Carl Simon & Co.

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The Lichtbildanstalt Carl Simon & Co. existed in Düsseldorf from 1907 to 2008 and was founded by Carl Simon (1873–1952). The company was active in the photo industry and traded among other things. a. with cameras, cinematographs and slide projectors . In addition, photographic services such as the production of slides from templates were offered. The core business consisted of lending and selling slides.

Carl Simon & Co.

Company history

Carl Simon, son of Johann Wilhelm and Katharina Simon, grew up in Dreifelden (Westerwald) and learned the trade in a general store. In 1896 he joined the Liesegang company in Düsseldorf, where he came into contact with the photo industry. In 1907, during the boom in German slide projection as a popular educational tool, he started his own business as a slide dealer and founded the "Lichtbildanstalt Carl Simon & Co." in Düsseldorf, located at Kronprinzenstrasse 92 in Düsseldorf- Unterbilk and listed in the Düsseldorf address book of 1911 as "Institute for Projection" is designated. Simon specialized primarily in the distribution of slides, of which he had built up a stock of 80,000 pieces by 1945. The motifs were either purchased as a series of images from slide wholesalers, made with the help of reproductions, or photographed as regional sights - possibly by hand. Each series of images included a lecture booklet in which the individual motifs were described and from which a speaker read aloud during the projection.

Carl Simon
Lecture booklet and slides

The slides were advertised both as black and white motifs and as hand-colored versions in separate catalogs together with the photo-optical devices. The colored versions show a high level of realistic color imitation.

The motifs were divided into the following groups in the 1935 catalog:

  1. National glass photo series with lectures
  2. Contemporary glass photography series with lectures
  3. Hiking and traveling through the German homeland with lectures
  4. Hiking and traveling around the world with lectures
  5. Art and poetry with lectures
  6. Science and technology with lectures
  7. Glass series of photographs of a religious nature
  8. Entertaining lectures, fairy tales and children's series
  9. Religious lectures (Protestant)
  10. Religious Lectures (Catholic)

It was presented and presented either by the borrowers and buyers of the slide series or by Carl Simon's employees, who are said to have traveled through Germany for slide shows. Venues were rooms in which a large number of people could stay: private salons, club rooms, community halls and movie theaters.

On June 27, 1947, Carl Simon sold his company to his son Carl-Heinz Simon (1920–2002), who then initially ran it under the same name.

In the 1950s, the company traded as "Lichtbilderei Carl Simon & Co. Bildstelle für Christian Kunst", which clearly emphasized the religious motifs. In addition to the rental business, the company concentrated on the implementation of its own projection events, in particular with the series of motifs for the Oberammergau Passion Play . Carl-Heinz Simon, the son of the company founder, engaged the Cologne actor Ernst Pilick as reciter . The last performance probably took place on November 22nd, 1966 in the “Gloria-Lichtspielhaus” in Kösching near Ingolstadt .

In 2010 the family owned around 23,000 slides and a large number of text booklets. The collection thus represented a coherent inventory of a German slide dealer of the early 20th century. In March 2012, the collection was auctioned off completely. A large part of the image motifs is digitized and can be called up in the foticon image database .

Dial warehouse of the photo institute Carl Simon & Co.

A publication was published in 2012 on the company's history, the media-historical background of the slide projection in the 19th and early 20th centuries, as well as the slide series “Die Kunststadt Düsseldorf”.

Web links

Digital copies

literature

  • Andreas Schroyen: Düsseldorf - the most beautiful city on the Rhine. Hand-colored slides from the Carl Simon & Co. photography institute from around 1930. Sutton Verlag, Erfurt 2012, ISBN 978-3-95400-118-7
  • foticon: A hiking trip through the Bergisches Land: hand-colored slides by the Carl Simon & Co. from around 1930 . Sutton, 2013, ISBN 978-3954002542
  • foticon: The Sauerland: Hand-colored slides from the Carl Simon & Co. from around 1930 . Sutton, 2013, ISBN 978-3-95400-255-9
  • foticon: Aachen - the charm of the cultural city around 1925 . Meyer & Meyer Verlag, 2014, ISBN 978-3-89899-849-9

Individual evidence

  1. ^ District Court Düsseldorf, Register Court, HRB 691 and autobiographical notes by Carl Simon, 1945 [oP], published in: Andreas Schroyen, Düsseldorf - the most beautiful city on the Rhine. Hand-colored slides from the Carl Simon & Co. photography institute from around 1930, Erfurt: Sutton Verlag, 2012, p. 8ff.
  2. ↑ Catalogs of the photo agency Carl Simon & Co., No. 511 [o. J.] - 532 [after 1934].
  3. ↑ Jens Ruchatz, Light and Truth. A medium history of photographic projection, Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag 2003, p. 374ff.
  4. ^ Address book for Düsseldorf and suburbs 1911 , Düsseldorfer Verlags-Anstalt AG, p. 478 , in the portal wiki-de.genealogy.net accessed on October 11, 2013
  5. ↑ Autobiographical Notes by Carl Simon, 1945 [oP].
  6. ↑ Catalogs of the photo agency Carl Simon & Co., No. 511 [o. J.] - 532 [after 1934].
  7. ↑ Lichtbildanstalt Carl Simon & Co., popular education and entertainment of the noblest kind, list no. 528 [1935].
  8. ↑ Memories of the Descendants, 2011.
  9. ↑ Jens Ruchatz, Light and Truth. A medium history of photographic projection, Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag 2003
  10. ↑ Düsseldorf District Court, Register Court, HRB 691 and autobiographical notes by Carl Simon, 1945 [oP].
  11. ↑ Application in printed matter from the company.
  12. ↑ List of events organized by the Lichtbildanstalt Carl Simon & Co. [unpublished, undated, undated]
  13. ^ Andreas Schroyen, Düsseldorf - the most beautiful city on the Rhine. Hand-colored slides by Lichtbildanstalt Carl Simon & Co. from around 1930, Erfurt: Sutton Verlag, 2012.
  14. ↑ suttonverlag.de ( Memento of the original from July 14, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , 70 colored photographs @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.suttonverlag.de
  15. ↑ suttonverlag.de ( Memento of the original from December 5, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.suttonverlag.de
  16. ↑ mm-sports.com ( Memento of the original from December 5, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.mm-sports.com