Arthur Ohler

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Arthur Ohler (born February 23, 1883 in Stuttgart ; † January 17, 1973 ibid) was a German photographer who lived and worked in Stuttgart.

Professional background

After attending elementary school, Ohler started an apprenticeship with various Stuttgart photographers in 1897 to realize his career aspiration. From 1902 to 1906 he worked for photographers in Ravensburg, Offenbach, Mannheim and Magdeburg. From around 1907 - interrupted by his service as a soldier in World War I - Ohler was back in Stuttgart and managing director of the Theodor Andersen photo studio for seventeen years. During this time, he was also involved as a union leader for the Stuttgart assistants, where he successfully campaigned against unpaid overtime and for vacationing photographers' assistants.

In 1926, Ohler set up his own studio in Stuttgart. At the same time he joined the Stuttgart Photographers' Guild, founded in 1921, where he was promoted to board member. It was not until the beginning of 1958 that the 75-year-old Ohler retired and handed over his business premises to his colleague Heinz Müller, who joined the studio community in 1945 as an apprentice, which Ohler managed from 1944 to 1950 with his half-brother Willi Moegle , who worked as a property photographer .

Working as a freelance photographer

With the beginning of his self-employment, Ohler's photographic work can be proven. Ohler was the photographer of all 64 illustrations for Max Adolphi and Arno Kettmann's publication “Dance Art and Art Dance from the Herion Stuttgart Dance Group”, which appeared in Stuttgart around 1928. They mainly show dancers, mostly in fantasy costumes, all in expressive postures.

In 1927/1928 Ohler made the photo prints to illustrate the publication by the architect Konrad W. Schulze "Steel and Skeleton Construction", which was published in 1928. In Schulze's publication "Glass in Contemporary Architecture", which appeared in the following year, Ohler himself took four photos from the Schocken department store in Stuttgart.

The Tagblatt Tower in Stuttgart, another building of the new objectivity , which was built until 1928 , also interested the photographer Ohler. Three photographs of Ohler's work in the Stuttgart City Archives have been preserved shortly after the building was completed. As a photographer, Ohler often devoted himself to urban architecture illuminated at night. This is evidenced by a recording of the Schocken department store published in the Schulze 1928 publication and a night recording of the Tagblatt tower, which was published in the Fest-Zeitung No. 6 in January 1933 in preparation for the German Gymnastics Festival in Stuttgart with the title: “Nocturnal thunderstorm over the Tagblatt Tower House ”was published.

The architects and furniture designers Heinz and Bodo Rasch, who work in Stuttgart, also chose the photo workshop A. Ohler, Stuttgart, for most of the illustrations in their publication entitled “The Chair”, which appeared around 1928, as can be read on the back of the title page.

The further development of photography was one of Ohler's concerns. In 1929 the international exhibition FILM UND FOTO, conceived by the Deutscher Werkbund, took place in Stuttgart. According to the exhibitor directory, Ohler was represented with five photos, including the title balloons, snowdrifts and skiers, but unfortunately all of them are lost.

The brochure accompanying the film and photo exhibition contains a half-page advertisement from Ohler's photo studio, here called “Werkstätte Ohler”, which is recommended for current and technical photos using a photo montage. Ohler also took photos of this exhibition in two issues of the Sunday supplement of the Neue Tagblatt.

As a photographer, Ohler was a universalist; He worked as a portrait, property, advertising alias product photographer and in the 1920s and 1930s as an architecture photographer. As his advertisement from 1929 and his high-rise photographs show, he took photos with a bellows camera with a compound shutter and lens standard, which enabled uniform illumination and distortion-free imaging of moving and high subjects. His traditional photographs are factual, his architecture and cityscape photographs are mostly effective productions.

Ohler as a teacher and guild master

Since his self-employment from 1926, Arthur Ohler trained apprentices, including several who were to become known as photographers. The son of his friend Hugo Schmölz is one of them : Karl Hugo Schmölz .

In the war years 1943 and 1944 Ohler rose to the position of deputy national champion in the photographers' guild, but was released from this position as a non-party member at the instigation of the NSDAP. After the war, in 1946, the Ohler Chamber of Crafts, in agreement with the American military government, reinstated the chief master of the photographers' guild. By 1963 he was re-elected as such four times in free elections. In 1955 and 1957, Ohler, together with the State Trade Office in Stuttgart, organized the exhibitions "photo 55" and "photo 57" as performance shows for professional photographers in the Federal Republic of Germany. In 1960, Ohler was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit for his work in improving photography training.

Literature, partly with source character

  • Judith Breuer: The photographer Arthur Ohler as chronicler of pre-war Stuttgart. In: Swabian homeland. Journal for Regional History… 71st vol. 2020, pp. 142–149.
  • Heike van der Horst: Foreword to inventory 2278 = Donation Hilda and Werner Nowak / Nachlass Arthur Ohler, status 2018. stadtarchiv-stuttgart.findbuch .
  • Preservation and loss - the legacies of the photographers Ohler, Windstuster, Seufert. Leporello for the exhibition in the Stuttgart City Archives from October 8, 2015 to January 23, 2016.

Short biographies

  • Art. Arthur Ohler. In: Deutsche Biographie , pnd127539433 [01/07/2020].
  • Film and photo from the twenties. A consideration of the international Werkbund exhibition “Film and Photo” 1929. Ed. By Ute Eskildsen and Jan – Christopher Horak, Stuttgart 1979, p. 235.
  • International exhibition of the German Werkbund FILM UND FOTO. Stuttgart 1929. [Reprint] ed. u. introduced by Karl Steinorth, Fellbach 1979, p. 72 [with wrong date of death].

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Breuer: The photographer Arthur Ohler… 2020, pp. 142f, 148.
  2. ↑ Max Adolphi and Arno Kettmann: Dance art and art dance from the dance group Herion Stuttgart, Stuttgart no year (approx. 1928)
  3. ↑ Konrad W. Schulze: Glass in Contemporary Architecture, Stuttgart 1929, pp. 30-33, figs. 22, 24-26.
  4. ↑ Breuer: The photographer Arthur Ohler… 2020, p. 145.
  5. ↑ Heinz and Bodo Rasch: The chair. Stuttgart no year (approx. 1928)
  6. ^ Breuer: The photographer Arthur Ohler… 2020, p. 146; International exhibition of the Deutscher Werkbund FILM UND FOTO, Stuttgart 1929, p. 70f; Film and photo from the twenties. A consideration of the International Werkbund Exhibition Film and Photo 1929. Edited by Ute Eskildsen and Jan-Christopher Horak. Stuttgart 1979; Ulrich Hägele: << Film and Photo >> - the exhibition of the German Werkbund 1929 in Stuttgart. In: Schwäbische Heimat , Volume 70, 2019, pp. 437–442.
  7. ^ Breuer: The photographer Arthur Ohler… 2020, p. 145f; International exhibition of the German Werkbund Film and Photo. 1929, p. 48d.
  8. ↑ Schwäbisches Bilderblatt = Sunday supplement to the Stuttgarter Neue Tagblatt No. 22 of May 31, 1929 a. No. 23 dated June 7, 1929; Ulrich Hägele: << Film and Photo >> - the exhibition of the German Werkbund 1929 in Stuttgart. In: Schwäbische Heimat , vol. 70, 2019, pp. 437 & 438.
  9. ↑ A Life for Photography. In: Stuttgarter Zeitung. 02/22/1958.
  10. ↑ Breuer 2020, p. 148; Horst Benz: Manuscript of the address for the 75th anniversary of the photographers' guild on May 3, 1996, in: Stadtarchiv Stuttgart, inventory 2278, unit 9.
personal data
SURNAME Ohler, Arthur
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German photographer in Stuttgart
DATE OF BIRTH February 23, 1883
PLACE OF BIRTH Stuttgart
DATE OF DEATH 17th January 1973
Place of death Stuttgart