Beyond the Battlefields: Käthe Buchler’s Photographs of Germany in the Great War
20 October 2017 – 14 January 2018
Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery
University of Birmingham
The Voices of War & Peace WW1 Engagement Centre is currently organising an exhibition of photographs by German amateur photographer Käthe Buchler (1876-1930), whose work forms one of the featured collections of the Museum of Photography in Braunschweig, Lower Saxony. This is the first time that her work has been displayed outside Germany.
Buchler photographed the German home front during the First World War. Her black & white images depict her family and community, children contributing to the war effort, women working in traditionally male roles, wounded soldiers returning from the frontline and the nursing staff who treated them. There will be two exhibitions in Birmingham, at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, focusing on Buchler’s images of women and children, and at the University of Birmingham, where her photographs of injured soldiers will be displayed alongside material relating to the University’s role as a hospital during the War. Both exhibitions draw extensively on the collections of the Library of Birmingham.
Käthe Buchler
Käthe Buchler was born in Braunschweig, Germany, in 1876. At age 19 she married Walther Buchler and by 1901 the couple had moved to an affluent area of the town. In 1905 they set up a foundation which awarded local grants in arts and culture. As well as supporting the arts, Käthe also belonged to many women’s organisations and to the Red Cross. In 1901 she had turned her attention to photography and Walther gave Käthe her first camera, a binocular Voigtländer. While she successfully taught herself to use the camera, she also sought advice from local professionals and attended courses in Berlin that were open to female students. She later developed and produced her own prints in the attic of the Buchler home.
Käthe Buchler died in 1930, aged 54. In 2003 the Buchler family donated their collection of over 1,000 black and white prints and 175 colour autochrome plates to the Museum of Photography in Braunschweig.
The exhibitions
The exhibition at Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery will explore Buchler’s photographs of her home town taken during the Great War. The black and white images feature members of Käthe’s family, working children and a series called ‘women doing men’s jobs’. These will be shown alongside material relating to the experience of women and children in Birmingham, for example, young girls working in the Mills munitions factory and Mrs Owen, a postal worker.
At the university Buchler’s photographs focus on the hospital in Braunschweig that treated wounded soldiers returning from the Great War. Displayed alongside these emotive images will be material relating to the University of Birmingham’s role as a military hospital from 1914-1918 and the patients who were treated there, for example, the Great Hall turned into a hospital ward and soldiers with jaw injuries, their faces bandaged. These images, documents and objects show that the war had a similar impact on people from both Britain and Germany. Regardless of nationality, people’s lives were changed irrevocably by the trauma of global conflict.
For more information about the exhibition and the programme of events please visit the Voices of War and Peace website: http://www.voicesofwarandpeace.org/voices-activity/beyond-the-battlefields/
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Beyond the Battlefields is a touring exhibition co-organised by the University of Hertfordshire Galleries, Photomuseum Braunschweig and the AHRC funded First World War Engagement Centres at the University of Birmingham (www.voicesofwarandpeace.org) and the University of Hertfordshire (https://everydaylivesinwar.herts.ac.uk). It will tour to the Grosvenor Gallery at the Holden Gallery, Manchester Metropolitan University from 2 February – 1 March 2018 and the University of Hertfordshire Galleries from 15 March – 5 May 2018.
All Buchler images © Estate of Käthe Buchler – Museum für Photographie Braunschweig/Deposit Stadtarchiv Braunschweig
The Iron Room 