Edmund Lill

Neon sign lettering Photo Lill 1950s

Edmund Lill (born September 26, 1874 ; † 1958 ) was a German businessman and photographer who was best known as the architectural photographer of the Bauhaus- style Fagus works built by the architect Walter Gropius .

history

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Around 1910: Postcard from Lill for the entrepreneur Karl Kracke , both in the illustrated office building at Georgstrasse 14 . The top floor shows the typical glass house structure for commercial photo studios

The photographer and company founder Edmund Lill , around 1950

Edmund Lill “learned from the well-known masters Dürkopp, Raupp and others”, worked in Düsseldorf and around 1900 was “long-time managing director of Hubert Lill, court photographer” with company locations in Mannheim and Stuttgart . After receiving a “1. Prize in the competition of professional photographers ”, Lill took over the Tiedemann studio in Hanover, Georgstrasse 14 on October 1, 1908 , and asked politely in the Hanoverian Gazette of the same date to view the exhibits in his show hall. In the following year, the daily newspaper advertised Lill's portrait photographs, which turned away from the “ poses ” and so-called “beautiful” pictures that were still common at the time . Instead, Lill's photos should have timed the right time for the characteristic properties of the person depicted, with a coordinated distribution of light and shadow that emphasized the shapes more vividly.

Even at the time of the German Empire Edmund Lill published in collaboration with the Hanover indicator of the Illustrirten newspaper published (IZ) magazines -Sondernummer 3538 of 20 April 1911 entitled Hanover and border areas dot screened a full page ad with four exemplary and by a Art Nouveau ribbon from the hand of the poster artist Paul Kammüller framed photographs. Two of them show interior shots of lavishly furnished villas , the other two put a young lady and two reading girls in the clothes of the upper class in the right light

1911/1912: The newly built Fagus factory by Walter Gropius in a recording by Edmund Lill

From 1911 and 1912, Lill took architectural photographs of the construction progress of the Fagus-Werke shoe factory built by Walter Gropius in Alfeld .

View from Georgstrasse in the direction of the Viennese café at what will later be the Kröpcke ; On the Andreasstrasse , which bends slightly to the left, Norddeutsche Lloyd operates a branch, where Photo-Lill will later set up its second branch;
Postcard number 648 , anonymous; around 1910

Ballroom of the express steamer of the NDL and transatlantic liner Europa , taken in 1930 by Edmund Lill during the maiden voyage from Hamburg to New York

As a result of the First World War , the Lill company also lacked the photo specialists who had been drafted as soldiers from 1914 , but also lacked photo materials. The galloping German hyperinflation from the beginning of the Weimar Republic also paralyzed business. In 1926, the award of the gold medal of the Northwest German Photographers Association , "for outstanding achievements [...] in the field of professional photography" and awarded by the board of the "jury" and the director of the German Photography Exhibition in Frankfurt am Main, promotes the gradually prospering business again . In the following year Edmund Lill was able to set up a branch in the Bauhaus- influenced style on September 1, 1927 as a specialty shop for cameras and accessories at Georgstrasse 39 with the shop windows facing Andreaestrasse . The light-flooded facility attracted attention with its clear, factual forms as well as the restriction to the "colors" black, white and gray that were common in photography at the time. In 1927, 40 employees worked in the company in addition to the owner.

In 1930 Edmund Lill was commissioned by Norddeutscher Lloyd (NDL) , “despite strong competition”, to photograph all the interior and technical facilities of the NDL's express steamer during the maiden voyage of the passenger steamship Europa from Hamburg to New York . Lill finally delivered at least 200 recordings to New York.

In the 1930s, "Reich winners in the photography competitions" emerged from the company's staff twice. In 1935, the future “junior boss” Klaus Zeug started working at Photo-Lill . He had previously completed a commercial apprenticeship with Rudolf Lichtenberg in the "Photo-Centrale Lichtenberg - Smits" in Osnabrück from 1926 and then worked in Düsseldorf, Bremen and Hamburg.

1945: A result of the air raids on Hanover , here the view from Bahnhofstrasse to the corner building on Andreaestrasse ; in the foreground the former Viennese café with a black cross : "Ruin searched for corpses!"

September 1947: Reconditioning of the building and company headquarters at Oskar-Winter-Straße 9 on Lister Platz, which had previously been partially destroyed by the air raids on Hanover

The time of National Socialism did not leave Foto-Lill without a trace; The aerial bombs during the air raids on Hanover finally laid both sites in ruins, which destroyed the entire Lill negative archive.

Edmund Lill was one of the first photographers to receive approval from the British Military Government to photograph destroyed houses. This enabled it to serve as an important support for architects and builders during the reconstruction. Around a year after the end of the war, the now 72-year-old company founder Edmund Lill took on his former employee Klaus Zeug as an "operator" and personally liable partner on July 1, 1946 ; With the consent of the British occupiers , the company, now declared as a general partnership, could be registered retrospectively on August 13th of that year at the Hanover local court . But the reconstruction was arduous: although some employees from earlier times found their way back from the chaos of war, equipment had been lost and material could not be delivered. In makeshift rented rooms at Lister Platz in Jakobistraße 1 , electricity was only available by the hour . In the beginning, broken shop windows had to be laboriously replaced by smaller built-in windows, and labels such as Kodak had to be painted on by hand. Ten days after the currency reform in the western occupation zones, the repair work began on the building, which was only partially damaged by the war, at Oskar-Winter-Strasse 9 on the corner of Bödekerstrasse , to which Photo-Lill was relocated.

Shop fittings from the 1950s in the Oskar-Winter-Straße 9 sales room

The new, expansive facility of the 1950s saw the almost 80-year-old company founder who, shortly after his milestone anniversary, on September 29, 1954 from the Central Association of German Photographers "for his services to the promotion of photography [...]" with the Silver badge of honor was awarded. In the same year Edmund Lill, who wanted “his company” to be continued as a family business , adopted his long-term employee and partner Klaus Zeug in 1954 .

For the 50th anniversary in 1958, the employees put together a unique clamp binder with an elaborately designed chronicle of the company. The work dedicated to the senior boss was signed by 20 employees and more than 50 “guests” of the celebrations.

In the meantime, the company is being continued by the owner Shahnaz Taheri , today at Eichstrasse 13 .

Awards

• 1907: “1. Prize in the competition of professional photographers "
• 1926: Gold medal of the Northwest German Photographers Association in Frankfurt am Main
• In the 1930s, "Reich winners in the photography competitions" emerged from the staff twice
• September 29, 1954: Silver badge of honor of the Central Association of German Photographers' Crafts based in Düsseldorf

Publications (incomplete)

• Doris Reichmann : gymnastics with the little ones. A textbook of infant gymnastics , [new edition of the 1930 edition published by Adolf Sponholtz with a foreword by Bruno Valentin] with photos by Edmund Lill and Reinhold Lessmann, Frankfurt am Main: Limpert, 1961

Exhibitions

• From 2013 to 2014, the State Museum for Art and Cultural History Oldenburg presented as part of the exhibition New Architecture! Modern architecture in pictures and books from November 10, 2013 to February 23, 2014 “a unique collection of vintage photographs, letters from architects, plans and sketches on modern architecture”, including a photo of Edmund Lill's Fagus work from the estate of the former museum director Walter Müller-Wulckow .

literature

• NN : 50 years in the service of photography. Photo-Lill. The history of a company from 1908–1958 , previously (as of 07/2014) unpublished text for the 50th anniversary of the business, "compiled, designed by the employees of Photo-Lill and dedicated to your senior boss, Mr. Edmund Lill", Hannover: Photo- Lill, 1958
• Ludwig Hoerner : 1908 Photo Lill GmbH & Co. KG , in: The photographic trade in Germany 1839 - 1914 , Düsseldorf: GFW-Verlag, 1989, ISBN 3-87258-000-0 , p. 243f.
• Annemarie Jaeggi: Edmund Lill , in: Fagus. Industrial culture between the Werkbund and the Bauhaus. Jovis, Berlin 1998, ISBN 3-931321-83-5 .
• Annemarie Jaeggi: Edmund Lill , in: Fagus: industrial culture from Werkbund to Bauhaus. Princeton Architectural Press, New York, 2000, pp. 107-112.

Web links

Commons : Photo-Lill  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Commons : Documents by Photo Lill  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• photo-lill.de
• Edmund Lill at the Harvard Art Museums at Harvard University
• Visit card portrait made by Atelier Lill on the privatsammlungen.net page
• Edmund Lill on fotografenwiki.org

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c} Transcription of the document shown and an unspecified newspaper clipping [o. O., und D.] on the page "Edmund Lill, the eighty year old ", in: NN: 50 years ... (see literature )
2. ↑ ^{a b} A new branch , in NN: 50 years ... (see literature )
3. ↑ ^{a b c} Two newspaper clippings [Hannoverscher Anzeiger?] On the page marked with "1909" in: NN: 50 years ... (see literature )
4. ↑ ^{a b} Compare the information  ( page can no longer be called up , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. under the title Das Fagus-Werk und die Denkmalpflege on the website of the Lower Saxony State Museum for Art and Cultural History Oldenburg , last accessed on July 24, 2014  
5. ↑ ^{a b} glued-in newspaper clipping from October 1, 1908 in: NN: 50 years ... (see literature )
6. ↑ ^{a b c d} Quote from an unspecified, glued-on newspaper clipping on the page "The employees of the thirties", in NN: 50 years ... (see literature )
7. ↑ oaO, p. VII
8. ↑ 1914 , in: NN: 50 years ... (see literature )
9. ↑ The crippling specter of inflation , in NN: 50 years ... (see literature )
10. ↑ ^{a b} Transcription of the document shown, in: NN: 50 years ... (see literature )
11. ↑ Next page with three photos of the “special house” with a newspaper clipping stuck on [o. O., o. D.], in NN: 50 years ... (see literature )
12. ↑ ^{a b} An honorable assignment , in NN: 50 years ... (see literature )
13. ↑ Compare the captioning on the digital version of the picture 102-09253 made available at Commons through a cooperation between the German Federal Archives and Wikimedia Germany
14. ↑ 1933 - twenty-five years later , in NN: 50 years ... (see literature )
15. ↑ Illustration of the apprenticeship contract and commentary, in NN: 50 years ... (see literature )
16. ↑ ^{a b c} The war is over ... in NN: 50 years ... (see literature )
17. ↑ ^{a b} o.V. : 75 years Photo Lill , in Reimar Hollmann, Brigitte Huhn, Martina Liedtke, Klaus Meyer, Bob Scholber, Wolfgang Steinweg, Helmut Zimmermann : Hanover , overall editorial team with the support of the Press and Information Office of the State Capital Hanover, Munich: Kunstverlag Josef Bühn, 1983, [without page number in the economic chronicles section of the city of Hanover ]
18. ↑ ^{a b c d e} Compare the documentation at Commons (see under the section Web Links )
19. ↑ Photo-Lill at Lister Platz ... in NN: 50 years ... (see literature )
20. ↑ Another result , in NN: 50 years ... (see literature )
21. ↑ NN: 50 years ... (see literature )
22. ↑ Compare the imprint on the company's website
23. ↑ Compare the information from the German National Library
24. ↑ Manfred Lanfermann ( ViSdP ), Birgit Neuhäuser (Red.): New architecture! Modern architecture in pictures and books | November 10, 2013 to February 23, 2014 , online  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. last accessed on August 20, 2014