Paul Sinner
Paul Sinner (born July 17, 1838 in Ludwigsburg , † March 30, 1925 in Tübingen ) was a German photographer who has made a special contribution as a documentarist of Swabian folk costumes and views, mainly of the cities.
Life
youth
Paul Sinner was the son of Johann Martin Sinner, who lived in Ludwigsburg and was a training sergeant with the rank of sergeant major . He quit military service as early as 1840 and returned with his family to his hometown of Tübingen. Since he was employed as a clerk at the court and as a caretaker, he lived in the building in which the Black Forest Court was located at the time: the former restaurant "Zum Adler" on the Holzmarkt ( Neue Straße 1). Since the father's modest salary was not enough to support a large family, the mother also earned money by selling flowers, for example.
Immediately after confirmation (i.e. probably in 1852) Sinner began an apprenticeship as a baker at the express request of his father and against his own request. After he had completed it in 1854, he obtained a passport and a certificate of homeland law from the municipality and went on the usual hike to German-speaking countries. In this way he came to Hamburg via Stuttgart and Frankfurt am Main . After he returned home, he looked for work in industry and from 1859 at the latest he worked as a locksmith in the Esslingen machine factory . Due to a work accident in which he seriously injured several fingers, he was forced to change jobs again, and on the advice of one of his friends, he started an apprenticeship in the newly established studio at Marienstraße 36 of the Stuttgart photographer Friedrich Brandseph . After completing this apprenticeship in 1862, he began to work as a photographer in Johann Bleibel's studio , where he initially earned 700 and later even 780 fl a year. The salary was very good, but Sinner had no plans to stay on as a permanent employee. He was convinced that his wish to become a freelance photographer would be hopeless because at the beginning of the 1860s there was strong competition among photographers in both Stuttgart and Tübingen, where he wanted to return. That is why he applied for a license for a restaurant in Tübingen in 1863, referring to the completed apprenticeship as a baker. However, the city council interpreted its frequent career changes negatively and rejected the application.
So Sinner stayed in Stuttgart and continued to work at Bleibel. Soon he began to look after his marriage to Wilhelmine Kienle (* July 23, 1839, † December 27, 1933), a butcher's daughter from Tübingen. This marriage had to be approved by the Tübingen city council. At this point, at the latest, he met the painter Wilhelm Hornung , who was hardly older and was also a member of the city council. Considering u. a. Due to the good income of Sinner, Hornung endorsed his application in his statement and at the meeting on June 18, 1864 the city council approved the marriage. The marriage took place in Stuttgart in July of the same year, and in November the young couple moved to Tübingen. Thanks to his wife's trousseau, he was able to settle in Tübingen. It can be assumed that Hornung and Sinner agreed on a joint activity at this point in time.
Sinner had eight children, the first of which, born in May 1865, died very early.
Photographic activity
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Beginnings
In December 1864, Hornung's father-in-law, master glazier Wilhelm Kieß, applied for permission to build a studio on the property of his house in upper Wöhrdstrasse (today Uhlandstrasse ). It was new in Tübingen that the studio should be located in a specially built, free-standing pavilion. Part of the walls as well as the roof should be glazed. The city council dealt with this matter several times - there were reservations about the “misshapen” roof, all the more because the pavilion was to be built in the Neckarvorstadt, a new representative housing estate. The building permit was finally granted in March 1865. After building work was carried out quickly, the "Hornung & Sinner, Painters and Photographers, Neckarvorstadt" studio was opened on May 5, 1865. Although the photographer's workshop gave the impression of a company, in reality it belonged only to Hornung.
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Folk costumes - a topic that was very important to Sinner - were photographed by Hornung and Sinner almost from the start. There was a good opportunity to do so in 1865. King Karl , who was traveling through Württemberg on the occasion of the takeover of the throne , came to Tübingen in the summer, where he was a. "34 farmer couples in their beautiful Steinlacher costume" presented. The homage to the king served to tie in with tradition, because national costumes were almost no longer worn at that time.
From the beginning, Sinner did not want to limit himself to photography and in November of the same year he opened a shop with arts and crafts and the photographs from the shared studio in the "Rupfschen home" in Neckargasse .
Complete independence
The joint studio with Hornung, in which he was only a subordinate partner, was only a temporary solution for Sinner: not even two years later, at the beginning of 1867, he bought a house (a former coach house) in Gartenstrasse 7, right at the foot of the Österbergs , on the slope of which was a vineyard. The house was thoroughly rebuilt: the studio was built on the top floor (the salon with the glazed roof was in the part facing the mountain), and the lower floor was used as an apartment by Sinner's family. The new atelier was officially opened on October 27, 1867. In order to lure customers into his studio, Sinner installed large letters on the roof of his house with the words “P. Sinner Photograph ”. On a pillar of the Neckartore that still existed at the time , he installed a display case in which one could admire his photos.
Sinner was both versatile and energetic, as well as inventive: Because at that time only wet plates were used in photography , which had to be developed immediately after exposure, he bought a one-horse-drawn carriage in his first year of self-employment was used to transport the specially made foldable darkroom tent . It was a large, flat wooden box with hinged legs. After opening the lid, the tent attached to it was erected, which covered the photographer from above. Thanks to this device, Sinner was independent of the studio and was able to take photos both with customers and outdoors, which he did on his own behalf.
For the photos of the Bebenhausen monastery , which were taken thanks to the transportable darkroom, he received a "Golden Medal for Art and Science" from King Karl von Württemberg in 1868. The medal made it easier for him to obtain a photography permit during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870/71. For this project of photographic documentation of the fighting, for which Sinner drove to Alsace , the transportable darkroom was again indispensable.
In 1868 Sinner opened a second studio: in Gmünd . Sinner probably employed a photographer there. But it only existed for a few months because Sinner probably realized that he could not tear himself apart between two cities at a time when the journey by train still took half a day. However, he stayed in contact with Gmünd: The Gmünder photographer Wilhelm Boppel , whom Sinner probably knew from the time he worked at Bleibel, had the exclusive right to sell his portraits in Gmünd; the rare portrait of the new Catholic bishop of Rottenburg, Karl Joseph von Hefele, from 1870 must be mentioned here in particular .
Sinner also owned a piece of land, situated much higher up, on a relatively flat part of the Österberg, which is called Wielandhöhe . He initially dried his wet plates on this property. Although he proved himself as a photographer - probably forced by the financial necessity due to the growing family - he took up his earlier idea and opened in 1876 in the large garden house on this property, which he originally had built as a retirement home for his father. the Sennhütte restaurant . The restaurant, which offered a wonderful view of the city, became a popular restaurant for excursions. At first it was run by Sinner's wife, later it was leased and existed until 1898, when Sinner sold this property to the neighboring student association “ Corps Rhenania ”, which built the corp house near the restaurant in 1886, which still exists today.
Sinner was the only photographer from the Kingdom of Württemberg who was allowed to present his work at the 1873 World Exhibition in Vienna in the "Graphic Art" department. After about ten years, Sinner's studio was known nationwide. This could be z. For example, it can be seen from the fact that in the travel and industry handbook for Württemberg from 1879 it was named in the first place of all Tübingen businesses. He owed his fame to his focus on architecture and costume photography. At this point in time he was already offering around 1,000 motifs from Swabia, where architectural photography dominated, and around 400 motifs in traditional costumes. An artistic-scientific claim can be clearly recognized in his efforts. He won over Prof. Dr. Wilhelm von Lübke and the state curator Prof. Dr. Eduard Paulus the Elder J. He was addressing the educated bourgeoisie who were just about to discover their passion for collecting.
Over the years, Sinner moved away from portrait photography. Hornung's studio in Tübingen was a leader in this area. In the end, Sinner completely renounced the studio photos in 1884 and leased the studio to the Stuttgart photographer Albert Gaugler from December, while he concentrated on architecture and costume photos himself.
Sinner photographed the Swabian costumes in the Black Forest in the area of Triberg and near Calw , in the Baar in Schwenningen , on the Swabian Alb in the Oberamt Ulm , as well as in the central Neckarland in Betzingen , Wurmlingen , Mähringen and in the Steinlachtal . Because of the proximity to Betzingen on the one hand and the traditional costume tradition that is still very much alive there, on the other hand, Sinner took the most photographs in Betzingen. He took the traditional costume photos both outdoors and in the studio. They were sometimes assembled into trading cards that combined several motifs. To make them look more attractive, elements of the black and white photos of his daughters were hand-colored red. Only the introduction of chromolithography in 1896 made color printing possible. The traditional costumes, initially in folders, later sold as postcards, were quite profitable for Sinner. Since there is no evidence of payment of the fees to the models, apart from subsequent mentions, it was speculated that Sinner did not share its profit with the farmers to an appropriate extent. His photographs of the Betzingen costumes turned out to be extraordinarily sustainable. They made a decisive contribution to the fact that the Betzinger costume is still alive today as the only Swabian costume and is perceived as the Swabian costume.
In the 1880s, Sinner mainly took landscape pictures, city views and photos of the villagers in their Sunday folk costume. He sold the recordings both to the press and as postcards. During the First World War he photographed the destruction of the cities in the war, mainly in Tübingen. The darkroom tent served him until the end of his life. In contrast to the carriage, it has been preserved - the Deutsches Museum in Munich bought it in the early 1930s , and you can see it there as part of the permanent exhibition “Photography and Film”.
Sinner was able to organize his time excellently. He worked professionally not only as a photographer, but also temporarily as an innkeeper, but also - immediately after he returned to Tübingen at the beginning of 1865 - he became a member of the "Harmonie" choral society and participated in it regularly, for which he received the title of honorary member in 1901.
Sinner photographed well into old age. Are known z. B. his views of Tübingen from 1916, which document the destruction caused by bombs; At this point in time he was 78. Sinner died as a respected citizen at the age of 87 and was buried in the Tübingen city cemetery. His wife survived him by a few years: she died in 1933 and was buried in the same grave.
Services
Paul Sinner was not only the most important representative of his subject in Tübingen, but he was also one of the most important photographers in Württemberg. He was perceived as a "fatherland artist". He owed this reputation to the orientation of his photographs. Thanks to traveling to Swabia and immortalizing countless Swabian views and details such as traditional costumes, he achieved national fame. Technically speaking, his pictures were no better than those of some of the other Tübingen colleagues. In the field of portrait photography and photomontage, his pictures were even inferior to the fine and precise pictures of Julius Wilhelm Hornung . A special place within his photographic work was the photography of objects that were already perceived as ancient: old buildings, Swabian folk costumes, household appliances and art antiquities. Sinner was also one of the first German war photographers.
Sinner's work stood out from the work of other photographers of the time. a. because the press of the time paid him a relatively large amount of attention. In addition, Sinner sold a large number of folders and postcards. Thanks to this dissemination, he influenced the perception of Württemberg. His photographs show not only how the cityscape and the image of the city dwellers changed over the course of the 19th century, but also how the image of the city and its inhabitants changed with photography. Paul Sinner was not only a picture chronicler, but also - as Wolfgang Hesse claims - the designer of a cultural region. His work became a model for the gradually increasing number of amateur photographers. "Late romantic notions of the country, art and people in 'Swabia' are not least his work and found lively expression in his work."
Because of this distribution, Paul Sinner's work has a special place in comparison to the work of other photographers of the time - thanks to this distribution, it is comparatively easily accessible. A very large part of his work from his fifty years of activity - a total of around 2000 records - has been preserved. The Tübingen city archive owns the largest part . The Reutlingen city archive also has an important collection. The Tübingen University Library , the Württemberg State Museum , the State Office for Folklore and the Württemberg State Library (all in Stuttgart) have significantly smaller collections . The panels owned by the Baden-Württemberg State Monuments Office are sorted according to topographical criteria and are therefore not recognizable as a separate collection.
Works
Individual evidence
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- ↑ Sinner's biography mainly follows the presentation of: Wolfgang Hesse: Views from Schwaben… , pp. 34–49, who wrote the reports Sinner's daughter: Mathilde Sinner: photographer Paul Sinner 1838–1925 and the Tübingen photographer Paul Sinner as a photo reporter in the Seventies , as well Used documents from the Tübingen City Archives.
- ↑ a b Wolfgang Hesse: Views from Swabia ... , p. 35
- ↑ Joachim W. Siener: Die Photography and Stuttgart ... , p. 133
- ↑ Wolfgang Hesse: Views from Swabia ... , p. 36
- ↑ The "supply inventory" of August 16, 1864 puts the wife's assets at 1,146 fl and 13 kr. fixed, while the spouse's property is only 304 fl and 2 kr. amounted to. - Wolfgang Hesse: Views from Swabia ... , p. 36
- ↑ Wolfgang Hesse: Views from Swabia ... , p. 46/47
- ↑ This settlement was located between the old town and the train station opened in 1861 .
- ↑ a b Wolfgang Hesse: Views from Swabia ... , s. 37
- ↑ Wolfgang Hesse: Views from Swabia ... , p. 51 - Quotation from the "Tübinger Chronik" of June 4, 1865
- ↑ Wolfgang Hesse: Views from Swabia ... , p. 38
- ↑ a b Wolfgang Hesse: Views from Swabia ... , p. 39
- ↑ Johannes Schüle: Gmünder Photographen , p. 41
- ↑ Johannes Schüle: Gmünder Photographen , p. 42
- ↑ Jürgen Jonas: Tübingen on foot. 13 District tours, VSA Verlag: Hamburg 1994, ISBN 3-87975-537-X , p. 134
- ↑ During the expansion of the house, the Sennhütte was the interim bar for the association.
- ↑ Wolfgang Hesse: Views from Swabia ... , p. 51
- ↑ a b Wolfgang Hesse: Views from Swabia ... , p. 94
- ↑ Possibly because of the strong competition in this market segment, Gaugler soon gave up the studio again, and at the end of February 1886 Christian Barth took it over and ran it until 1895 when he opened his own studio at 7 Uhlandstrasse . After that, Sinner's son Carl ran the studio. However, he moved from Tübingen to Neckargemünd in 1899 and the studio has remained unused since then.
- ↑ Wolfgang Hesse: Views from Swabia ... , pp. 52–67; see. also Sigrid Helber: The Betzinger costume. Grace, pride and self-confidence , Reutlingen-Betzingen 2015, ISBN 978-3-939775-53-9
- ^ Martin Kazmaier: Tübinger walks , Pfullingen: Neske 1977, p. 202
- ↑ Wolfgang Hesse: Views from Swabia ... , p. 46
- ↑ a b c Wolfgang Hesse: Views from Swabia ... , p. 5.
literature
- Johannes Schüle: Gmünder Photographers. The early days of photography in Schwäbisch Gmünd , Einhorn-Verlag: Schwäbisch Gmünd 2002, ISBN 3-927654-94-9
- Wolfgang Hesse: Views from Swabia. Land and people in photos by the first Tübingen photographers and the photographer Paul Sinner (1838–1925) , Metz brothers : Tübingen 1989, ISBN 3-921580-79-X
- Joachim W. Siener: The photography and Stuttgart 1839-1900. From the masked sleigh ride to the court photographer , Cantz edition: Stuttgart 1989, ISBN 3-89322-150-6
- Tübingen - cultural monuments. Tübingen photographs by Paul Sinner. Exhibition at the Kunsthalle Tübingen, April 8 to May 14, 1978 , ed. by Götz Adriani , Tübingen 1978
- Mathilde Sinner: The Tübingen photographer Paul Sinner as a photo reporter in the Seventies . In: "Tübinger Chronik", December 24, 1942
- Mathilde Sinner: photographer Paul Sinner 1838–1925 . In: “Tübinger Blätter”, 1938, pp. 45–49
Web links
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Sinner, Paul |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German photographer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | July 17, 1838 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Ludwigsburg |
| DATE OF DEATH | March 30, 1925 |
| Place of death | Tübingen |