Trudpert Schneider House

General information

It all began with a wonderful story. When the French photographer Joseph Broglie arrived in Freiburg in 1847, he asked if there was a local cabinet maker who would be able to make high precision replacement parts for his camera. He was recommended to Trudpert Schneider (1804–1899) in Ehrenstetten. Schneider was fascinated by the new technology of photography and asked Broglie to demonstrate this to him. He finally ordered his own camera from Paris. He took this with him on walking tours of the region of southern Germany.

From the 1850s onwards Schneider also travelled to Switzerland, upper Italy and Austria. Later on he was joined on these trips by his sons Heinrich (1835 - 1900) and Wilhelm (1839 - 1921) who had been making walking tours on their own since 1858. In the late 1850s and early 1860s the Schneiders travelled through the Rhineland, Prussia and Russia. The brothers enjoyed great success wherever they went. Following a series of recommendations, they were granted an audience, for example, with Crown Prince Friedrich in Berlin. This was followed by numerous orders from the nobility, army officers and wealthy citizens. The Schneiders took photographic portraits of the prominent people of the age - from the Archbishop of Cologne, the poet Mörike, the chemist Liebig and right up to the Emperor Franz Josef of Austria and Russian princes.

In the mid-1860s the Schneider brothers stopped making long distance journeys and in 1867 they set up their home with an integrated photography workshop directly next to the railway station. The Schneiders’ retreat to their home town reflected the general rise of photography to becoming a mass medium which was accessible everywhere. The photographs of Trudpert Schneider and his sons Heinrich and Wilhelm are today internationally considered to be amongst the finest achievements in the history of photography. They are preserved in numerous museums across the world.