Abstract

In 1898, mining inspector Hugo von Königslöw (1868– 1926) travelled to the German colony of Jiaozhou Bay in China, which the Chinese had been forced to lease to the German Empire just a few months previously. As one of the first colonial masters of the Shandong Mining Company, von Königslöw worked in the territorial capital of Qingdao until 1901. While there, he collected an album with photographs of the city and its environs, the vast bulk of which he took himself. His China Album is therefore both an authentic historical source on the history of mining in the colony and a record of its author’s own personal interests; hence the inclusion of images of the Mountain States of America that he visited on his return journey to Europe. The album, long in family hands, was studied by the photographer and visual studies expert Stephan Sagurna and then entrusted to the Mining History Documentation Centre at the Deutsches Bergbau-Museum Bochum, also in digitised form. Both the album itself and reproductions of the photos it contains were exhibited in the presentation “Nach China? Das Fotoalbum des Hugo von Königslöw” at the LWL-Museum Henrichshütte at Hattingen from 19 July to 29 September 2024. That touring exhibition can currently be viewed at Siegen University Library (15 October to 6 December), after which it will travel on to Paderborn and Iserlohn.

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