1887 – A cabinet photo by German photo Pioneer Alb. Giesler shows the buildings on top of the Bruhnskoppel near Malente-Gremsmühlen in Germany. © Mark Zanzig/zanzig.com/Photo: Alb. Giesler
The story behind the image
Last week I could obtain a cabinet photo created by Albert Giesler. It shows the buildings of Bruhnskoppel near Malente-Gremsmühlen, probably taken between 1885 and 1890. It was owned by my great-great-grandfather, Johann Hinrich Grebien (1826-1903), father of Dorothea Christine Grebien (my great-grandmother).
While this image is essentially identical to this image from a postcard, the quality of the cabinet photo is waaaay better than the postcard. I scanned the image at 2400 dpi and gently edited it – just the usual stuff: removing spots, adjusting contrast, cropping. I think it’s great to have a 116 Megapixel image of Bruhnskoppel (which would be good for a decent print sized 114 x 72 cm.) I could even zoom into the image to see the people, and I guess that Johann Hinrich must be one of the guys. Very, very nice.
What’s more, I found a valuable hint on the creation date: Giesler embossed the figure 1887 into the lower right corner. This date is just barely visible in the print and not visible in the scaled down version above. It’s fantastic as the stamp on the postcard already suggested that it was created in 1891 (or before) but the date was not clear. Now it’s clear that this photo is certainly among the oldest image in the archive.
Johann Hinrich had opened a restaurant on the top of the Bruhnskoppel, a tiny hill near Gremsmühlen. Tourism in the area had slowly been picking up, and the restaurant was pretty successful. So successful in fact, that he extended the business with a hotel around 1895, which was run by his son, Friedrich Rudolph Grebien, who added a 21 meter high tower that provided stunning views across the landscape. There are many images on the web showing the site with that tower which makes the photo without the tower quite unique. Friedrich operated the hotel until the end of 1907 when he sold it.
The hotel continued a wild ride through the decades until it closed in 2010.
Albert Giesler was born in May 1862 in Eutin in Germany and pursued a photography career after graduating from school. He got trained by various photographers across Northern Germany and opened his photo studio in Eutin in 1886, at the age of 24. Starting with landscape photos, he constantly explored new and promising technologies like stereographic photos or artistic portrait photography. His work quickly became popular and many customers started collecting his photos. No surprise that he was appointed as official photographer of the Oldenburg court very soon. Even today, his work is outstanding both from technical and artistic point of view (considering the limitations of his time.)
It’s exciting to see how Johann Hinrich actually lived in Bruhnskoppel, which certainly was a beautiful place in 1887.
The high resolution image
| Capture Date | 1887 |
| Photographer | Alb. Giesler |
| Location | Bruhnskoppel, Germany |
| Image Source | 14 x 10 cm cabinet photo |
| Digital Image Source | EPSON Perfection 4870 Photo |
| Digital Image Source Format | TIFF, 48 bits/pixel, sRGB |
| Edited Image Format | JPEG, 24 bits/pixel, sRGB |
| Edited Image Dimensions | 13488 x 8596 Pixels |
| Copyright | © by Alb.Giesler/Mark Zanzig/zanzig.com |
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