Old pictures, newly discovered
The decorative painter and photographer Josef Hanel (1865-1940) once caused a surprise when hand-coloured glass slides turned up in the former Botanical Museum of the University of Zurich. Since then, further collections have been discovered, including at the ETH Zurich. Biologist Christiane Jacquat has published them in a new book "Fundamentals". What fascinates her about these pictures?
You have already published a book about Josef Hanel's glass slides a few years ago. Why a second book on this subject?
After the publication of the first book five years ago, the last relatives of Josef Hanel emerged. Several articles were published about the "I.H. enigma", including one in the NZZ am Sonntag. A friend of Josef Hanel's brother's grandson – i.e. a friend of his great-nephew – read this article and made the connection. Josef Hanel had died of tuberculosis in 1940, having moved to Poland together with his wife before the Second World War.
Who was Josef Hanel?
Josef Hanel was born in 1865 in Hennersdorf in Sudetenland, which belonged to the Austrian Empire and later to Czechoslovakia. He was not a scientist, but a decorative painter and photographer. He produced unusually sharp and lifelike photographs (glass slides) of mushrooms and later also of plants, which he coloured by hand. Such glass slides were widely used in science and teaching. At that time, the hand-coloured glass plates were better suited for projection on large screens than the first colour films because they were razor-sharp.
And what does ETH Zurich has to do with Hanel?
The slides were also used for teaching at ETH Zurich. Sabina Keller, a member of staff and lecturer at the group of Grassland Sciences, was digitising a teaching collection when she discovered three boxes containing a total of 130 glass pictures in a cupboard*. Hanel seemed obsessed with his work. In total, more than 1.200 motifs have now been catalogued in various collections. In the book "Fundamentals", a good third – 71 of 222 illustrated pictures – come from the collection found at ETH Zurich.
What fascinates you about Hanel's slides?
Hanel's works have an incredibly positive and cheerful effect on me. The plants in his pictures look fresh and three-dimensional, even though – at the beginning, at least – he was almost certainly only photographing with sunlight. They are also scientifically very accurate. It is even possible to identify subspecies. Looking at them, it becomes clear that Hanel enjoyed his work very much and did it with great precision.
Why did you call your book "Fundamentals"?
Plants play a fundamental role. Without plants, there would be no air to breathe, no food, no people. People used to talk about sustainability or ecology. Today, the key word is "biodiversity". It was important to me to look at Hanel's collection from a contemporary perspective. This is why today's researchers, including Nina Buchmann, Professor of Grassland Sciences at ETH Zurich, have also contributed to certain topics. The book is also an attempt to make a scientific work accessible to the public. So I was looking for the "modern" aspects of this "old" material.
From "Fundamentals. The Plant World of the I. H.", pictures from the Grassland Sciences Group, ETH Zurich
About Christiane Jacquat
Biologist Christiane Jacquat specialised in plant sociology, archaeobotany and ethnobotany. Until her retirement in 2019, she worked as a research assistant at the Institute of Plant and Microbiology at the University of Zurich and was also curator of the former Botanical Museum attached to it. The Botanical Collection was later integrated into the Natural History Museum of the University of Zurich. Christiane Jacquat's research included the first plants found in the pile-dwelling settlements near Zurich. She has always been interested in the relationship between humans and the environment.
The book "Fundamentals - die Pflanzenwelt des I. H., Aktualität einer Sammlung handkolorierter Glasdiapositive" has been published by external page AT-Verlag and costs 59 Swiss francs.
* Three small treasure chests in the LFW: Article about the Hanel discovery at the Institute of Agricultural Sciences at ETH Zurich
external page Josef Hanel, 1865 - 1940: Film by the University of Zurich about Josef Hanel and the creation of his glass slides