Die Banater Berg- und Hüttenwerke und Domänen in der offiziellen Photographie der StEG (1858-1873)
The Mines, Steelworks, and Estates of Banat in the Official Photographs of the StEG (1858–1878)

Summary/Abstract: The industrialization of the Banat Highlands began when the StEG Company took over the mining areas under an agreement made with the Austrian state in 1855. Historians have stressed primarily the modernization of the area (addressing topics such as the capital investments made by the company, the effort to set up mining towns, the industrial progress correlated with the development of railway infrastructure), but neglected one of the most graphic historical sources: photography. Without diminishing the importance of documentary photography, in this case devoted to industrial topics, we found it necessary to point out its advertising function, which began to emerge in the second half of the nineteenth century. Official photography was one of the strategies employed by the StEG Company in order to highlight their good management of mining areas in Banat. For this purpose a number of talented photographers were commissioned (Andreas Groll, Anton Rohrbach, G. A. Stosius) and numerous presentation albums were made for the universal exhibitions at which the company participated (London 1862, Paris 1867, Vienna 1873) or for commemorative purposes, like the ones devoted to special technical achievements such as the Steierdorf-Oravița mountain railway, finished in 1863.

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