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Description
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Photographer unknown. Views of buildings and locations in Berlin illuminated for the project Berlin im Licht. 1928. 97 vintage warm-toned gelatin silver prints on ivory paper. Each circa 22,5 x 16,5 cm and 16,5 x 22,5 cm. Some with layout marks/numbers in pencil/crayon on the verso. With the original brown leather presentation album (34 x 25 cm, slightly rubbed and scuffed, lower spine with loss) with gilt-stamped title: Berlin im Licht, 50 l with slits for photographs, with a typed list "Berlin im Licht. Verzeichnis der im Album enthaltenen angestrahlten oder illuminierten Baulichkeiten", 100 images listed. Under the slogan Berlin im Licht (Berlin Alight), from October 13 - 16, 1928, the city of Berlin together with various business organizations and the lighting industry (AEG, Siemens & Halske, Osram) initiated a visionary propaganda campaign for electric light advertising and illumination of the city. It was a sensation throughout Germany and a spectacular tribute to modern city life. Already in the early 1920s the designer Walter Dexel had developed the first gas light for advertising purposes. As of 1926 he worked in Frankfurt and designed light advertising to unify facades and create harmony between architecture and advertising, also using larger designs on facades and on rooftops as well as illuminated phone booths and columns. There was a clear trend towards the use of light in advertising and architecture.A group of more than one hundred night views, which are a brilliant testimony to the New Vision in photography of the time, as well as urban and architectural photography, was taken to document the Berlin im Licht event. The collection offered here nearly contains this complete series and in its entirety constitutes a very rare and important part of photographic history. It is assumed that only a few albums were made with a series of one hundred photographs each to illustrate the Berlin im Licht project. One is in the collection of the Stadtmuseum Berlin which was exhibited in 2008 and contained many of the photographs offered here. This group offers a comprehensive overview of the many locations involved in the project, among them many modern buildings designed by renowned architects.The buildings include department stores such as Kaufhaus des Westens ("KaDeWe") and the silk store Michels & Cie., Kurfurstendamm (both designed by Johann Emil Schaudt); the main store of Michels & Cie., Leipziger Strasse; the textile store F.V. Grunfeld, Kurfurstendamm (Otto Firle); the fur store C.A. Herpich & Sohne, Leipziger Strasse (Erich Mendelsohn) as well as different branch offices of Hermann Tietz ("Hertie").A selection of images, which strongly follow the line of the new objectivity movement in photography, depict various retail stores, window shop displays, illuminated advertising columns such as the Berlin im Licht column at Grosser Stern which advertised the event (see p. 96), the Persil column at Postdamer Platz, as well as brightly lit exterior advertising billboards. In addition, this collection contains a series of striking images depicting modern cinemas such as: Ufa-Pavilion, Nollendorfplatz (Oskar Kaufmann); Capitol am Zoo (Hans Poelzig); Ufa-Tauentzien-Palast and the Titania-Palast, Steglitz (Schoffler, Schlonbach & Jacobi). Hotels are also included such as: Hotel Adlon (Carl Gause & Robert Leibnitz), Pariser Platz; Hotel Excelsior, Anhalter Bahnhof (Otto Rehnig), as well as places of public entertainment such as Potsdamer Platz with Haus Vaterland (Franz Schwechten).The present collection of photographs not only gives a wonderful impression of Berlin at night in the 1920s, but also documents a historical era of Berlin enterprise, especially in the images of department stores and retail stores of Jewish owners such as the silk store Michels & Cie., the textile shop F.V. Grunfeld and the luggage, leather and luxury item shop of Albert Rosenhain. These shops were soon closed in the 1930s or "aryanized" and their owners either deported or forced to emigrate. - All with light pressure marks in corners from album slits, some with minimal oxidation mirroring in edges and corners, a few slightly discolored, otherwise most in good to very good condition.Lit.: Franziska Nentwig (ed.). Berlin im Licht. Berlin 2008, ill. pp. 2 and 224-236.
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