Carl Schenk

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Carl Wilhelm Traugott Schenk (* 1813 in Jena ; † July 14, 1874 there ) was a German painter and the first established photographer in the university city of Jena.

Life

Schenk's advertisement about the opening of his photo studio in 1853
Karl Wilhelm Göttling on a photograph by Carl Schenk, around 1858

Schenk was born as the youngest son of the type founder Johann Justus Schenk (1772–1842) and Ernestine Augusta, b. Choinanus (1770–1845) born in Jena. He initially worked as a painter and was still selling colored views of Jena in 1852. On June 7, 1853, Schenk announced in an advertisement that he had opened a "studio for unchangeable photographs on paper" which is located "behind the gutter opposite the academical brewery". His advertisement is the earliest evidence of a photographer established in Jena. The first works were probably exclusively portraits.

As early as 1854, Schenk was offering portrait, landscape and reproduction photographs of paintings and works of art both in black and white and colored. There is evidence that Schwenk took apprentices into his studio in 1857, including the later photographer Bernhard Bischoff (* 1842).

Schenk's efforts to become a teacher at the University of Jena and thus an academic photographer came to nothing in 1855, among others after the concerns of Karl Snell and Karl Wilhelm Göttling . Above all, Snell doubted the academic abilities of Schenk, who had no knowledge of the actual mode of action of the chemical preparations and physical instruments that are needed for photography. Academic citizenship would have meant for Schenk, among other things, special privileges with regard to jurisdiction and taxation - both his father as a type founder and his brother Friedrich Ernst August Schenk (1796-1859) as an academic drawing teacher had the status of an academic citizen.

From 1855 to 1858 Schenk photographed all the members of the Senate of the University of Jena as well as the rector Carl Alexander von Sachsen and the university curator Karl Julius Moritz Seebeck (1805–1884). Among those photographed were scientists like Andreas Gottlieb Hoffmann , Karl August Hase , Leopold Immanuel Rückert , Carl Nipperdey and Heinrich Aemilius August Danz . The total of 29 photographs that Schenk presented to the university on the occasion of its 300th anniversary in 1858 are today the “oldest surviving image documents on the history of photography in Jena”.

Schenk stayed in Gotha in September 1857 , where he was praised as a “master of photography”: “The portraits are among the most successful that we have seen, both technically and artistically”. Other critics emphasized the “purity, clarity and fidelity” of the images, in which the “other errors in the photographs, such as the disproportion of the parts closer to the machine, are almost completely eliminated”.

The first address book for the city of Jena from 1862 names the photographers Julius Schnauß (1827–1895) and Wilhelm Müller as well as Schenk ; Earlier, Ernst Haeckel's son Walter reported in his childhood memories that “Schenk and Schnauß [...] were the first photographers in Jena around the mid-1850s”. As early as 1865, the number of photographers based in Jena had increased to five. The studio Hinter der Rinne 154 existed until 1874. Schenk, who bore the title “Grand Ducal Court Photographer”, died on July 14, 1874 in Jena.

literature

  • Volker Wahl : The prevented "academic photographers" or the beginnings of photography in Jena. In: Photography , No. 1, 1980, pp. 2–3.
  • Volker Wahl: The photo album of the academic senate members from 1858 . Friedrich Schiller University, Jena 1983.

Web links

Commons : Carl Schenk  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Text of the advertisement in: Blätter von der Saale , No. 65, June 7, 1853, p. 306.
  2. ↑ Leaves from the Saale , No. 10, January 24, 1854, p. 58.
  3. ↑ Quotation of your choice, p. 16.
  4. ^ Volker Wahl: The photo album of the academic senate members from 1858 . Friedrich Schiller University, Jena 1983, p. 7.
  5. ^ Reprint of an article in the Gothaische Zeitung of September 23, 1857. In: Blätter an der Saale , No. 115, October 1, 1859, p. 519.
  6. ↑ Pages from the Saale , No. 66, June 8, 1854, p. 381.
  7. ^ Walter Haeckel: Alt Jena. Childhood memories . Jena 1931, p. 12.
personal data
SURNAME Schenk, Carl
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Schenk, Carl Wilhelm Traugott (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German painter and photographer
DATE OF BIRTH 1813
PLACE OF BIRTH Jena
DATE OF DEATH July 14, 1874
Place of death Jena