Else Seifert (9 December 1879 – 23 June 1968) was a German architectural photographer and teacher from

Dresden Dresden (, ; Upper Saxon: ''Dräsdn''; wen, label=Upper Sorbian, Drježdźany) is the capital city of the German state of Saxony and its second most populous city, after Leipzig. It is the 12th most populous city of Germany, the fourth larg ...

Biography

Else Seifert was born in Dresden in 1879 to Karl Robert Seifert, a merchant, and Klara Amalie Juliane (née Schiertz). She was educated at the Fröbelseminar in

Kassel Kassel (; in Germany, spelled Cassel until 1926) is a city on the Fulda River in northern Hesse, Germany. It is the administrative seat of the Regierungsbezirk Kassel and the district of the same name and had 201,048 inhabitants in December 2020 ...

and completed a brief training in accounting. She worked as a private tutor in Kassel for three years and then worked in the commercial sector for ten years. In 1909 she returned to Dresden and began teaching at the Städtischen Mädchengewerbe- und Handelsschule (Municipal Girls' Industry and Trade School), where she worked until 1924. She taught classes in penmanship, correspondence, commodity economics, life skills, mathematics and civics. Seifert took up amateur photography in 1909 and joined the Dresden Photographic Society. In her spare time, she studied photography and architecture at the

Dresden University of Technology TU Dresden (for german: Technische Universität Dresden, abbreviated as TUD and often wrongly translated as "Dresden University of Technology") is a public research university, the largest institute of higher education in the city of Dresden, th ...

. She left her teaching job in 1924 and travelled to Italy, where she worked for a year as a nurse and began to pursue commercial photography. Upon her return to Dresden in 1926, her first book of photography was published by Wolfgang Jess. Between 1926 and 1931 she worked for the City of Dresden and its departments of buildings, education and transport as an architectural photographer. She spent three months in the Netherlands in 1930 and exhibited in Utrecht and Amsterdam. A collection of her photographs of Dresden was displayed in an exhibition at the

German Hygiene Museum The German Hygiene Museum (german: Deutsches Hygiene-Museum) is a medical museum in Dresden, Germany. It conceives itself today as a "forum for science, culture and society". It is a popular venue for events and exhibitions, and is among the most ...

in the same year. Between 1931 and 1934, Seifert worked for the Hamburg-Südamerikanischen Steam Shipping Company as an onboard photographer on its routes to Norway, Morocco, Spain, Egypt, Palestine and England. From 1937 she turned her focus away from commercial photography to creating portraits and cityscapes, particularly of

Loschwitz Loschwitz is a borough ('' Stadtbezirk'') of Dresden, Germany, incorporated in 1921. It consists of ten quarters (''Stadtteile''): Loschwitz is a villa quarter located at the slopes north of the Elbe river. At the top of the hillside is the quar ...

, the neighborhood of Dresden where she lived. Seifert was largely inactive after 1945, and three books she had compiled were never published. She died on 23 June 1968 in Dresden. A collection of her work is held by the

Saxon State and University Library Dresden The Saxon State and University Library Dresden (full name in german: Sächsische Landesbibliothek – Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Dresden), abbreviated SLUB Dresden, is located in Dresden, Germany. It is both the regional library (german: ...

in its

Deutsche Fotothek The Deutsche Fotothek () is a picture library in Dresden, Germany, located in the Saxon State Library. It holds more than two million images. Its strengths are in art, architecture, music, geography, technology, the economy, and the Saxony region. ...

library. The collection includes around 1100 negatives and 570 positive photographs.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Seifert, Else 1879 births 1968 deaths Architectural photographers Photographers from Dresden German women photographers German schoolteachers