Emil Pulse

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Emil August Johannes Puls (born December 26, 1877 in Ottensen-Neumühlen , † May 20, 1941 in Hamburg-Altona ) was a German photographer . He lived and worked most of his life in Altona / Elbe .

biography

Emil Puls was born as the son of the cigar turner ("Piependreihers") Johannes Puls in the then independent Ottensen. He trained as a photographer; At least in 1903 he was registered as a photographer's assistant, i.e. journeyman, in Kiel . In 1912, back in his hometown, which now belongs to Altona , he opened the Emil Puls Photographic Art Institute ; He operated this until shortly before his death in 1941. During the First World War he was temporarily stationed in Belgium and northern France ; with the support of Otto Lehmann , the director of the Altona Museum , he was released for individual photo assignments. In 1917 he took a series of pictures in the Alsatian town of Zabern . Puls was married to Margarethe Ips from 1921.

On May 20, 1941, he died in Ottensen from the long-term effects of his injuries, which he suffered on Blood Sunday in 1932. Ottensen has been a part of Hamburg since Altona was incorporated into the Hanseatic City of Hamburg in 1938 . Emil Puls' grave in the Holstenkamp cemetery in Altona has been preserved.

plant

Puls always preferred to work with the plate camera during his long creative period, even after the advent of the roll film camera . Around 6,000 glass plate negatives were found in his estate and have been kept in the Altona Museum since 1976. He mainly took motifs from Altona, neighboring Hamburg and the Lower Elbe region , especially the Altes Land . Puls also seems to have taken maritime motifs around 1900, as well as pictures of soldiers and ruins during the war; but later he specialized in architecture, interiors, industrial and landscape photography.

His clients included the city museum in particular, for which from 1915 he made interior photos, numerous reproductions of engravings and paintings, but also two series of pictures about the “Cherry Blossom in the Old Country” and the “Hahnöfer Sand Juvenile Penitentiary”. Furthermore, his colleague, the photo collector Fritz Lachmund , and the Altona magistrate repeatedly acquired Puls' work. For his two-volume book Neues Altona 1919-1929 , published in 1929 . Ten years of building a major German city , the city archivist Paul Theodor Hoffmann used around 40 motifs by the photographer, including new buildings by Gustav Oelsner and facilities in the Volkspark designed by Ferdinand Tutenberg . He also sold paper prints of his pictures.

In the conflict between “art” and “professional photography” that has been propagated in northern Germany in particular by Alfred Lichtwark since the turn of the century , Puls is not easy to classify. On the one hand, he ran an economically quite successful business; on the other hand, he called this art institute and developed an independent handwriting in his work. In addition, he occasionally took part in competitions; in one of these (1930 on the subject of the Lower Elbe), two submitted pulse photos were awarded.

Posthumous appreciation

The photographic estate was kept by his wife Margarethe Puls in the attic of their house on Bahrenfelder Str. In Ottensen. One year before her death in 1977, the picture archive was transferred to the Altona Museum. In addition to the 6,000 glass plates, it also contained a few hundred slides and contact prints; the entire collection was easily accessible through image directories created by Emil Puls himself.

In 1999 the museum showed the exhibition Emil Puls, a photographer from Altona . The exhibition Altona: A City Like No Other , which was also on view there in 2003/04, also contained numerous photographs by Emil Puls.

In 2002, more damaged negatives came to light in a private house in Ottensen. The artist Hans-Christian Jaenicke secured these glass plates and used them to create new art objects, the pulse installations. Jaenicke chose the motifs Zeppelin over Altona, the Kleine Papagoyenstrasse, bathing boys, the Hessen ship of the line and Max Brauer's speech at the Liliencron celebration of 1928 for his installations. The pulse installations were shown in the Altona Museum in 2004.

literature

  • Nina Gorgus, Gerhard Kaufmann (ed.): The Photographische Kunstanstalt Emil Puls in Altona. Specialty: architecture, interior, industry and landscape. Dölling and Galitz, Hamburg 1999, ISBN 3-933-37424-3 ( exhibition catalog for the Emil Puls exhibition . A photographer from Altona (1877–1941) in the Altona Museum from May 12 to July 11, 1999).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Birth register StA Ottensen, No. 704/1877
  2. ↑ Death register StA Hamburg 7a, No. 633/1941
  3. ↑ Marriage register StA Altona II (Ottensen), No. 80/1921
  4. ↑ yacht.de: The "Beginnings of Maritime Photography": Photo exhibition from July 1st to August 1st on the "Rickmer Rickmers" , June 23rd, 2004
  5. ↑ Art and Kultur.de: Altona: A city like no other , the exhibition of the Altona Museum of 3 September 2003 to August 1, 2004
  6. ^ Kunstaspekte.de: Hans-Christian Jaenicke - CONSTRUCTION SITE: The pulse installations , March 24, 2004 to August 2004
personal data
SURNAME Pulse, Emil
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Puls, Emil August Johannes (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German photographer
DATE OF BIRTH December 26, 1877
PLACE OF BIRTH Ottensen-Neumühlen
DATE OF DEATH May 20, 1941
Place of death Hamburg-Altona