Emil Pinkau

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Emil Pinkau: Self-Portrait
Pinkau family around 1900
Emil Pinkau's study around 1912
Emil Pinkau (1850–1922): Garden view of the Villa Pinkau, after 1912
Gravesite of the Emil Pinkau family, Südfriedhof Leipzig

Emil Pinkau (born January 10, 1850 in Thonberg near Leipzig , † July 22, 1922 in Halle; full name: Eduard Franz Emil Pinkau ) was a German lithographer and entrepreneur . He is considered a pioneer of the picture postcard and is one of the founders of the picture postcard industry in the last quarter of the 19th century.

Life

Emil Pinkau is the son of the wheelwright and blacksmith Johann Carl Pinkau (1817–1878) and his wife Johanna Charlotte, b. Wendel (1820–1850), who died in childbirth. His half-brother was the photographer and later member of the Reichstag, Karl Pinkau (1859–1922). Pinkau thus came from a rural and craft tradition.

His great talent for drawing was noticed early on and so his parents apprenticed him to a lithographer around 1867 . "In addition, he looked for and found the opportunity to continue his artistic, scientific and commercial training." The apprenticeship period usually lasted three to three and a half years. During his time as a journeyman, including the time of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71, he wandered through Germany and Switzerland to Basel, where he probably also acquired knowledge as a photographer. He worked in various "art institutions" and quickly achieved leading positions due to his skills. In the course of the economic upswing after the war he won, Emil Pinkau returned to Leipzig and founded his own company there on October 1, 1873, the Emil Pinkau Lithographic Art Institute , which he converted into Emil Pinkau & Co AG in 1904 .

In 1877 he married Christiane Lina Regine Helene Müller (* 1855 in Leipzig, † 1932 in Leipzig), daughter of a self-employed shoemaker from Hanover. The two have five children: Charlotte Bertha Gertrud (1878–1967), Emil Heinrich Johannes (1879–1958), Lina Selma Charlotte (1882–1974), Eva Ida Margarethe (1892–1985), Hermann Otto Werner (1894–1970) .

Emil Pinkau is described as very urbane. Travels took him to Saint Petersburg and Constantinople. He was a passionate hunter and sang in a male choir. From 1908 he belonged to the Leipziger Herrenabend , an association of respected members of civil society, which met every four weeks in the Leipzig Ratskeller. Around 1910 he slowly withdrew from the day-to-day business of his company and devoted himself increasingly to his musical inclinations, such as drawing , painting and erasing .

Emil and Lina Pinkau's grave is located in Leipzig's southern cemetery . It originally consisted of a temple-like burial chapel on the historical main axis of the cemetery, which was demolished in 1982/86 as part of the construction of the Socialist Grove of Honor. The urns were reburied in another, historical burial place.

Emil Pinkau's house was built by Karl Poser between 1906 and 1907 and is now the seat of the Leipzig State Notarial Office .

meaning

Emil Pinkau, along with August Schwartz and Johannes Miesler , was one of the pioneers of the early postcard. In a newspaper article in 1918 he wrote in retrospect: “On July 15, 1870, I had a small landscape printed as a proof on a postcard and sent to the customer in Silesia. As far as I know, this was the first postcard, created unconsciously by chance… ”. Pinkau recognized the potential of this idea. After founding his own company in 1873, he tried orders for postcards to acquire among publishers - first with little success - "until I got the idea to use the postcards as adding items." Finally, he printed some cards with Rhine views and put them ordered Leporelloalben free at. Their buyers asked for more such postcards, which they then had to purchase ("at 5 Pfg. The piece"). Pinkau aroused the interest of customers and proved to its skeptical clients that there was a need for the new product.

But customers want cards on the same box that Reichspost used and on which the stamp was conveniently already printed. Pinkau initially made do with buying Reichspost cards and then printing them. But the necessary pre-financing, the small print sheets and the resulting printing waste did not make this model lucrative. In order to get really large print sheets, he obtained permission “after combating various prejudices” to order his cardboard box from the same factory from which the Reichsdruckerei obtained its material.

Pinkau relied on large editions early on. The Emil Pinkau Art Institute's production figures for 1879: 15,000, 1880: 160,000, 1885: 4 million, 1890: 45 million postcards.

Since many foreign publishers were regularly in Leipzig, Pinkau took the opportunity to get into international business. In 1888 he was commissioned by the American government to conduct a study of the sales and proceeds of postcards in the German Empire . At the world exhibition in Chicago in 1893, Pinkau received the “Grand State Prize” for the perfection of his photolithographic Leporellos. In 1895, the Istanbul art dealer Max Fruchtermann commissioned him to print cards with motifs from Turkey. These were possibly the first postcards ever to be commissioned from Turkey.

Descendants

Emil Pinkau was the grandfather of Hans-Georg Rausch and Klaus Pinkau .

Collections

The Leipzig City History Museum owns a large number of postcards from Emil Pinkau AG . Pinkau postcards are often offered on the Internet.

Literature and Sources

  • Emil Pinkau: The postcard, its origin and distribution. In magazine: German stone printing industry. No. 19/20, October 15, 1918, p. 89 f.
  • Obituary for Emil Pinkau. Ed .: Emil Pinkau & Co AG, Leipzig 1923
  • Wolf v. Waldow: Leipzig, Springerstraße 8 - a search for clues. In: 25 years as a freelance notary in Brandenburg, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt. Otto Schmidt Verlag, Cologne, 1st edition 2015, ISBN 9783504062224 , pp. 507-39.
  • Finding aid for inventory 22286 Emil Pinkau & Co., Leipzig, in the Leipzig State Archives

Web links

Commons : Emil Pinkau (Person)  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Wolf v. Waldow: Leipzig, Springerstraße 8 - a search for clues. P. 508.
  2. ↑ Quotation: Obituary Emil Pinkau
  3. ^ Obituary by Emil Pinkau
  4. ↑ Wolf v. Waldow: Leipzig, Springerstraße 8 - a search for clues. P. 510.
  5. ↑ Wolf v. Waldow: Leipzig, Springerstraße 8 - a search for clues. P. 532.
  6. ↑ Information from the Pinkau family
  7. ↑ Pieske, Christa: The ABC of luxury paper. Manufacture, processing and use 1860–1930. Reimer, Berlin 1984. p. 93.
  8. ^ Cit. Emil Pinkau: The postcard, its origin and distribution.
  9. ↑ The question of who was the "inventor" of the postcard arose as early as 1895, when the first postcard collecting groups were formed. Pinkau himself described various preforms. August Schwartz , to whom the first postcard has so far been attributed, sent his (preserved) card one day later, on July 16, 1870.
  10. ↑ Quotation and illustration from: Emil Pinkau: The postcard, its origin and distribution.
  11. ↑ Information according to Emil Pinkau's obituary.
  12. ^ Emil Pinkau: The postcard, its origin and distribution.
  13. ^ Page with historical postcards from the Ottoman Empire
  14. ^ Advertisement text for a book with postcards by Max Fruchtermann. Pinkau is wrongly located in Breslau there
  15. ↑ Available in the Saxon State Archives in Leipzig, Emil Pinkau AG files
personal data
SURNAME Pinkau, Emil
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Pinkau, Eduard Franz Emil (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German lithographer and entrepreneur
DATE OF BIRTH January 10, 1850
PLACE OF BIRTH Thonberg
DATE OF DEATH July 22, 1922
Place of death Leipzig