Herman George Scheffauer Photograph Album, ca. 1885-ca. 1925

Summary

Creators:

Scheffauer, Herman George, 1878-1927

Extent:

1 album (131 photographic prints, various sizes, many bound); 38 x 27 cm. 68 digital objects

Language:

English

Background

Scope and content:

The Herman George Scheffauer Photograph Album contains 130 photographs taken circa 1885-1925. Nearly all the photographs in the album feature Scheffauer, many of them being portraits taken by professional photographers in San Francisco, London, and Berlin. Other notable persons featured in the collection include Ambrose Bierce, George Sterling, Haig Patigian, James Hopper, Frederick Bechdolt, as well as Scheffauer's wife Ethel and their daughter Fiona. Identifiable locations featured in the collection include the Bohemian Grove, London, Scotland, Spain and Germany. A few of the photographs feature sculptural or painted portraits of Scheffauer.

Photographer's featured in the collection include Arnold Genthe, Gabriel Moulin, Adolph Langfier, Florence Vandamm, Becker & Maass, Coover and Rasmussen, Heywood and Towers, John W. Baker, and Annie W. Brigman.

The album appears to have been compiled by an unidentified niece or nephew of Scheffauer, as such captions as "Uncle Herman" and "Aunt Ethel" would indicate.

The album also contains one etching--a portrait of Scheffauer by William Walker.

The album--bearing the hand-written title "Herman George Scheffauer"--is bound in string. For preservation purposes, its covers and leaves have been sleeved in plastic.

Biographical / historical:

Herman George Scheffauer was born in San Francisco, California in 1878. A poet and playwright of local importance, he was a protégé of Ambrose Bierce and was associated with George Sterling and other Bohemian Grove writers and artists. He married the English poet Ethel Talbot, with whom he had a daughter, Fiona. In 1910, Scheffauer moved to Germany to become a translator and journalist. He committed suicide in 1927.

Scheffauer's published poetry and drama includes Of Both Worlds (1903), Looms of Life (1908), The Sons of Baldur (1908), Drake in California (1912), The Hollow Head of Mars (1915), and The Infant in the News-Sheet (1921). His published translations from the German, many of them posthumous, include Atta Troll (1913), by Heinrich Heine; Bashan and I (1923), Children and Fools (1928), Early Sorrow (1930), and A Man and His Dog (1930), all by Thomas Mann; Gas (1924), by Georg Kaiser; and Peter the Czar (1925), by Klabund.

Acquisition information:

The Herman George Scheffauer Photograph Album was transferred from the Herman George Scheffauer Papers, 1895-1927, BANC MSS 84/22 c.

Location of this collection:

UC Berkeley, Bancroft Library

University of California, Berkeley, The Bancroft Library

Berkeley, CA 94720-6000, US

Contact:

510-642-6481

bancref-library@berkeley.edu

Website