Jacques Marie Bellwald

Jacques Marie Bellwald (born September 10, 1871 in Bech-Kleinmacher ; † April 25, 1945 in Echternach (Luxembourg) ) was a Luxembourg photo and cinema pioneer.

Life

Jacques Marie Bellwald was a son of Nicolas Bellwald and his first wife Maria Munhoven. His mother died early and Jacques Marie Bellwald had a stepmother in 1875. Bellwald familiarized himself with photographic techniques in Paris and completed his training with Charles Bernhoeft in Luxembourg . After his marriage in 1895 he moved to Echternach, where he opened a photo studio next to the Denzelt on the market square. He used the onset of the postcard boom from 1896/97 and the increasing number of tourists and produced postcards with hundreds of motifs from Luxembourg in the time between his branch in Echternach and the beginning of the First World War . On his photo tours he was often accompanied by his wife Josephine Hirsch and his two children Leonie and Cécile - a son who died at an early age - whom he also often took pictures of. Bellwald also documented the German invasion of Echternach in the course of the First World War and later the Allied troops. He later switched to reproducing old recordings. It can be assumed that he designed around 1500 to 2000 different picture and photo cards.

Bellwald presented his Edison's Ideal at the Hôtel du Cerf in Echternach on October 18, 1896, the first cinema screening in Luxembourg. In the capital he appeared as a projectionist only four days later. From October 22, 1896, he offered film screenings four times a day in the Villa Louvigny in Luxembourg. He presented the Lumiere films The Arrival of a Train at the Train Station in La Ciotat and La Mer as well as self-made films. In the winter months of 1896 he moved through the towns of Luxembourg and showed his films. Neither he nor his compatriot Adolphe Amberg, who had also started showing moving images a few days after Bellwald, continued his career in the cinema business. Until the first cinemas were established in Luxembourg around 1907, only a few traveling projectionists from abroad appeared in Luxembourg. Theodor Bläser from Wiesbaden in particular visited the annual markets with his traveling cinema. The Marzen family from Trier were also popular, showing films they had made themselves, often with Luxembourg motifs.

Jacques Marie Bellwald also wrote, illustrated and published travel guides about the Echternach area. The first came out in 1898 under the title Album Guide, La Petite Suisse Luxembourgeoise . La Moselle Luxembourgeoise et Mondorf-les-Bains and St. Willibrord and the jumping procession (1902) followed later .

Solange Coussement placed Bellwald among the best rural photographers who worked in Europe.

Web links

• Postcards Bellwald

References and comments

1. ↑ home.planet.nl
2. ↑ 1914 he traded as photography and publisher, consumer business: legilux.public.lu (PDF; 973 kB).
3. ↑ The hotel fell victim to the Battle of the Bulge . Since 1985 a memorial plaque commemorates the house in which Victor Hugo was a guest several times: massard.info (PDF; 1.3 MB)
4. ↑ moviemoviesite.com ( Memento of the original from December 22, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
5. ↑ onsstad.lu
6. ↑ lcc.luxcentral.com (PDF; 8.0 MB)