Photographs by Robert Breitinger

Robert Breitinger-Wyder was a heating engineer and stove manufacturer in Zürich. At age 45, he took up the hobby of photography, like so many of the bourgeoisie in Zürich at that time. His photographic work, which is objective and documentary in style, spans the period between 1886 and 1910. His main subjects were topographical views and individual buildings in the city of Zürich, occasionally he also photographed views of geographical locations in wider Switzerland. Other thematic areas of interest for Breitinger were the arts and crafts, depictions of the frozen-over Lake Zürich in winter, trees and flowers, fountains and monuments, ships, and, unsurprisingly, heating stoves. Breitinger himself produced his photographs in two size categories: the cabinet and the visiting-card format. The cabinet card measures 13 x 18 cm (the collection comprises 18 boxes of these with 180-200 photos per box). The visiting-card format is sub-divided into three further sizes, all smaller in dimension than the cabinet card (there are 3 boxes of these, each containing between 200 and 220 photos). The collection was catalogued and typed on to library index cards in 1934 and is organised according to Breitinger’s meticulous system. The biggest group contains images of Zürich city, in particular the neighbourhood of Enge with its prestigious villas. Buildings are frequently depicted, normally complete with information about their owner. Breitinger’s engineering training predisposed him to focus on the technical aspects of objects, resulting in various series of photographs featuring heating stoves, bridges and building sites. The time period covered by this collection of photographs encompasses and documents an intense period of development and change in Zürich’s urban history.