REISINGER, Ernst. Griechenland Schilderungen deutscher Reisender In zweiter, veränderter Auflage herausgegeben. Mit 90 Bildtafeln, davon 62 nach Aufnahmen der Preussischen Messbildanstalt, Leipsig, Insel-Verlag, 1923.

In the introduction to this album, first published in 1916, the author,Ernst Reisinger, states his intention of offering a work that is not strictly a travel account but that will strengthen the bonds between Greece and Germany. With ninety photographs by himself, F. Boissonnas and Van Lüpke, and reproductions of engravings by V.M. Coronelli, E. Dodwell, J. Stuart and N. Revett, and L.-E.-S.-J. de Laborde, as well as scholarly texts by L. Ross, E. Curtius and others, which treat the subject of Greece in depth, Reisinger aims to offer a token of love to the Greek people. He collected his material from libraries in Munich and Berlin during the First World War. Many reproductions in the volume come from photographs in the Prussian Photographic Archive in Berlin and present rare views (of around 1910) of mainly continental Greece and the islands.

On browsing through the album, we come upon views from Athens and Attica, Corinth, the Argolid, Arcadia and Messinia, Epirus, Mount Athos, the Ionian Islands, Aegina and the Cyclades. It is moving to see the Isthmus of Corinth, Bassae, Sparta and Mystras, Methana, Tiryns, Eleusis and Epidaurus, Hosios Loukas, Meteora, the Byzantine churches in Arta, Melos, Tempe, Paros, Agrinio and Amphissa, in unbiased shots from the first decade of the twentieth century. It should be noted that the photographs of Corinth were taken before the excavations of the American School, and those in Olympia and Delphi before the restoration of the respective temples at these archaeological sites.

Written by Ioli Vingopoulou