Background
Henry Buergel Goodwin was born on February 20, 1878 in Munich, Bayern, Germany.
lexicographer philologist Photographer
Henry Buergel Goodwin was born on February 20, 1878 in Munich, Bayern, Germany.
Henry Buergel Goodwin studied Nordic languages at the University of Leipzig, graduating in 1903 with a Doctor of Philosophy thesis on the Icelandic manuscript Konungsannáll. Annales Islandorum Regii. While in Leipzig, he also learned to photograph in the studio of Nicola Perscheid.
In 1903, Henry Buergel Goodwin married Hildegard Gassner, and the following year, they moved to Uppsala in Sweden, where he held a position as lecturer in German at Uppsala University from 1906 until 1909. When his academic career did not really advance, Henry Buergel Goodwin began concentrating more on photography. In 1913 he organised a photography course given by Nicola Perscheid, and from 1916 on, he worked as a professional photographer with his own studio. He became known as Sweden's foremost pictorialist photographer, and his works were exhibited and acclaimed internationally.
He took up horticulture in his later years, corresponding with persons around the world about the best method for growing roses.
A member of the Photographic Society (Stockholm) and RPS.
With his move to Sweden, where he was naturalised in 1908, he also began to anglicise his name: he first added the "Goodwin" surname and omitted the Umlaut, changing "Bürgel" to "Buergel", and in 1907, he changed "Heinrich" to "Henry" and henceforth went by the name "Henry B. Goodwin".
Quotes from others about the person
Leif Wigh of the Fotografiska Museet writes: "Dr. Henry Buergel Goodwin's photographs can be divided into three different periods. His earliest works, in the pictorial manner, mark him as one of the predecessors of Swedish pictorialism during the years of the First World War. His pictures from this period have characteristic softness, a lack of sharpness, and a not uninteresting elevated air in typical pictorialist manner. His second picture period was more down-to-earth; it was during this period that he left the studio to take pictures outdoors (though he kept the studio as a means of support). Toward the latter part of the 1920s he came in contact with the new objectivity during a visit to Germany ... and subsequently began to photograph the vegetation in his garden in Saltsjobaden ... Now Goodwin's photographs, fifty years after his death, stand out as some of the most eminent from the pictorial era in Sweden."
In 1903, Henry Buergel Goodwin married Hildegard Gassner. In 1909, he was divorced from Hildegard, who would move back to Germany with their three children three years later. Only a short time later, Goodwin wed Ida Helander, née Engelke (1874-1963), a teacher from Stockholm.