Historic Photo: Neuhauser Strasse in Munich, Bavaria, 1839.

This amazing picture is one of the earliest photographs ever taken in Germany. It depicts Neuhauser Strasse, one of the “main drags” in the old city of Munich, in what was then the state of Bavaria (Germany was not a unified country until 1871). At first glance it appears to have been taken on a rainy day, or it could simply be that the ancient silver of the plate combined with smudges and water-marks over the 186 years since this photo was taken simply make it look like it’s raining. Many of the earliest photos look like this.

This picture was taken by Franz von Kobell and Carl August von Steinheil, two scientists and authors active in Bavaria at the time. Von Kobell was a mineralogist and von Steinheil a physicist and engineer. They liked to tinker with things, and one of the things they tried to do was build a better camera. Photography got its start in France in the 1820s but it was a very difficult and cumbersome process. At this time, the late 1830s, a new form of photography called the Daguerreotype was just on the verge of becoming popular. This would revolutionize photography, but it hadn’t happened yet.