Horses drink from a trough inside a paddock.

Hans Hildenbrand: 1870-1957

Hildenbrand was apprenticed in Pforzheim, and further training stations were Geneva and Frankfurt am Main. In 1894 he founded his own photography studio in Stuttgart at Königstrasse 27 and later at Marienstrasse 32. He became a royal court photographer. He also created pictures in the open air early on. For example, on August 5, 1908, he photographed the Zeppelin LZ 4 over Stuttgart, which went up in flames shortly afterwards. He also photographed the wreck of the airship in Echterdingen and sold his pictures as postcards .

From 1909 onwards he worked with Autochrome plates, making him one of the early colour photographers in Germany. In 1911 he founded the Colour Photographic Society, which mainly distributed postcards and stereoscopic images . The stereoscope series, which were marketed together with the corresponding device, were sold under the name “Chromoplast”.

During the First World War he was one of 19 officially commissioned war photographers on the German side and the only one among them who took color photographs of the war zones in Alsace , Champagne and the Vosges .

After the war, Hildenbrand worked a lot for the American magazine National Geographic . His last contributions were pictures on the topic Changing Berlin in 1937.

In 1944, Hildenbrand’s archive in Stuttgart was destroyed by an air raid, so many of his originals were lost. The company Photo-Hildenbrand , which was founded by Hans Hildenbrand, existed until 1997.  -Wikipedia (2024)