Dr. Henry Buergel Goodwin is one of Sweden´s most distinguished photographers ever. He was active in Sweden during and after World War I. Henry B. Goodwin was born in Munich, Germany, on February 20, 1878. He was the only son of the Bavarian landscape painter, Hugo Bürgel, (1853-1903), and his wife Marie, born von Prantl, (1853-1923). He was christened Karl Heinrich Hugo, but after he had graduated from the University of Leipzig in 1903, he started to gradually change his name to give it an English-like touch by calling himself Buergel instead of Bürgel. He also converted from Catholicism to the Anglican Church. Young Heinrich was an Anglophile and was preparing himself for a future life in Great Britain.

At the University of Leipzig Heinrich studied Nordic languages and wrote his doctor´s thesis on an old Icelandic manuscript, called "Konungsannáll. Annales Islandorum Regii", which is kept at The Royal Library in Copenhagen. During his university years in Leipzig he also studied photography with Nicola Perscheid, who was one of the real great photographic masters in Europe at the turn of the century. With Perscheid Heinrich learnt how to use alternative copying methods, such as carbon-printing and bromoil-printing.

In 1903 his father died and later that year he married Hildegard Gassner of Würzburg. Half a year later, in April 1904, Heinrich and Hilde Buergel arrived in Uppsala, Sweden. His aim was to continue his university studies of Nordic languages in order to gain a lectureship at one of the famous English colleges.

In 1906 he got an engagement for two years as a lecturer of German at the University of Uppsala, which was prolonged for another two years in 1908. In 1908 he also became a Swedish subject.

Gradually Heinrich continued to change his name. In 1905 he added the surname Goodwin, claiming Dutch and Scotch ancestry and that he originally descended from Nordic vikings. In 1907 Heinrich was replaced by Henry and from then on he called himself Henry Buergel Goodwin or Henry B. Goodwin.

Late in summer 1909 Henry Goodwin married again. His new wife´s name was Ida Helander, née Engelke, and she was a schoolmistress in Stockholm at the time. Ida and Henry Goodwin did not get any children of their own. At the same time Henry Goodwin was forced to inhibit a planned removal from Uppsala to Oxford. His divorce had made it socially impossible for him to be accepted in Oxford, all the more as he had married again so quickly.

During the years 1909-1915 Goodwin continued his linguistic work. In 1912 he was employed by the publishing-house, P. A. Norstedt & Söner, in Stockholm as a lexicographer. Gradually his interest in photography developed, and as the linguistic career did not make its appearance, he passed on to portrait photography, part-time from 1913 and full-time from 1916. He named his studio 'Kamerabilder', which means 'Camera Pictures'. He claimed that his camera pictures are works of art and that they should be treated as such. He soon became a fashionable photographer but he also got a reputation as a debater and an ideologist in photographic matters. The name Goodwin became well-known and a trademark in those days.

Pictures on this page (in turn)
Click on the links or the pictures to get full size views

'Heinrich Bürgel och hans mor, Marie Bürgel´ - Henry Goodwin and his mother Marie Bürgel in 1896 - Photo: Gebrüder Lützel, Munich; 'Nicola Perscheid´ - c. 1900; 'Ung flicka' - 'Young Girl', c. 1900 - Photo: Nicola Perscheid; 'Heinrich Buergel i Upsala - 'Heinrich Buergel in Upsala, Sweden, May 1, 1904; 'Kamerabilder' - 'Camera Pictures', Goodwin´s exhibition catalogue 1915