Karl Blumenthal

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Karl Blumenthal (born April 27, 1866 in Wildbad ; † March 25, 1944 there ) had been a royal Württemberg court photographer in Wildbad since 1896 .

life and work

Karl Blumenthal was a son of the court photographer Ernst Heinrich Blumenthal (1827–1907). He and his family moved to Wildbad in 1872. He created numerous portraits of members of the European high nobility. His work was shown in an exhibition in the Württemberg State Library in Stuttgart in 1989 with the title “From the masked sleigh ride to the court photographer. The Photography and Stuttgart 1839-1900 “honored. A younger relative also embarked on a career in photography: Gustav Adolf Blumenthal was the official press photographer at the Summer and Winter Olympics in 1936.

Karl Blumenthal himself had a photographic studio and a postcard publisher at Wildbad 17 in Wildbad. Among other things, he sold the stereoscopes popular at the time . In 1896 he was appointed court photographer.

Raft trip from the Agenbacher Sägmühle (1910/1920)

From 1914 to 1916 he accompanied the field pilots department on the western front of the First World War on reconnaissance flights and made aerial photographs of French positions. He then gave up this job for health reasons. Later he joined the paramilitary " Organization Consul ", which was responsible, among other things, for the murder of Matthias Erzberger and Walter Rathenau .

Blumenthal documented life in the northern Black Forest . In addition to pictures of Wildbad and typical forest professions such as rafters and charcoal burners , which gradually became extinct at the beginning of the 20th century, he also took pictures of fairs and landscapes. During several stays in the Netherlands from 1927 onwards, he also created an extensive series of pictures about the abdicated Kaiser Wilhelm II and his family. When he arranged an exhibition on the former emperor in his shop window on the occasion of Wilhelm II's birthday in 1935, the National Socialists prompted the police to intervene. Blumenthal had to remove the pictures.

Blumenthal's studio in Wildbad, including his photo collection, was taken over by Dieter von Schoenebeck around 1950, who managed it until 2003. Dieter von Schoenebeck continued to document the development of the city. A large part of the pictures from the holdings of Blumenthal and von Schoenebeck, who had his studio at König-Karl-Straße 23 in Bad Wildbad, have been in the Baden-Württemberg State Archives since 2002 under the signature J 312 . The inventory includes around 1,600 negatives and prints.

In 2011, the exhibition “When the Forests Went on a Journey” was shown in Pforzheim , in which numerous photographs by Karl Blumenthal could be seen.

Publications

  • With the mountain railway to the Wildbader Höhengebiet , Schnitzer 1908
  • The Black Forest in and around Wildbad in pictures and words. 22 nature photos , Wildbad 1922

Web links

Commons : Karl Blumenthal  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Gustav Adolf Blumenthal (PDF; 539 kB)
  2. ↑ Publishing address
  3. ↑ Forests on the move ( Memento from February 12, 2013 in the web archive archive.today )
  4. ↑ Blumenthal loyal to the emperor (PDF; 48 kB)
  5. ↑ Inventory display
  6. ↑ When the forests went on a journey ( Memento from February 12, 2013 in the web archive archive.today )
personal data
SURNAME Blumenthal, Karl
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Royal Württemberg court photographer
DATE OF BIRTH April 27, 1866
PLACE OF BIRTH Wildbad
DATE OF DEATH March 25, 1944
Place of death Wildbad