130-year-old photographs return to art library
Press release from 05/30/2017
Before the Second World War, the Art Library of the National Museums in Berlin owned over 400 works by the photographer Ottomar Anschütz. A large part of these are considered lost. Recently, Anschütz's great-grandson gave the museum six photographs of wolves and foxes taken in 1886.
Holger Anschütz bought the photographs online at auction in 2014. At the beginning of 2017, it emerged that they came from the art library's collection. It was a matter of course for the Anschütz family to return the photographs to the museum. Hermann Parzinger, President of the SPK: "Every work that reappears is a special work for us. It also has a special value for those who return it to the collections. I would therefore like to express my heartfelt thanks to Ottomar Anschütz's family for their decision to donate the photographs to the Art Library."
Ottomar Anschütz, born in 1846 and a pioneer of early photography, died 110 years ago today, on 30 May 1907. In the 1880s, he used a camera he invented himself with a focal plane shutter, with which he was able to reduce exposure times - unimaginable at the time - to 1/1000 of a second. He also did not need a tripod or black cloth over the camera, as was customary at the time, but took photos handheld. Anschütz was able to keep this camera secret until it was patented in 1888, and he became world-famous for his sensational photographs of animals in their natural movement.
In 1887, the Berlin museums acquired a large collection of photographs, mainly of animals, by Ottomar Anschütz. The Art Library received some Anschütz photographs back in 2002 and 2016.
Further links
- Press images
- More about Ottomar Anschütz