Bertha Wehnert-Beckmann

Bertha Beckmann was born in 1815 and demonstrated pioneering skills in business and photography in an international career spanning 40 decades. She apprenticed in the studio of photographer Wilhelm Horn in Prague in 1842 and settled in Dresden as a daguerreotypist. Upon her marriage to a fellow photographer, they ran a portrait studio in 8 Burgstrasse, Leipzig. After being widowed in 1847, she amazingly travelled to the US and opened two more studios in New York between 1849-1851 with the help of her brothers. Upon returning to Leipzig she opened the first stereoscope exhibition in the German-speaking world in 1854 and then another studio in Vienna in 1861.

Bertha specialised in portrait photography, with wonderful artistic depictions of children and musicians such as Clara Schumann, among others, but also ventured into architectural photography, documenting the town of Leipzig between 1855 and 1860, and also undertook early experiments with nude photography. Her photographs of buildings such as The Old Town Synagogue (1860) are invaluable records od pre-war Germany.

She was phenomenally successful and in 1865 was able to build a magnificent home and studio, the Bertha Wehnert-Beckman Villa, which survives to this day on the outskirts of Leipzig.

Her work can be found in the Leipzig Museum of City History

A book about her work ‘A German Lady. Bertha Wehnert-Beckmann’ by historian Jochen Voigt was published in 2014.

By Paula Vellet