Arthur Koester

Arthur Köster (born December 5, 1890 in Pausa-Riezmar , Vogtland , † September 18, 1965 in Hankensbüttel ) was a German architectural photographer .

Live and act

Arthur Köster was born in 1890 as the oldest of four siblings. His parents ran their own farm in front of the village of Pausa. He learned the trade of a farmer , but was not happy with it and preferred to work in textile manufacture . He began to take photos as a self-taught person with a camera given by a friend who was called up for the military .

In March 1915 he was drafted himself and did his military service on the French front . He took the camera with him and took photos of comrades and officers there. In 1917 he was finally able to begin training as a photographer within the telephone department , which was later recognized by the Chamber of Crafts . It is assumed that the captain Günther Wasmuth, nephew of the founder of the Ernst Wasmuth publishing house in Berlin and its director since 1913, could have encouraged him to do so out of the publishing house's interest.

So Köster continued his training from July 1919 to September 1920 in Wasmuth's own photo studio . Shortly afterwards, his teacher died, which is why Köster took his place. In the years from 1920 to 1926 he photographed numerous buildings for the publications of Ernst Wasmuth Verlag, for example Wasmuth's MONTHS for Baukunst , but also for Die Bauwelt des Ullstein Verlag , and got to know most of the architects, the few Years later in the freelance business his clients were. The first part-time recordings date from 1926. Otto Haesler (Celle) and Erich Mendelsohn (Berlin) were the clients. The incentive to work completely independently came from the circle of architects he knew.

In the same year the time had come and his customer base was quickly established: Otto Bartning , Egon Eiermann , Fred Forbát , Walter Gropius , Otto Haesler, Paul Rudolf Henning , the office of the brothers Hans and Wassili Luckhardt & Alfons Anker , the office of Mebes & Emmerich , Ludwig Mies van der Rohe , Hans Poelzig , Max and Bruno Taut , Hans Scharoun , Otto Rudolf Salvisberg , Thilo Schoder u. a. The result was a series of pictures from, among others, Siemensstadt , the forest settlement Onkel Toms Hütte , the residential town Carl Legien and the horseshoe settlement Britz . Many photos were used for illustration in books or printed on postcards. From 1929 the younger brother Walter supported the company owner Arthur Köster as an assistant and was trained by him as a photographer. Arthur Köster himself aspired to the master's degree and learned for it in the photography class at the Berlin Lette School . In 1931 he passed the master's examination in photography. The guild was not offended by the fact that the brother's training began before his own master's examination . The order situation was excellent. Even though the photo studio was based in Berlin and mainly worked for Berlin customers, Köster worked nationwide.

During the Nazi era , fewer architects commissioned him (most of them were no longer suffered), but more public institutions such as the city of Berlin, the Reichspost , and also large companies such as Philipp Holzmann AG and specialist journals. For example, he was commissioned by the National Socialists to photograph the new building of the Reich Aviation Ministry . Likewise the bridges of the Reichsautobahn . The architect Ernst Sagebiel , who is associated with the regime , placed major orders with Köster, for example the documentation of the largely completed Tempelhof Airport . Köster was not drafted into the Wehrmacht , but the photo workshop experienced a drop in orders in 1943 due to the precarious conditions of the war. A larger advertisement in the address and yellow pages than in previous years could not change that.

In 1945, after the war and the end of National Socialist rule, the architects who had remained in Berlin approached him again. Now the Berlin magistrate and housing associations have announced a need. There were also orders from the allied occupying powers and companies such as AEG or Philipp Holzmann AG. The photo documentation of the ruins of the war in Berlin was also part of the field of activity in the " Zero Hour ".

In the " economic miracle " from the 1950s onwards, he took on architectural photography orders from the Berlin administration and various building cooperatives and housing associations, as well as orders from industry, trade, the financial sector and (towards the end of the 1950s) trade fair construction . The metal industry was represented by Rheinstahl Hüttenwerke , Krupp and Mannesmann , the electrotechnical industry with AEG-Telefunken , Osram and Electrolux , and the food industry with Dr. Oetker and several Berlin breweries. Customers from the financial services industry were, for example, the Berlin Commerzbank , the Sparkasse der Stadt Berlin-West and the Hamburg-Mannheimer Versicherung . Producers of goods of everyday life for which he captured the production processes or even just the end product in the picture or staged the latter for advertising purposes, for example, were furniture manufacturers or the stocking manufacturer Kunert . Even mere recordings of consumer goods took place at the producer's, since the studio was not designed in this direction. He was hired by exhibition companies as well as exhibiting customers, and not only in Berlin, but throughout Germany . Köster was also used for another field of activity, namely reproduction photography , that is, for the reproduction of graphic art , because the artists valued the high resolution of the large negative format . In the meantime, color photography had also found its way into Köster's work.

At the turn of the year 1958/59 Arthur Köster retired at the age of 68 . Walter Köster continued the business until 1969. On September 18, 1965, Arthur Köster died in Hankensbüttel / Gifhorn district as a result of a stroke .

style

Simone Förster wrote about Köster in her dissertation, Mass Needs Light , that his image finding was tailored to the motif and intended use and that every shot, beyond the mere documentation, also made the building concept visible. Therefore, no uniform, dogmatic style can be recognized, but an individually chosen style that is adapted to the motif “at the highest level with consistently brilliant technical elaboration”.

For Michael Stöneberg, author of a comprehensive study of Köster's work in the Weimar Republic , Köster was “a masterful architectural photographer who had a wide range of photographic means” with which he was able to vividly reproduce individual buildings and their characteristics. At the same time, “typical features and overarching aspects of modern architecture are worked out” in the reproductions. As the most important photographer of the New Buildings , he had “to a considerable extent” shaped the contemporary image of this style epoch conveyed by journalism .

estate

The company archive contained an enormous number of negative plates , the majority of which suffered water damage that made them unusable. Walter Köster tried in vain to sell the rest, so that - as they say - a truckload was dumped in the garbage. The “rest of the rest”, consisting mainly of negatives, was purchased by the architect Günter Meier, who sold it to the Bauhaus Archive and the Academy of Arts in connection with his departure from Berlin . Originals were passed on by other bequests (former customers) and are, for example, in the archive of the Academy of Arts (including the Hans Scharoun Archive, Karl Otto Archive, Thilo Schoder Archive, Luckhardt-und-Anker- Archive) and the Berlin Art Library (Erich Mendelsohn Archive).

literature

• Simone Förster: Mass needs light. Arthur Köster's photographs of Erich Mendelsohn's buildings. A contribution to the history of architectural photography in the 1920s. dissetation.de - Verlag im Internet, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-86624-314-9 .
• Michael Stöneberg: Arthur Köster. Architectural photography 1926–1933. The image of "New Building" . Gebr. Mann Verlag, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-7861-2583-9 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p} Simone Förster: Mass needs light. Arthur Köster's photographs of Erich Mendelsohn's buildings. A contribution to the history of architectural photography in the 1920s . dissetation.de - Verlag im Internet, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-86624-314-9 , chapter 2.1. Life and work. Photographic beginnings - self-employment in Berlin - employment after 1933 - post-war period - whereabouts of the archive, p. 53-62 .
2. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i j k l m n} Michael Stöneberg: Arthur Köster. Architectural photography 1926–1933. The image of "New Building" . Gebr. Mann Verlag, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-7861-2583-9 , Chapter II. Arthur Köster and his photo workshop for architecture and industry. 1. Sketch of the life and company history, p. 21-56 .
3. ↑ ^{a b c d} Eva-Maria Barkhofen (Ed.): Architecture in the archive. The collection of the Academy of Arts . DOM Publishers, Berlin 2016, ISBN 978-3-86922-492-3 , Arthur Köster, p. 524 f .
4. ↑ Michael Stöneberg: Arthur Köster. Architectural photography 1926–1933. The image of "New Building" . Gebr. Mann Verlag, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-7861-2583-9 , Chapter VI. Arthur Koester's contribution to the image of the “new building”. 3. Conclusion, p. 372-375 .

Web links

• Literature about Arthur Köster in the catalog of the German National Library
• bpk picture agency (Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation). In: bpk-bildagentur.de. June 12, 2018, accessed on June 20, 2020 (search Arthur Köster).