Käthe Buchler

Käthe Buchler's grave in the main cemetery in Braunschweig

Käthe Buchler , b. von Rhamm , (born October 11, 1876 in Braunschweig ; † September 14, 1930 ibid) was a German amateur photographer whose pictures serve as significant sources for the history of German women in everyday war life in the First World War and the use of color photography .

Life

Käthe Buchler was born in 1876 as the daughter of the member of the Landtag , Land Syndikus and legal historian Albert von Rhamm (member of the Ehrliche Kleiderseller zu Braunschweig ) and his wife Emma, ​​née. Spies was born in Braunschweig. With two sisters and a brother, she grew up in a safe and secure environment.

Since she had been hard of hearing from an early age , she received several treatments for this condition in Berlin . There she took part in photography courses from the Lette Association , founded in 1866 , which had committed itself to “promoting the employment of women” and, since 1890, had also offered training as a photographer. Before that she had already dealt with oil painting and watercolor painting .

In 1895 she married the owner of the quinine factory Braunschweig Buchler & Co , Walther Friedrich Theodor Buchler (1863–1929), who ran the company founded in 1858 by Hermann Buchler . Around 1901, after moving to the villa at Löwenwall 19 in Braunschweig, she remembered the courses at that time and began to capture her husband and her two children in portraits with a two-eyed Voigtlander camera he had given him . But also socially committed photo series with a plate camera in 9 × 12 format produced by the same manufacturer followed. From 1906, she refreshed her knowledge in the Lette club. Since 1910 - according to other sources from 1913 - she also used the autochrome process to produce color photographs . First and foremost, she only took pictures of her family's surroundings with this rather expensive method, but the children of the Braunschweig rescue center, an institution for socially disadvantaged boys and girls, and Sinti children who were taking a break in Steterburg were also found in these color photos .

As from 1914, more and more men in the wake of World War conscripted were, had strengthened women to "service to the home front " afford in traditionally male professions. As a member of the upper middle class, Käthe Buchler was a member of the Red Cross and the National Women's Association , but saw her main task in documenting the activities of her female environment in work in male professions in pictures.

However, she went even further by staging the recordings with a “ patriotic view” in order to “hold onto the perseverance of the bourgeoisie on the home front” .

The women in Buchler's photos do not symbolize female emancipation , but rather, in the spirit of their time, the "dutifully serving woman [...] who knows exactly where her place is in the war."

estate

Käthe Buchler's photographs have been in the holdings of the Museum of Photography in Braunschweig as a virtually complete estate since 2003 and served as source material for a scientific article as early as 1980 . As part of a German - documentation about the First World War her pictures in 2004 were known to the public. She reserved her 175 Autochromes , which were primarily made between 1913 and 1930, for private use. These pictorial documents, which are to be regarded as rarities as archives , were presented to the public in an exhibition and publication at the end of 2006 / beginning of 2007.

literature

• Gabriele Armenat (ed.): Women from Braunschweig. Braunschweig 1991.
• Ute Daniel: Workers' Women in War Society (= Critical Studies on History . Volume 48). Goettingen 1986.
• Bodo von Dewitz : Photographs from Braunschweig 1901–1918 by Käthe Buchler, b. from Rhamm. in: Working reports from the Braunschweig Municipal Museum. No. 37, Braunschweig 1980.
• Miriam Jung, Franziska Schmidt: The world in color. Käthe Buchler - Autochrome 1913 to 1930. Appelhans, Braunschweig 2006, ISBN 978-3-937664-52-1 .
• Museum for Photography : Käthe Buchler - Photographs between idyll and home front. Exhibition catalog, Appelhans Verlag Braunschweig 2012, ISBN 978-3-941737-76-1 .
• Doris Obschernitzki, Karin Weber-Andreas: In view of the photographer ... but what else? Lette Association, Berlin 1991.
• Mechthild Wise : Buchler, Käthe. In: Luitgard Camerer , Manfred Garzmann , Wolf-Dieter Schuegraf (eds.): Braunschweiger Stadtlexikon . Joh. Heinr. Meyer Verlag, Braunschweig 1992, ISBN 3-926701-14-5 , p. 49 .

Web links

• Käthe Buchler as a personality in BLIK - Braunschweig's guidance and information system for culture. on braunschweig.de
• 100 years of color photography, 70 years of color film. on photoscala.de
• Shockwave application. Entry “Käthe Buchler” under the menu “Artists” on dasverborgenemuseum.de
• Autochrome - And Gone to Heaven. on humanflowerproject.com
• Käthe Buchler - Autochrome 1913 to 1930. - Exhibition at the Photomuseum, Braunschweig ( Memento from January 12, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
• Käthe Buchler - photographs between idyll and home front. on photomuseum.de
• Self-portrait ca.1905

Single receipts

1. ^ Anne Roerkohl: home battlefield. in: The First World War. The book for the ARD television series. With contributions by Christiane Beil, Werner Biermann, Heinrich Billstein, Jürgen Bürschenfeld, Anne Roerkohl, Susanne Stenner and Gabriele Trost. Rowohlt, Berlin 2004, p. 174, and WDR Wissen  ( 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. on lernzeit.de  
2. ^ Anne Roerkohl: home battlefield. P. 175.
3. ^ The beauty of chemistry on taz.de.