Klein and Peyerl – Photo Studio

I recently attended a lecture delivered by Mr. Randor Guy as part of the "Madras Week celebrations" in Chennai. The venue was M. Ct. Muthiah Chettiyar High School in Pursawalkam and the topic was on the Photo Studios of Chennai. He was referring about one Photo Studio by name Klein and Peyerl. The Madras photo collection known to many as the Harry Miller Collection were NOT his pictures. He only owned the collection till he sold it to Vintage Vignettes. The pictures in Madras were one of those seredipitous discoveries. Please read on to know more…

The firm Wiele and Klein was founded by an Englishman named Wiele, probably in the late 1880s. Before long, he took as partner a Theodor Klein, who was born of German parents in Madras. The earliest record of the firm Wiele and Klein is in 1890 when there's mention of it being a prize-winner at the Madras Fine Arts Exhibition. At 11, Mount Road, the studio was on the ground floor and Klein and his wife Valeska, whom he married in England in 1909, lived on the first floor, tending the store. Wiele, it would appear, preferred to move to the Blue Mountains, where the partners set up studios in Ooty and Coonoor around 1900.

The Great War had Klein, the German, out of the frame for its duration, but once it was over, Wiele decided to return home and Klein bought him out. The first thing Klein did was to sell the Round Tana property to Venkatapathi Naidu - a descendant of the founder of the city, Beri Thimmappa, and an active figure in civic affairs - and move to smaller premises further up Mount Road, between the LIC tower block and VST Motors. There he employed a young fellow German, Michael Peyerl, to run the shop and in the 1920s took him on as a partner. It is as Klein and Peyerl that Madras, till not so long ago, knew the firm - but in a different context.

During World War II, both Klein and Peyerl were interned as German nationals and the business was run by the Custodian of Enemy Property. Klein died during internment and, after the War, Peyerl decided to sell the firm and return to Germany. The firm was bought by Vettath John who continued the studio, but gradually made Klein and Peyerl the blockmakers most sought after by the letterpress printers and advertising agencies of South India. The wane of letterpress industry and a fire in 1987 spelt the end of Klein and Peyerl - a name the Johns retained - and the shell of the building was used by John's son Basu as offices.

One of the mysteries that the German owners left for posterity was an enormous collection of large and small glass plate negatives of India that the firm had accumulated. Besides the pictures taken by Wiele and Klein with their cumbersome equipment that weighed several scores of pounds and which needed several porters to carry, there were also negatives by Peyerl and Klein's brother-in-law Erwin Drinneberg. Holidaying in India in 1929-30, with his wife Elizabeth, Drinneberg, Klein and Peyerl with their families travelled to several parts of India and took hundreds of photographs. Many of these photographs found their way to Germany and over 500 of them were gifted by Elizabeth Drinneberg, after her husband's death, to the J&E von Partheim Stiftung (Endowment) in Heidelberg. A few years ago, a few of these pictures were exhibited in Madras.

An Englishman visiting Coonoor heard of a collection of pictures which a Miss Cooper, an ageing and penurious Anglo-India spinster, did not know what to do with. When he visited her, he found four huge custom-made teak boxes crammed with glass plate negatives. He told Harry Miller, perhaps the best known news photographer in the South in those days, about the collection and Miller sought the help of his friend, Eric Stracey, the then Inspector General of Police. Stracey had the collection picked up in Coonoor and brought to Madras in a police van. When Miller examined the collection, he found there were 1515 plates in all, ranging from 3 ½ x 4 ¼ inch quarter plates to 52 large plates of size 10x12 inches. Of them, over 300 were of Madras, including 100 and more of a bit of our lost heritage, the palms of Chepauk Park.

Harry Miller nursed this collection like a baby and whenever use was made of any of the pictures, the proceeds were used to help make Miss Cooper's last years more comfortable. As Miller himself became older, he was not able to care for the collection as it ought to have been and he sold it to a five-man partnership, `Vintage Vignettes', which now tends it.

The intriguing part of the collection is that there is no provenance to it. All that Miss Cooper could offer was that she had worked for a German family and they had left the collection with her and never came back for it. Could it have been Klein or Peyerl? Stracey's attempts to trace their heirs proved fruitless. Many such plates in old collections have the names of the photographers etched in the plates. There are plates with names of contemporaries of Klein and company, like Willie Blake, A. Nicholas, Tripe, and Bourke on them - but this collection has no names, though several pictures in it have dates. They all also have numbers - which perhaps tally with a catalogue or index - but of either, no trace was ever found. And so here in Madras is a provenance-less collection of brilliant photographs of an India of the past of which the most we can say is that there is a good chance that the photography was the work of Wiele, Klein, Peyerl and Drinneberg.

And if it was their work, they were indeed brilliant photographers - explaining why Wiele and Klein and then Klein and Peyerl were such popular studios in South India from the 1890s to the 1940s.

Madras War Cemetry

Madras War Cemetry

Hi I recently shifted to Mogappair west extension on the Vanagaram – Ambathur road. My office is in Ekkattuthangal. I was trying different routes to see which is the optimal route both in terms of time, distance, traffic, signals and what not? While on this exercise I used to cross a strange place daily near St. Thomas Mount with greeneries and grave yards. Finally I decided to see this place and parked my vehicle and went near to see the place. The entrance displayed “Madras War Cemetery” and inside there are thousands of grave yards each carrying a name to it. Later when I searched in the Google I found that this cemetery was built in 1952 to pay tribute to valiant men and women who died in the Second World War.

A tribute to the valiant men and women who laid down their lives in the Second World War, the Madras War Cemetery was set up in 1952 by the Imperial War Graves Commission, which is now known as the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC). The Cemetery is maintained by the CWGC in partnership with the Indian Government.

The Stone of Remembrance greets the visitor to the Madras War Cemetery with the words from the Book of Ecclesiasticus 'Their Name Liveth For Evermore'. Then there is the Cross of Sacrifice, which is set up on an octagonal base bearing a bronze sword upon its shaft. These two monuments are common to all large CWGC cemeteries.

The Madras War Cemetery honours 855 men and women of the Commonwealth forces and one Polish airman who died during the war of 1939 - 1945. It has been a kind of second burial for these armed forces personnel, who died in the line of duty at different places while serving in various units during the war. Most of the graves were brought together from civil and cantonment cemeteries in the South and East of India. There is also a memorial commemorating a merchant seaman who was buried elsewhere. The Cemetery also has three non-world war graves.

"There is also a Memorial to soldiers who died in the First world war between, 1914 - 1918. It is known as the Madras Memorial. The Madras Memorial has all the 1,039 men who died in the First World War inscribed on it. This was done, because the permanent maintenance of the graves of these men in various civil and cantonment cemeteries was not assured", says N Rajaram who is the caretaker of both the Madras War Cemetry and St. Mary's Cemetery. Of the 857 war graves in the Madras War Cemetery, 659 served for the forces of United Kingdom, 110 served for the forces of West Africa, 49 for the forces of undivided India (India before partition), 17 for the forces of Canada, 14 for the forces of Australia, 5 served for the forces of New Zealand, one for Burma, one for Malaya and one for Poland. The Madras Memorial honours 936 men from the forces of United Kingdom and 103 from undivided India.

The St. Mary's Cemetery, which belongs to St. Mary's Church Fort, contains the Commonwealth burials of both World Wars. There is one Commonwealth War Grave in the adjoining St. Patrick's Cemetery and also one non-world war burial. Of the First World War casualties buried here, 17 served for the forces of United Kingdom while 6 were from undivided India. Of the Second World War casualties in this cemetery 75 are from United Kingdom, 19 from India, 3 from West Africa, 1 from East Africa, 1 from Southern Rhodesia and 1 from Burma.

N Rajaram who is caretaker of both Cemeteries says, "It costs approximately around Rs 50,000 every month to maintain the cemetery. November 11th, Armistice Day, which signifies the end of the Second World War is celebrated every year. Wreaths are laid at three places - the Stone of Remembrance, Cross of Sacrifice and at the First World War Memorial. The bugle is sounded after the wreaths are laid, then the Guard of Honour reverse arms, after which the bugler sounds 'Just Rest'. At the end of the bugle, 2 minutes of silence is observed. Then the bugler sounds 'Rouse'. This is the way in which the graves are honoured. There is also a small prayer service. Every year a prominent personality is invited to grace the occasion." Prominent visitors include the Prince of Kent and Princess Anne.