Hermann Wagner (photographer)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Hermann Wagner (* 1895 ; † October 20, 1976 ) was a German photographer who was best known as a photographer of archaeological objects and places.

Life and achievement

Hermann Wagner served in the Air Force during World War I and learned aerial photography here, among other things . After the war he first worked as a technical photographer, then switched to archaeological photography. In 1929 he went to Athens as a freelance photographer, where he initially worked on the American excavations in Corinth . Later he also worked increasingly for the German Archaeological Institute Athens (DAI), where he had had a small laboratory in the basement since the early 1930s. Since he was not permanently employed, he had to make a living with work contracts. For the DAI he worked on the excavations on Samos and in Olympia , for the American School of Classical Studies at Athens on the Agora excavation . From 1931 he was the first excavation photographer at the Agora. In the history of this excavation, which was very modern for the time, he played an important role at the beginning and is held in honorable memory to this day, although in the assessment he is now overshadowed by his since 1934 initially as an assistant and after he left the excavation in 1939 acting as successor Alison Frantz . He took his first photo here, shortly after the excavation began, on May 25, 1931, from the northeast corner of the Temple of Hephaestus over the excavation site. In the next few years he made almost 1,500 negatives. For object photography, he used a camera that had a particularly great depth of detail and a large format of 18 × 24 cm. His main focus here was on the outdoor shots. Here he used one of the new lightweight Leica - 35mm cameras . This standard of complementary photo formats was retained during the excavation even after Wagner's departure.

When film recordings were made of the statues found on the Acropolis of Athens in their original locations in preparation for the Olympic Games in 1940 , Wagner took the opportunity to take photographs of the statues. He was considered a photographer who knew how to deal with “Greek light” particularly well. Some specialist historians, including Reinhard Förtsch , see the type of photography as a living expression of Third Humanism . On the other hand, the strong staging of the images, the idealization of antiquity typical of the time and the transfigurative attempt to “relate” to antiquity as well as the not always appropriate or speculative presentation are criticized. Nonetheless, in 1939 Hans Schrader published the book Die archaischen Marmorbildwerke der Akropolis with Wagner's pictures and with the participation of Ernst Langlotz , who was very appreciative of Wagner , which was widely distributed. After leaving the Agora excavation, Wagner was mainly involved in the DAI's Olympic excavation. Here, the technical staff - restorers, draftsmen and photographers - were of particular importance, since in the 1940s it was particularly difficult to recover finds made of bronze and iron. Wagner was not only responsible here as a photographer, but also for cleaning the bronze finds. He also received several orders from the Greek government: before elections in the country, Wagner was commissioned to take aerial photos of the refugee camps that had been taken in and around Athens of the refugees from the Greco-Turkish war and after the population swap at the beginning of the 1920s. At that time there were no Greek photographers who were able to take such aerial photographs. With the withdrawal of the German occupiers in 1944, Wagner also left Greece, which had meanwhile become his home, and lost his house in Heraklion .

Wagner found a new home in Heidelberg . After the long-time institute photographer and caretaker Anton Heppler was classified as incriminated in a court proceedings and dismissed, Wagner received the position at the Institute for Classical Archeology and Byzantine Archeology at the University of Heidelberg . He was considered politically completely unencumbered. He stayed at the institute until his retirement in 1961, until 1953 he was not only a photographer, but also a caretaker, from May 1948 assisted by the reinstated Heppler. In addition, as on Samos and in Olympia, he worked as a restorer of metal objects from the collection of antiquities at Heidelberg University. As an institute photographer he made the photographs for the first two volumes of the Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum Germany . But he was also repeatedly asked for work internationally. He took the photos for the large catalog of sculptures Catalogo de la escultura des Prado as well as for the excavations in Palinuro . For the institute he produced several thousand glass plate and celluloid negatives. Wagner was buried in the main cemetery in Pforzheim . The funeral speech was given by Roland Hampe , with whom Wagner had known since they met in Athens in 1932 and who was his last supervisor at the Heidelberg Institute.

Appreciation

Wagner was considered a patient and resourceful photographer who came to his results without any major technical aids and was able to capture large structures as well as small details. He achieved mastery above all in the photography of ancient sculptures , but also in landscape photography . In addition, he was also a documentarist of daily life, especially in Greece. Photographing flowers and other plants was more of a private inclination. Alongside Walter Hege, he is considered to be one of the most important photographers of the artistic legacies of ancient Greece. In his work he combined technical accuracy and realism with the local or the object's own "atmosphere". 2014 was entitled In the Light of Greece. Unknown masterpieces by the Heidelberg photographer Hermann Wagner (1895 to 1976) showed an exhibition with Wagner's pictures in the Heidelberg Institute, which was also presented in 2015 in the Eberbacher Heimatmuseum . In preparation for this exhibition, Wagner's heirs donated his estate and his small collection of antiquities to the Heidelberg Institute. In 2018, another exhibition was shown in Pforzheim under the title Hermann Wagner - Photographs from Greece .

literature

  • Roland Hampe : Hermann Wagner 1895–1976. In: Erika Simon (editor): Ancient and modern Greece. (= Cultural History of the Ancient World , Volume 22), Philipp von Zabern, Mainz 1984, ISBN 3-8053-0802-7 , pp. 325–328.
  • Susan I. Rotroff and Robert Lamberton: Women in the Athenian Agora. (= Agora Picture Book , Volume 26), American School of Classical Studies at Athens, Princeton 2006, ISBN 0876616449 , p. 51.
  • Lucy Shoe Meritt : A History of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens 1939–1980. American School of Classical Studies at Athens, Princeton 1984, p. 192 ( digital copy ).
  • Craig A. Mauzy: An Digging Story in Pictures. , In: John McK. Camp II , Craig A. Mauzy (Editor): The Agora of Athens. New perspectives for an archaeological site. (= Zabern's illustrated books on archeology ), von Zabern, Mainz 2009, ISBN 978-3-8053-3789-2 , pp. 87–112, especially p. 99.
  • Caroline Rödel-Braune: Items and personal details. In: Nicolas Zenzen (editor): Objects tell stories. 150 years of the Institute for Classical Archeology. An exhibition at Heidelberg University Museum, October 26, 2016 to April 18, 2017. Institute for Classical Archeology, Heidelberg 2016, ISBN 978-3-00-054315-9 , pp. 37, 49–50.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ New exhibition in the Eberbacher Museum ... Neckartal-Odenwald online magazine - news from Eberbach, Hirschhorn, Schönbrunn, Waldbrunn, Neckargerach, Zwingenberg, Schwarzach, Neunkirchen, Mosbach, Neckarsteinach, Neckargemünd, Beerfelden, Sensbachtal and Hesseneck. Retrieved May 21, 2020 .
  2. ^ Paul Scheding and Michael Remmy (editors): Antike Plastik 5.0: //: 50 years research archive for ancient plastics in Cologne. Exhibition in the Academic Art Museum Antikensammlung of the University of Bonn, October 26, 2014 - December 21, 2014. Lit, Münster 2014, ISBN 978-3-643-12812-6 , p. 211, footnote 34
  3. ↑ Karoline Schröder: A picture of sculpture. The influence of photography on the perception of sculpture. transcript, Bielefeld 2018, ISBN 978-3-8376-4544-6 , p. 157
  4. ^ Paul Scheding and Michael Remmy (editors): Antike Plastik 5.0: //: 50 years research archive for ancient plastics in Cologne. Exhibition in the Academic Art Museum Antikensammlung of the University of Bonn, October 26, 2014 - December 21, 2014. Lit, Münster 2014, ISBN 978-3-643-12812-6 , p. 211, footnote 34
  5. ↑ Alexandra Kankeleit: Impressions from Olympia during the occupation, 1941-1944. In: Hellenika , New Series Volume 14, 2019, pp. 39–53. 
  6. ↑ UAH B 6607/2
  7. ↑ New exhibition in the Eberbacher Museum ... Neckartal-Odenwald online magazine - news from Eberbach, Hirschhorn, Schönbrunn, Waldbrunn, Neckargerach, Zwingenberg, Schwarzach, Neunkirchen, Mosbach, Neckarsteinach, Neckargemünd, Beerfelden, Sensbachtal and Hesseneck. Retrieved May 21, 2020 .
  8. ^ Exhibition: Greece Photographs from the Early 20th Century - Communication and Marketing - Heidelberg University. Retrieved May 21, 2020 .
  9. ↑ Newsletter 02/2014 (May 2014) of the Institute for Classical Archeology and Byzantine Archeology at the University of Heidelberg
  10. ^ "Hermann Wagner - Photographs from Greece": Exhibition shows historical recordings - Culture - Pforzheimer-Zeitung. Retrieved May 21, 2020 .
personal data
SURNAME Wagner, Hermann
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German photographer
DATE OF BIRTH 1895
DATE OF DEATH 20th October 1976