Robert Lohmeyer

Robert Lohmeyer on horseback with his porters during his stay in South Cameroon in February / March 1908. Enlarged detail from: Robert Lohmeyer, Tropenphotographie (Deutsche Tropen-Bibliothek, Vol. 9), Thaden, Hamburg 1913

Robert Lohmeyer (born October 20, 1879 in Leipzig , † March 3, 1959 in Gütersloh ) was a German photo chemist and pioneer of color photography .

Life

Robert Lohmeyer, market stall in Agome-Palime. Lohmeyer stayed there in January 1908.

Robert Lohmeyer, game with the Great Cameroon Mountains in the background. The picture was taken in April 1908.

Robert Lohmeyer grew up in an educated middle class. His parents were the writer Julius Lohmeyer (1835–1903) and Elfriede Lohmeyer, née Hesse (1851–1920).

Study and start of career

Robert Lohmeyer, train of the Lüderitzbahn in the shifting dunes. The photo was taken on Lohmeyer's second trip to Africa in April 1909. The last wagon was attached to the train especially for him.

After graduating from high school, which he passed at the Berlin Oberrealschule Schlossstrasse, Lohmeyer first studied chemistry at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich (1901/1902) and then moved to the Royal Technical University in Berlin-Charlottenburg in the summer semester of 1902 . His university teachers there were Adolf Miethe and Otto Nikolaus Witt . He received his doctorate in 1907 with the thesis "Investigations on the gradation of silver-bromide-gelatine dry plates under the influence of light rays of different wavelengths" at the University of Marburg as a Dr. phil. He then worked briefly in Berlin as an assistant to Otto Nikolaus Witt.

Africa travel

In 1907, the International World Publishing House in Berlin hired Lohmeyer alongside Eduard Kiewning (1847 – ca. 1912/15) and Bruno Marquardt (1878–1916) to take color photographs in the German colonies according to Adolf Miethe's system . The photographers were equipped with Bermpohl machines for this purpose. The project received administrative support from the Reich Colonial Office. Kiewning took photos in German South West Africa (today Namibia) in the summer of 1907, and in 1908 Bruno Marquardt took the photos in the Pacific colonies of the German Empire and in Kiautschou . Lohmeyer reached Lome in Togo at the end of December 1907. From February to April 1908 he traveled to Cameroon . He returned to Germany via Togo, where he made further recordings. After a short stay in Berlin, another trip to Africa followed in today's Namibia, where Eduard Kiewning had already made color photographs in 1907, and German East Africa (now Tanzania). From February to the end of April he took photos in what is now Namibia. At the end of May 1909, Lohmeyer , coming from Lüderitzbucht , reached Dar es Salaam and then drove to the south of the colony. From July to September he visited the Usambara Mountains , Kilimanjaro and Lake Victoria . At the end of September he started his return journey to Europe from Dar es Salaam. These images are believed to be the first color photographs taken in Africa, but certainly the first to be taken in Togo, Cameroon, Namibia and Tanzania.

The photographs were first published in 1909/1910 in the work “The German Colonies”, which was produced after the bankruptcy of the International World Publishing House in 1908 by the newly founded “Verlagsanstalt für Farbenphotographie Weller & Hüttich” in Berlin, but later also in other publications. As a series of postcards from the “Colonial Warrior Donation”, some of Lohmeyer's color photographs were published during the First World War. After the war, new editions of "The German Colonies" were published between 1924 and 1926.

Further work

From 1911 Lohmeyer was managing director of the “Photocentrale des Kolonialkriegerdank e. V. ”, which sold both photographic equipment and black and white photographs from the colonies to publishers, editorial offices and ethnographic museums. Major buyers included the Ethnographic Museum in Berlin and the Rautenstrauch-Joest Museum in Cologne.

After the First World War , Lohmeyer became independent with "Wira GmbH Photocentrale (Specialhaus f. Kriminalistik)", which continued to sell colonial photographs but also supplied the criminal police with materials to secure crime scene traces. After the Second World War, Lohmeyer moved to Gütersloh, where he continued to run his company. He died in 1959.

family

Lohmeyer had been married to Alwine Peter, the daughter of the Göttingen botanist Gustav Albert Peter (1853-1937), since 1911 . The couple had sons Kurt (1914– approx. 1943) and Wolfgang (1919–2011).

Fonts

• Investigations into the gradation of silver-bromide-gelatin dry plates under the influence of light rays of different wavelengths , Diss. Marburg 1907
• The ruins of Kilwa-Kissiwani , in: Süsserott's Illustrated Colonial Calendar 1911, W. Süsserott, Berlin 1911, pp. 65–71
• Tropical photography (German Tropical Library, Vol. 9), Thaden, Hamburg 1913

Publications with photographs by Robert Lohmeyer

• Africa service. Handbook for passengers : Edition 1914 (Woermann-Linie AG, Hamburg-Amerika Linie, Hamburg-Bremer Afrika-Linie AG), Hartung & Co., Hamburg 1914
• Deutsche Kolonialgesellschaft (ed.): Color photographs from the German colonies. 48 color photographs from nature. Following the work of W. Scheel “Germany's Colonies” . Publishing company for color photography Weller & Hüttich. Berlin [1912/13]
• Manual 1914 : German East Africa Line Hamburg, Hamburg 1914
• Pfeiffer, Hans-Ernst (ed.): "Our beautiful old colonies". With e. Vorw. V. Ernst Wilhelm Bohle. With 189 color photogr. Fig. After nature photograph. v. R. Lohmeyer, Br. Marquardt. Ed. Kiewning and Helmut Blenck as well as 20 monochrome. Text fig. u. Maps vd image area d. Reichskolonialbundes . CA Weller. Berlin 1941
• Scheel, Willy: Germany's colonies in eighty color photographic recordings . Publishing company for color photography Weller & Hüttich. Berlin 1912 (3 editions)
• Schwabe, Kurd (ed.): The German Colonies , 2 volumes. Publishing house for color photography Weller & Hüttich. Berlin 1909/1910
• Schwabe, Kurd / Leutwein, Paul (ed.): The German Colonies: Anniversary edition for the forty-year return of the beginning of German colonial history . Complete neubearb., Publishing House for Color Photography Carl Weller. Berlin 1924/1925
• Schwabe, Kurd / Leutwein, Paul (ed.): The German Colonies . Publishing house for color photography Carl Weller. Berlin 1925/6 (ND Cologne: Komet Verlag 2009)

Individual evidence

1. ^ Official directory of the staff of teachers, civil servants and students at the royal Bavarian Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich. Summer semester 1901 , Munich 1901, p. 93 and official directory of the staff of teachers, civil servants and students at the royal Bavarian Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich. Winter semester 1901/1902 , Munich 1901, p. 91.
2. ↑ Robert Lohmeyer: Investigations on the gradation of silver-bromide-gelatin dry plates under the influence of light rays of different wavelengths . Phil. Diss. Marburg 1907.
3. ↑ Emil Sembritzki (ed.): Der Kolonialfreund: critical guide through popular German colonial literature . Berlin 1912, p. 150 .
4. ↑ Kurd Schwabe (ed.): The German Colonies , 2 vol. Publishing House for Color Photography Weller & Hüttich. Berlin 1909/10.
5. ^ Willy Scheel: Germany's colonies in eighty color photographic recordings . Publishing house for color photography Weller & Hüttich. Berlin 1912 (3 editions).
6. ↑ Kurd Schwabe / Paul Leutwein (eds.): The German Colonies: Anniversary edition for the forty year return of the beginning of German colonial history. Complete neubearb., Publishing House for Color Photography Carl Weller. Berlin 1924/1925; Kurd Schwabe / Paul Leutwein (ed.): The German Colonies , publishing house for color photography Carl Weller. Berlin 1925/6 (reprint Cologne: Komet Verlag 2009, CD-ROM edition German colonies in color photographs ISBN 978-3-89853-344-7 ).