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E. Bieber

*1810

The original E. in “E.Bieber” was the studio´s founder: Emilie Bieber (born in 1810 in Hamburg). She was a pioneer in the field of photography and one of the very first women to work with daguerrotypes. In 1852 she established the photographic studio “E.Bieber” in Hamburg; later it had a branch in Berlin as well. In 1872 she was appointed Court Photographer to the royal court of Prussia. The firm remained in the Bieber family after Emilie´s death in 1884. Her great-nephew Emil Bieber (born in 1878) also became a leading portrait photographer in Hamburg; he owned the family firm from 1911 on. After fleeing from the nazis in 1938 he was able to establish himself as the pre-eminent portrait photographer in Cape Town, South Africa. His obituary there in 1962 called him “the Emperor´s photographer” and listed some of the notables he had photographed: the German Kaiser, Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands, Richard Strauss, Franz Lehar, Josephine Baker, Thomas Edison, and “since 1938, prominent South African political figures”. The Bieber photographic dynasty and several other noted Jewish photographers in Hamburg are portrayed in a lovingly edited volume by Wilfried Weinke titled “Verdraengt, vertrieben, aber nicht vergessen” [Driven out, expelled, but not forgotten]. The book, published in 2003 by the Kunstverlag Weingarten (ISBN 3-8170-25467) contains many superbly reproduced examples of the works of the Biebers, Max Halberstadt, Erich Kastan and Kurt Schallenberg.

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