An almost round wooden structure measuring several metres across with a stool or chair in front of each set of brass eyepieces: the so-called Kaiserpanorama enabled the automatic presentation of three-dimensional photographs at the turn of the 20th century. It was a mass medium during the German Empire that many people remembered fondly well after its heyday. In his book Berlin Childhood around 1900, philosopher Walter Benjamin, who was born and raised in Berlin, described a noise that was like the ‘ringing of a little bell’ which sounded each time Kaiserpanorama switched from one imagine to another, guiding viewers through a series of ‘distant worlds’.
A crowd-pleaser at the Kaisergalerie
Crowd puller in the centre of Berlin
The Kaiserpanorama was invented by physicist, inventor and businessman August Fuhrmann (1844 – 1925). Born in Breslau, Silesia (now Wrocław, Poland), he opened his first Kaiserpanorama in 1883 in Berlin’s then popular Kaisergalerie shopping centre, located between Friedrichstraße (on the corner of Behrenstraße) and the boulevard Unter den Linden, an ideal location for such an attraction.
An early mass medium
In an early form of photojournalism, August Fuhrmann soon supplied up to 250 branches in Europe and overseas with stereoscopic images from his Berlin-based ‘World Panorama Centre’. It was a genuine mass medium intended not only for the wealthy and educated sections of the population, but for all of society. Its distribution was therefore widespread: in 1909, 100,000 prints of 3D images were already in circulation.Around 1900, with colour photography still in its infancy, black and white images were elaborately coloured by hand. August Fuhrmann had developed and patented a special process that made his black-and-white stereo images glow in colours that appeared natural.
‘A first-class art institute’
Fuhrmann’s company, which employed up to eight photographers, was commercially successful thanks to its founder’s skilful advertising and sales strategy and was known as a ‘first class art institute’. However, stereoscopy was ultimately no match for competition from the new medium of film. People lost interest in the still, silent images as they began flocking to the cinemas, which were often magnificent film palaces. The Kaiserpanorama in Berlin’s Kaisergalerie nonetheless remained open until 1939.Experience the Kaiserpanorama live
The Stadtmuseum Berlin has an original Kaiserpanorama in its collection. It comes from a Dutch branch of the ‘Weltpanoramazentrale’ and is the only one of its kind in Berlin. Acquired in 1983, it was in operation in the Märkisches Museum until 2019. Since 2021, an exact, functional replica can be experienced in the ‘Entertainment’ room of the BERLN GLOBAL exhibition at the Humboldt Forum.At the 2015 museum festival, visitors to the Märkisches Museum had the opportunity to watch the series of paintings in the Kaiserpanorama being changed and take a look behind the scenes of the original apparatus.
Editional Editing: Heiko Noack