Fotoeins Fotografie

location bifurcation, place & home

Posts from the ‘Urban Photography’ category

Fotoeins Friday: Fujichrome Slide, Fuji recipes 1

Fujifilm film-simulation recipes for X-Trans II detectors, applied to the X70:

2 Jun 2023: Fujichrome Slide.
9 Jun 2023: Kodak Platinum 200.
16 Jun 2023: Ektachrome 100SW.
23 Jun 2023: Kodacolor.
30 Jun 2023: Kodachrome 64.

I made the image above on 21 Sep 2022 with a Fujifilm X70 fixed-lens prime and settings: 1/1000-sec, f/13, ISO1000, and 18.5mm focal length (28mm full-frame equivalent). This post appears on Fotoeins Fotografie at fotoeins DOT com as https://wp.me/p1BIdT-p8i.

10. Bezirk, Favoriten, Wien, Vienna, Austria, Österreich, Fuji X70

Fotoeins Friday: Vienna still, four

“What’s the hubbub, bub?”

A quiet contemplative moment in the middle of the rush, at the city’s main/central station.

I made the image on 22 May 2022 with a Fujifilm X70 fixed-lens prime. This post appears on Fotoeins Fotografie at fotoeins DOT com as https://wp.me/p1BIdT-ok0.

Neuer Markt, 1. Bezirk, Innere Stadt, Wien, Vienna, Austria, Österreich, fotoeins.com

Fotoeins Friday: Vienna still, three

Neuer Markt

Afternoon light at Kupferschmiedgasse, in the 1st district.

I made the image on 19 May 2022 with a Fujifilm X70 fixed-lens prime and these settings: 1/500-sec, f/14, ISO1000, and 18.5mm focal length (28mm full-frame equivalent). This post appears on Fotoeins Fotografie at fotoeins DOT com as https://wp.me/p1BIdT-ojR.

5. Bezirk, Margareten, Wien, Vienna, Austria, Österreich, Fuji X70

Fotoeins Friday: Vienna still, one

“Renn” (run).

Next to the Wien river on the Recht Wienzeile, in the 5th district.

I made the image on 15 May 2022 with a Fujifilm X70 fixed-lens prime and these settings: 1/60-sec, f/8, ISO2000, and 18.5mm focal length (28mm full-frame equivalent). This post appears on Fotoeins Fotografie at fotoeins DOT com as https://wp.me/p1BIdT-ofL.

My Vienna: Dr. Olga Ehrenhaft-Steindler, trailblazer & women’s advocate

In examining the history of the University of Vienna, I discovered Olga Ehrenhaft-Steindler was the first woman to receive a doctoral degree in physics from the university in 1903. Who was she? How did she become the first? How did society of the time view the education of young women?

I’m starting a series on women who left their mark on Vienna and Austria, and some of the traces they left behind in the Austrian capital city. With educators, inventors, writers, and scientists, my serial includes: Dr. Marietta Blau; Marianne Hainisch; Hedwig Kiesler, a.k.a. Hedy Lamarr; Dr. Lise Meitner; Dr. Gabriele Possanner; Dr. Elise Richter; and Bertha von Suttner.


Who: Dr. Olga Ehrenhaft-Steindler: b/✵ 28 Oct 1879, d/✟ 21 Dec 1933.
PhD: 1st woman with doctoral degree in physics from University of Vienna, 1903.
Educator: Early 20th-century teacher & advocate for better access to education for young women.

In late 19th-century and early 20th-century Austria and Vienna, Olga Steindler was one of countless women who faced difficulties and challenges by young women who wanted to expand their education and improve employment, all of which were viewed by society at the time as undesirable. Feminism or anything similar did not exist.

Born and raised in Vienna, Olga Steindler departed her home for Prague to complete and pass her final high-school examinations in 1899, because young women were not permitted to do so within Austria at the time. She subsequently enrolled at the University of Vienna to study physics and mathematics within the Faculty of Philosophy. Only two years earlier in 1897 had the University of Vienna finally accepted the enrolment of women, although they were initially allowed only into the Faculty of Philosophy. In 1903, Steindler became the first woman to receive a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Vienna after successfully completing her research dissertation.

Completing qualifications for teaching at secondary (high) schools in the same year, she joined the “Athenäum” where she taught young women about experimental physics; she also taught at Vienna’s first girls’ secondary school established by Marianne Hainisch in the city’s 1st district. In 1907, she founded two new schools in Vienna: a girls’ public secondary school in the city’s 2nd district, and a business school for young women in the city’s 8th district. Steindler married her physicist colleague Dr. Felix Ehrenhaft in 1908; she became known as Dr. Olga Ehrenhaft-Steindler. She championed the cause for educating girls and young women, and creating new opportunities in science, business, and society at large. For her dedicated service to the public, Austria awarded her in 1931 the title of “Hofrat” as a new member of the imperial court advisory council, an honour uncommon among Austrian women at the time. At the age of 54, Dr. Olga Ehrenhaft-Steindler died in December 1933 from complications after having contracted pneumonia.


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Karpfengasse, Heidelberg Altstadt, Heidelberg, Baden-Württemberg, Germany, Deutschland, fotoeins.com

Fotoeins Friday: home in the Old Town (HD)

One of the great joys of being back “home” in Heidelberg is a slow relaxed stroll through the side streets in the university’s Altstadt (Old Town). Residents will have “strong” opinions about navigating the Hauptstrasse (main road) at the best of times, but newcomers quickly learn about the side streets and alternate east-west routes. In this image is Karpfengasse (“carp lane”), facing north to the Kongresshaus Stadthalle in the background.

I made the image on 15 Mar 2017 with a Canon EOS6D mark1 and these settings: 1/250-sec, f/16, ISO1000, and 50mm focal length. This post appears on Fotoeins Fotografie at fotoeins DOT com as https://wp.me/p1BIdT-ofx.

My Vienna: the Bohemian Prater & Europe’s oldest carousel

I’m on foot in Vienna’s Favoriten (10th district), slowly making my way uphill onto Laaer Berg. I pass apartment blocks and summer garden cottages and plots. After about 10 to 15 minutes, a clearing appears in the forest.

There’s a ferris wheel. There’s another ride with a vertical drop, some flat rides, even a small roller coaster.

The modest fairground is open on this warm late-afternoon in early-June, which means crowds are a little sparse with most kids in school and adults at work. Still, there’s a scatter of families: some with strollers, and others with young children dragging their parents to the nearest ride or closest treat.

There are spots to buy cold pop/soda, ice cream, and grilled sausage. There are also a couple of larger places for beer, wine, and typical Austrian “fare at the fair”.

And somewhere in the midst of a blaring soundtrack of top-40 and classic rock is home to Europe’s oldest carousel or merry-go-round.


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My Vienna, Judenplatz: centuries & memories of the Jewish community

Above/featured: Judenplatz at night. The Holocaust memorial is in the foreground at centre. In the background are “To the little trinity” at centre and Misrachi House (Museum Judenplatz) at right. Photo, 10 Jun 2022.

At Judenplatz are clear visual reminders of the city’s first Jewish community in medieval times.

The first Jewish community in Vienna settled around present-day Judenplatz in the Middle Ages with mention in written documents dated mid- to late-13th century AD/CE. Daily Jewish life thrived around the Or-Sarua Synagogue, the Jewish School, and the Mikveh ritual bath. The community along with the surrounding Jewish neighbourhood came to an end with the Pogrom of 1421. Catholic Habsburg Duke Albrecht II rolled out a decree (Wiener Geserah, Vienna Gesera) which legitimatized the expulsion, incarceration, torture, and murder of some 800 Jewish residents; accompanied by destruction and forced takeover of buildings and property.

Below I highlight remnants and traces to the medieval Jewish community at this square in central Vienna.

Judenplatz, Vienna, Wien, Oesterreich, Austria, fotoeins.com

Facing northwest: B, Bohemian Chancellery; H, Holocaust Memorial; L, Lessing monument; M, Misrachi House; T, To the little Trinity. Photo, 20 May 2018.

Judenplatz, Vienna, Wien, Oesterreich, Austria, fotoeins.com

Facing southeast: B, Bohemian Chancellery; J, Jordan House; H, Holocaust memorial; L, Lessing monument. Photo, 20 May 2018.


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My Vienna: Shoah Wall of Names Memorial

Above/featured: Shoah Namensmauern Gedenkstätte (Holocaust Wall of Names memorial site).

I drag my fingers gently down each stone block, across the fine indentations and the print of countless names.

I give quiet voice to each name I see.

In Vienna’s 9th district is a small green space, Ostarrichi Park, in front of the Österreichische Nationalbank (Austrian National Bank). The park is home to the Shoah Namensmauern Gedenkstätte (Holocaust Wall of Names Memorial), dedicated to over 64-thousand Austrian Jews murdered during the Nazi regime. Public inauguration of the memorial occurred on 9 November 2021 on the 83rd anniversary of the Pogromnacht.

The establishment and realization of the memorial has been a lifelong project for Vienna-born Holocaust survivor Kurt Yakov Tutter, who with his family fled to Belgium in 1930. Kurt and his younger sister, Rita, survived with the help of a Belgian family; their parents were deported and murdered in Auschwitz.

He made a new home in Toronto, Canada, where in 2000 he began working to create a memorial to murdered Austrian Jews. Funding from the national Austria state emphasized the enormous significance of the historical memorial; responsibility for continuing maintenance of the memorial is now shared by the Austria National Fund and the City of Vienna.

The names of over 64-thousand children, women, and men are engraved onto 160 slabs of granite; the slabs are arranged in an oval ring. Within the open and uncovered space, visitors to the memorial can walk briskly past each vertical block, but the air is thick with names.

Selma ABZUG, geboren/born 1886
Ernst ADLER, geb./b. 1904
David ALBRECHT, geb./b. 1871
Grete ALTMANN, geb./b. 1928



Therese WEISZ, geb./b. 1867
Eva WELLISCH, geb./b. 1933
Alfred WERTHEIM, geb./b. 1920
Edmund WESTFRIED, geb./b. 1890

Audio: Mr. Tutter speaks about Austria’s very late road to dealing with the past (Vergangenheitsbewältigung) and why he created the Wall of Names project.


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My Vienna: Aspang Station Deportation Memorial

“Well into the 1970s, the area around present-day Leon Zelman Park was the site of the Aspang Railway Station, which was built in 1880–1881 as a terminal for the regional Vienna-Aspang-Pitten rail line. Despite its relatively central location in the city’s 3rd district, the station served only regional rail traffic and was not very busy. These were likely reasons why after the “Anschluss” the Nazis chose this station for deportation transports.

Two transport trains departed in October 1939 with 1584 Jewish men deported to Nisko in the Lublin District of the General Governorate of occupied Poland as a failed attempt to create the Lublin reservation for expelled European Jews. Much larger deportations resumed from February 1941 to October 1942. 45451 Austrian-Jewish men and women were deported on a total of 45 transport trains to ghettos and extermination sites in (what are now) Czechia, Poland, Belarus, Lithuania, and Latvia.

In Vienna, the cynically-named Nazi ‘Zentralstelle für jüdische Auswanderung’ (Central Agency for Jewish Emigration) organized deportation efforts including forced captivity and assembly or collection points. Four internment stations were established in the city’s 2nd district where prisoners were abused and stripped of their possessions. For every transport, about one thousand people were driven to Aspang Station in uncovered trucks, in plain and open sight of the city’s population.

Of the 47035 Jewish men and women deported from Aspang Railway Station, only 1073 (2%) survived, according to the research by Austrian historian Jonny Moser, himself a survivor of the Holocaust/Shoah. In total, more than 65-thousand Austrian Jews fell victim; most of them began their road to their deaths at Aspang Station.”

•   Paraphrased from Kunst im öffentlichen Raum Wien (Art in public spaces Vienna).

After the war and Allied-occupation period, little was done to improve the station and its tracks. The station was closed in 1971 and the station building was demolished by 1977. The turn of the millennium provided momentum to both city and the national rail company for redevelopment of the area, including apartment blocks, green space, and a memorial. Today, the former railway station is Leon Zelman Park, named after Dr. Leon Zelman who established in 1980 the Jewish Welcome Service Vienna and led the organization until his passing in 2007. The inauguration of the deportation memorial occurred on 7 September 2017 with full opening to the public on the following day.


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