daguerreotype and the following year
he became a pupil of Samuel F.B. Morse. He was given