Hermann Krone Collection
Hermann Krone, Self-Portrait with Photographic Equipment, ca. 1856-1858 (TU Dresden, Hermann Krone Collection, inv. no. KAD T 022/03)
The Hermann Krone Collection preserves the work of photographer, scientist, university lecturer and publicist Hermann Krone (Wrocław 1827-1916 Laubegast). Krone is one of the pioneers of photography in the German-speaking world. In 1907, he donated one of his most important works, the “Historische Lehrmuseum für Photographie” (“Historical Didactic Museum of Photography”), to the Scientific-Photographic Institute of the Technische Hochschule Dresden, now the Institute of Applied Physics (IAP).
The donation originally comprised 141 didactic charts with around 1,200 photographs, produced using a wide variety of photographic processes, in addition to twelve frames with daguerreotypes and around 900 glass negatives and diapositives. The donation also included Krone’s manuscript on the basic methods of his work, “Die Photographischen Urmethoden”. With the exception of minor losses, this collection has survived to the present day and is now one of the most important testimonies to the early history of photography.
The collection is fully inventoried and documented in a virtual database. The publication of these records in the central collection database of TU Dresden is currently being prepared.